Writing: Follow each chain of thought to its end · 4:49pm Dec 19th, 2013
[Summary: When you're in a character's POV, only stop narrating when that character would stop looking or thinking.]
You can figure out what you ought to do when writing by looking at what writers do. It’s harder to figure out what you shouldn’t do, if the writers you read don’t do it. This is a “shouldn’t do”.
I wrote this yesterday for the intro to “All the Pretty Pony Princesses” (or, “the season 3 finale as written by Joss Whedon”). This morning I realized there was something wrong with it.
The mayor still hadn’t looked at her. She kept frowning at Rarity, who had the mayor by her left forehoof and was leaning in close to tell her something, then at Fluttershy and Applejack, clustered together on her right, and then down at the hard chalky dirt at her hooves. She didn’t look at Rainbow or Pinkie at all. The two police mares with her studied Twilight guardedly. They were probably intimidated by the bright Element of Magic around her neck, flashing in the noon sun, which they kept glancing at.
This description brought me up short when I reread it the next day. It seemed to jerk to a stop when it mentioned the Element of Magic.
Describing a scene from third person limited point of view is following one character’s thought process. The description can end before getting around to everything in the scene, but it may end only at points where a person’s thought process would switch to something else. No one would observe all the little things in this scene, and then trail off on reaching the Element of Magic, as if that were the least interesting thing there.
I added this at the end of the paragraph:
They were probably intimidated by the bright Element of Magic around her neck, flashing in the noon sun, which they kept glancing at. Twilight had hung it on a string that Rarity had thrown in the trash, just until she could find a proper gold chain for it.
Note that I didn’t describe the Element! But I had to go somewhere from there; I couldn’t end the description on something that no one would end a thought on. Long descriptions should either break when they are interrupted by a story event, or else trickle off when they reach a point where a person's attention might turn to something else, as opposed to ending when the writer has mentioned everything on their checklist.
Very interesting. I guess the corollary to this is to have something at hand ready to interrupt the main line of thought in case the main one is at risk of getting boring and useless.
It's a rare piece of generally applicable and generally good literary advice. I am impressed.
What's "writing a look at what writers do"?
1624595
It should read "taking a look at what writers do".
So what you're saying is that this paragraph (Twilight's POV, right?) ends awkwardly because her train of thought would not naturally end with noticing the guards looking at her necklace, right? I dunno.
Just for purposes of discussion, would this also be an acceptable fix:
> The two police mares with her seemed nothing so much as intimidated. They kept glancing at the Element of Magic around her neck.
That's basically homeomorphic to your original sentence (you could add "which was flashing in the noon sun as it dangled" at the end if you wanted to keep that detail in, I guess?), but the grammar doesn't end on quite such a dangling phrase, and so the glances feel more like a parenthetical to explain the intimidation rather than something you're drawing attention to.
I could be wrong, because I'm not sure I understand your point, but this seems more like a sentence structure issue than a narrative structure issue.
1625088 You make a convincing case. But I think that the principle may still be true; I couldn't end the description with "They kept glancing at the Element of Magic around her neck" if the point of view character were unfamiliar with the Element of Magic.
The paragraph break doesn't matter as much as I said, though. You could make a paragraph break before going on to describe the EOM in detail, for instance.
1624595 Fixed. Voice recognition mistake.
1625088
Here's a more obvious example:
I can't see this continuing in any way other than an interruption or a continuation of Protagonist's thoughts along the same line.
I think the idea is that if a character would obviously continue some train of thought, and if the reader is putting himself in the character's place, then not following that train of thought would break immersion.
Adding my "not a writer" disclaimer to this post.
Thank you.