Anna Karenina, Parts IV-V
Jan. 10th, 2006 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranAs I've been chomping my way through _Anna Karenina_, I've been thinking about what goes into a page of Tolstoy.
It's interesting that there's surprisingly little "filler". The conversations tend to be summarized and truncated into a few key sentences, and there's only a minimum of the sort of trivial actions that tend to be inserted in modern writing to break up dialogue. There is a lot of political discussion, of course, which has very little to do with the plot, but this always seems to add at least some value of its own.
Although, in plot terms, there's not much action on a single page, there is always development. Things change, characters change, the reader's understanding of the characters changes. This also seems to add to the reader's empathy with the characters. You understand them, not because you've been given a perfect snapshot, but because you've had time for your opinion to develope slowly. With each change you get a sense that _now_ you understand the character better, because you've seen where they've come from as well as what they are now.
It's also interesting the way Tolstoy uses the multiple viewpoints to show characters from different sides. There's a good deal of nuance there, especially in choosing when to switch viewpoints, and when to show things from a character's pov for the first time. It's something that's much harder to do if you stick to tight third and a single viewpoint, and there's some flexibility you lose if you use a rigid system for alternating views.
It's interesting that there's surprisingly little "filler". The conversations tend to be summarized and truncated into a few key sentences, and there's only a minimum of the sort of trivial actions that tend to be inserted in modern writing to break up dialogue. There is a lot of political discussion, of course, which has very little to do with the plot, but this always seems to add at least some value of its own.
Although, in plot terms, there's not much action on a single page, there is always development. Things change, characters change, the reader's understanding of the characters changes. This also seems to add to the reader's empathy with the characters. You understand them, not because you've been given a perfect snapshot, but because you've had time for your opinion to develope slowly. With each change you get a sense that _now_ you understand the character better, because you've seen where they've come from as well as what they are now.
It's also interesting the way Tolstoy uses the multiple viewpoints to show characters from different sides. There's a good deal of nuance there, especially in choosing when to switch viewpoints, and when to show things from a character's pov for the first time. It's something that's much harder to do if you stick to tight third and a single viewpoint, and there's some flexibility you lose if you use a rigid system for alternating views.
