From the outside in...

[khiemtran]

I've been thinking a bit about something inspired by this post, where llygoden mentions getting stuck as a character needs to venture out into the world for the first time.

This is something that has also happened to me, and I'm starting to think it's not just a coincidence. One of the things I've been learning in the last year is how to write from the outside in. How to start from an outside viewpoint and work my way into the story, rather than starting from inside my protagonist's head. It's something that I've been noticing more and more in some of my favourite novels, but it was only recently that I really started recognizing it. It was probably only when I first read Anna Karenina that I really started paying attention to it, and especially the way Tolstoy would introduce characters from outside points of view before showing us inside their heads.

I think the same thing also applies to settings as well. There's a certain shaping of the story when it is first introduced, and if the setting changes too much in scale or tone after that, it feels discordant. The story doesn't have to start with the full wide view panning in (although that's certainly a effective method), but it does help to have clues of the larger world embedded early on.

Thinking about this a bit more, this is probably where the classic cinematic openings come from. The huge spaceship looming in space, the fly-through view of the city, the bridging opening. On the flip side of course, the opposite effect can also be effective if done well (and early). For example, the surprise draw-and-reveal when the characters open the door for the first and it turns out they're really on...

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Now *that* is an efficient technique. I certainly wanted to read more!

The whole hinting that there's more than the story itself is stuff Patricia and I are discussing on rasfc right now. She uses the metaphor of the story as a stream with plenty of branches that split and flow together and how you need to bring some of those outliers in to enrich the story. Especially in the current story I am far too linear; I follow _only_ the main story (and a few subplots, granted, a *lot* of subplots, but they're always in direct relation to my POV character.)

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

The starting outside and zooming in can be effective, but if the viewpoint is very tightly focused on the POV character, is impossible to do. Having said that, I'm beginning to think the insistence on tight third is a "rule" dreamed up by writing workshops and a more flexible viewpoint is often more effective. brownenicky often talks about shifting levels of intimacy and distance.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

There is an effective way to start from the outside and zoom in with a tight POV, and that is to use multiple povs. The trick seems to be that, instead of using each POV to illustrate the viewpoint character, you use the viewpoint of each different character to illustrate another. So, you might you have the fairly common opening where a minor character serves as little more than a vehicle to introduce a main character. It's also roughly analogous to the role of the Greek chorus in setting up an expectation about a particular character before they come on stage.