Navel-gazing

[alixtii]

I was reading a fic in a fandom in which I don't do all that much reading, and hit the back button halfway through the first paragraph. Then, intrigued, I went back (i.e. forward) and checked myself. And, yes, the exposition-y nature of the opening kept up throughout.

I thought about it. Those opening sentences signalled to me two things: 1) that the POV was either 3rd person omniscient, 3rd person objective, or a 3rd person limited which didn't deeply penetrate at all, and 2) the author wasn't able to use the POV effectively.

There's no wrong POV in which to write (although one might be a wise or bad choice for a particular story), but 3rd person objective is a very tricky perspective. The actions in the stories have to speak for themselves. It's a particularly poor choice for a fic where the emphasis is romance and sex, in my opinion, because we don't care how much how it happens as to what effect it has on the charcaters.

For the other varieties of 3rd, omniscient and limited, it comes down to voice. I don't care if the narrative voice is that of the POV character or that of an omniscient narrator (wisdomeagle has done some great things with language using an omniscient narrator), but it needs to be distinctive, engaging--there has to be a personality behind it. There's a pretty significant difference between an objective recounting of what happened in the two years leading up to a fic and Faith remembering what happened in those two years. Faith is going to give it her own spin, make us care about it.

So I went through my own recent first lines to see how well I stand up to these standards.

From R3 2.3.16:

“They’re lying to us.”

This isn't really the actual first line, but the first paragraph is lifted straight from Orson Scott Card and italicized. So karabair's recent advice not to use dialogue to start a story doesn't really apply, I suppose. Although it does apply--because right above what I consider to be the first paragraph, there is an epigraph-ish thing which consists only of dialogue lifted from Card's novel. Now part of the intended effect is to recreate the feel of Ender's Game, because that's how he introduces the chapters in that book, with these giant chunks of disembodied conversation.

But karabair defends her choice to start a story with dialogue by claiming its "deliberately disorienting," which strikes me as one hell of a loophole. I like to start scenes and chapters with dialogue in part because of the disorienting effect: it throws you into a scene running, in media res. It's the literary equivalent of a fast cut. Which I suppose isn't a good idea when you're just fading in from black (indeed, the cinematic metphor doesn't even make sense), but as a transition I enjoy it.

And the fact is that in fanfiction there are no fade ins the way there are in original fiction. We are all already familiar with the universe, so a line like

"Jayne, if you don't put that down and get back on this ship right now we'll leave without you, so help me."

isn't really all that disorienting, is it?

From Five Views on Breaking and Entering:

It had been six years since Faith had seen the inside of a police station.

Now this is Faith's POV, but it could just as easily be an omniscient or objective narrator. The important thing is that, whoever is speaking, they're saying something significant, with implications one can figure out using just the sentence and canon. The purpose of the line isn't exposition, but to create a certain response in the reader.

And that line gets the entire first paragraph to itself, forcing the reader to mull over it. One of the signs that the fic I back-buttoned out of was not for me was that the first paragraph was too long; unless one is Charle Dickens, you should probably think twice about making your first paragraph fill the entire first page. And it isn't a habit that has aged very well, I don't think. And again, he gets away with because his voice is so very distinctive, never purely exposition. The point of "Marley was dead, to begin with" is not to tell the reader that Marley was dead. It's to set the scene.

From Surrender:

Giles will never forget the moment when the world changed.

It's already clear what perspective we're in, so any exposition that might come at this point is also a character moment.

From Losing Count:

She has died and been resurrected so many times that not only has she lost count of how many, but she can’t even remember whether she is currently alive, dead, or undead.

Even though we have quite a bit of exposition here (setting up the Firefly/BtVS crossover) we also have a pretty vivid sense of the narrative now. There's a particular moment we're inhabiting rather than seeing the action from some God's Eye view.

From With Love and a Hippo:

So they're in Cleveland, and have just had the most mindblowing sex, having more or less fucked out each other's brains, and pretty much the only thing Dawn is able to say at this point is "Guh."

Guh, indeed. But this is pretty strongly in Dawn's POV, which is important--although a narrator with a personality could achieve much the same effect.

From Class Trip:

“Fucking cornfields.”

Return of the not-so disorienting dialogue! (Although, technically, the first line of this story is "Fade in.") Why is Faith in a cornfield? Well, read on!

From The Ransom of Andrew Wells:

There weren’t many ways in which Rome and Sunnydale were all that similar, but there was certainly a couple of big ones.

Not particularly meaningful, and from the face of it we have no idea whose POV we're in, but it's still interesting. We have the sense that whatever mind we're in, it has a personality, at least.

From Best Friends Forever (Devon Days Remix):

They had all felt it: a dark force, fueled by grief, more powerful than anything they had ever sensed before.

Frankly, I think this first line is far more disorienting than any line of dialogue. Who are "they"? But I like to think that encourages the reader to read on in order to find out.

My point being . . . well, I don't really have a point. I just like, like any writer(?), to talk about my writing. But, as everyone knows but some people still seem to haven't figured to apply, first lines count. So I try to make them as interesting, as do all of you on my flist. (Well, maybe you don't try. But you do it anyway.)

Comments

[netgirl-y2k.livejournal.com]

I've just gone and looked over the first lines of my fic (what can I say, I'm a natural follower) and I actually really prefer the ones I started with dialogue. I think they throw you right into the story, more importantly, they throw me into the story, otherwise I tend to write a paragraph of some of the most clunky exposition ever to blight the face of fanfiction. Plus I think a good bit of dialogue can get you into the character mind better than any amount of description.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Agreed, anything is better than the horrible beast which is exposition. (Although exposition can be done well at the start, I maintain, if it is done with style.) I like beginning with dialogue for all the same reasons.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

And surely "'Take my camel, dear,' said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass" is one of the great opening lines in English fiction, precisely because it begins with dialogue?

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Not exactly.

"Take my camel, dear" is not much of an opening in itself. It's the pairing of that pity and, yes, disorienting piece of information with the matter-of-fact exposition that follows in the same sentence that makes it work.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

um, i think i meant "pithy"

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Hey, this is a really cool idea -- going to your first lines to see what they suggest about point of view. What most of yours have in common is that they both provide information and suggest the perspective of a particular character. In every case, I think I could guess the POV from the first sentence, which is excellent, because that's something POV needs to do. (Since well over half of my stories, last time I checked, begin with a character either knocking on, opening, or answering a door -- I guess that suggests I'm very attached to third-person limited? (As I'm very attached to first in non-fannish writing). Based on who is doing the opening or knocking, the POV is apparent.

About the prohibition on starting with dialogue -- I picked this "rule" up from my first creative writing teacher. He had a lot of rules, most of which I happily forgot and/or ignored. But this is one that I've held onto; it's almost the only thing I state as a bright-line rule, in my beginning class, because (a) most beginning writers are inclined to start with dialogue, (b) these beginnings are almost always improved by some more scene- setting detail. The "disorienting" thing is not so much a loophole as a statement of what starting with dialogue does. It disorients the reader and makes them wonder where they are and who is speaking. Now your example of "Fucking cornfields!" does indeed seem to get around that problem because, well, we know where they are, and we have a good idea of how at least one character feels about it. So that sentence basically does the same thing as "Faith hated cornfields," a lot more effectively. Excellent exception!

(Incidentally, I didn't really intend to defend the opening of that story -- as when I looked back at it, I thought the opening was weak. I'm just kind of baffled as to why I wrote it like that, since starting with dialogue is something I never do! And I guess I must have thought disorientation worked there, but going back, it clearly would have been better to describe the scene in a Harmony-colored sentence or two).

My favorite opening for a story I haven't actually been able to finish is "The stone lions on the front steps at the Art Institute of Chicago are anatomically correct. At least, Stuart believes that they are." I enjoy this combination of sentences because the first one sounds like pure exposition, while the second reveals that we're actually dealing with a character-perspective (and immediately qualifying the first sentence as -- how would the character know what a lion's balls look like?)

I played a similar game in "Keen Buffy" when I started a chapter with "Wesley thought that Lilah Morgan smelled like a French whore. Unfortunately, this was not a metaphor." I originally wanted to start that piece (in close limited-third Wesley-POV) with "Lilah Morgan smelled like --" etc. Then I realized that wasn't really logical and that poor Wesley is too logical to apply a metaphor when he couldn't really literally vouch for it.

Part I

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty tightly wed to third person limited, yes, although I certainly feel other perspectives can work. (I might occasionally use omniscient if there's a special effect I want to create, and I'll sometimes use second or first--or both--with present or future tense for shorter ficlets.) For example, ""The stone lions on the front steps at the Art Institute of Chicago are anatomically correct" is exposition, yes, but it's interesting exposition, so I'd be perfectly willing to take it from an omniscient narrator just as easily as from Stuart. Whereas "X and Y had been flirting for years, but neither of them had had the courage to do anything about it" just leaves me cold. After a couple sentences of such a view from nowhere I'm hitting the back button--unless the writer can really put off a Hemmingwayesque objective viewpoint. (And even then I'm not personally a Hemmingway fan, although there were a couple of stories I liked well enough, even though I can recognize the quality of his technique.)

And now I'm trying to figure out if the opening line of Mrs. Dalloway counts as dialogue or exposition. The latter, I suppose; it certainly posesses a narrative quirkiness--a je ne sais quoi--that "'I'll buy the flowers myself,' said Mrs. Dalloway" lacks: the sort of spark necessary for good opening exposition (the sort that Dickens had such a talent for).

Looking over my fic, I continue to see places where the disorienting nature of initial dialogue is used deliberately. For example, in Watcher's Burden:

“I can’t believe you are the one suggesting this,” says Giles. “After what your sister went through—-what you went through-—I can’t believe you could possibly be saying this.”

The fact that we don't know what it is they have been discussing is exactly the point; I don't reveal that information until at least a third of the way through the fic.

And again, the nature of fanfic allows dialogue to have a profoundly orienting effect, such as in Sinister Simulacra, in which the first line is lifted directly from canon:

“That was a signal, okay? Is that clear enough for you?”

Wesley smiled. “Not even close.”

The reader immediately knows that we're in Fred's lab at the end of "Smile Time."

From Olympus:

Damnation! The god's exclamation echoed through the Otherworld. Hellfire!

And I wonder if it's not only easier to orient oneself even using disorienting information like dialogue, but if fanfic readers would be willing to put up with disorientation longer, knowing that eventually they will see elements of the familiar.

From After the Ball:

“Now, this is my idea of a party," Faith said.

Basically, another example of a "Fucking cornfields!"--this pretty effectively sets the scene. (And it could have been interior thought just as easily.)

From

“Why did we think this would be a good idea again?”

“Because that cute little Reader of yours read my mind and verified that I was on the level,” you answer. “Now, are you going to help me or not?”

Here I probably should have more effectively made it clear that the POV character is Saffron. (I used the second person so I wouldn't have to answer the question of what name she thinks of herself as.) But I wonder if here isn't another example of fanfic being a different sort of medium--I can see how the way in which I ask the reader to "just imagine that a lot of stuff happened already" would be much more frustrating if we didn't already know these characters a little. As it is, though, I don't think it as being much of a problem. They're doing something which may not be a good idea, and that's all the reader needs to know.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Indeed, it strikes me that the more deeply allusive and intertextual a piece is, the more it could only function as fanfiction, the less disorienting beginning with dialogue is. Take a ficlet such as Eve of All Hallows:

“You’ve never gone trick-or-treating?”

The ficlet is about Madelyn (an original character, even, whom th fanfic reader may never have encounter before this fic) never having gone trick-or-treating. It would be ludicrous to start anywhere else, because this exchange is the center of the work; setting the stage in a cozy Dickensian style would be totally superfluous to what is actually going on narratively. The whole point of a ficlet is that one slips in, makes the point, and ends; there simply isn't any time to orient oneself.

Another ficlet example, from About Power:

"It isn't about power," the Wiccan says. "It's about balance, about the way of the world. You don't belong in this world; you know it. You've killed a woman. It's about karma and about retribution."

I have absolutely no idea how Amy and Illyria ended up together to have this conversation.

From Triangle, a full-length fic:

“You should hang up lights,” Amy said. “It’d be festive.”

This may be another "Fucking cornfields!" as it does possibly identify the scene as occurring around the holidays, and someone who really knows their canon well might even recognize that Faith does indeed put up lights in her motel room in time for "Amends." (I introduce the section with the header "The Year of Our Lord 1999," so the reader does have at least that much orienting information.") We still don't know what Amy is doing in Faith's motel room, and don't really find out at least until she and Faith begin making out (at which point we get a pretty good clue), but I don't think the average fanfic reader needs a reason. I might be wrong about that, though.

From History of a Pink Princess Vampire:

“You don’t want to be a girl, do you?” the other boys had said, and Jesse and Xander had just sort of looked at her apologetically before they went off to play wiffleball or whatever.

This is sort of like the camel example above in that it comes with a lot of other information to help us orient ourselves (including a header telling us the year is 1989 C.E.), but here the disorienting effect is put to good use, as I'm attempting the equivalent of opening with a smash cut. This is a flashback of sorts, outside the range of time in which fic is typically set, so the disorientation of the dialogue prepares the reader for the scene which is sort of out of step with the Buffyverse with which we are more familiar (i.e., doesn't occur after 1996).

But it also comes down to the fact that I like the disorienting effect. To me, "I'd hate to die on the ground like an animal, Stuart thought as he pulled himself up onto this sister's newly-upholstered couch" sounds like a great first line.

I'm not disagreeing with you, really; I'm more taking the opportunity to work through my thoughts in writing. Thank you for the chance.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

And I wonder if it's not only easier to orient oneself even using disorienting information like dialogue, but if fanfic readers would be willing to put up with disorientation longer, knowing that eventually they will see elements of the familiar

Excellent point. We don't really need orientation in the same way when we already know the characters -- for example, the dialogue you give with Giles' tag in it -- we not only know who Giles is, we can generally assume the sort of situation where he would be saying this. Which might turn out to be generally right or wrong.

But contrast:

"I can't believe you're suggesting this," said Mrs. Smitherdoodle. "After the events of last Thursday, after what happened to Brian, how could you consider it?"

I'm not saying that it's an awful opening but it presents problems -- who is Mrs. Smitherdoodle? Who is she talking to? How does she sound, what is her tone, what does she look like? Who is she talking to and what is their relationship? Who is Brian? What happened last Thursday? Obviously you want your readers to come in with some questions, but you also want them to have a place to stand, something to hold onto. This opening is nothing but questions.

And suppose your next line is:
"But you know I'm more responsible than Brian!" Bethany answered. "And I would never let the attack alligators off their leashes the way Norbert did!"

That's just more questions. Who is Bethany? What is her relationship to Mrs. Smitherdoodle? Why are there attack alligators? Etc etc. And if this goes on much longer, the effect can't be anything but comic and will probably end up with the burden of excessively expository dialogue in the vein of (my favorite example, from a story I actually read in a CW class) "Remember when your mother died last year?" Also, see almost anything in the movie "Swordfish".

Also, I may now forever be using "Fucking cornfields" as an example to explain the exception to my dialogue, um, guideline.