When writing a synopsis for your novel, are you allowed to hold back information, or must you spoil the surprise for your editor by telling all? That’s the first of two questions we’ll look at today.
Alice posted two questions on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
I have a question about writing a synopsis for a mystery novel. Should you try to leave at least a bit of a mystery unsolved in synopsis (like, who’s the bad guy) or should you reveal all the secrets? What bothers me is that mystery novel is supposed to be a mystery and if the publisher knows everything right from the start, could it be that it won’t be interesting for him/her to read that novel?
That question concerns not just mystery novels but all other novels that may have a surprise in the end. Should you reveal it in your synopsis or can you hide it?
I have also another question that got me into an argument with my friend. If your POV character doesn’t notice (for different reasons) something that is important TO THE READER (not the characters) to know, can the author peek over his shoulder and show the reader what the POV character can’t see? I think the author can do that, but my friend argues that it will ruin the mood of the scene and that the reader would be more immersed in the story if they are not shown stuff POV character fails to notice. Problem is, her POV character fails to notice quite a lot of stuff that I, as a reader, would like to see and that quite the contrary irritates me and prevents me from getting the feel of the story.
Randy sez: Editors wear two hats at all times. All editors are readers. All editors are editors. (I’m sure this is not terribly surprising.)
When wearing the reader hat, the editor likes to be surprised as much as anyone else does.
When wearing the editor hat, the editor wants to know that you can deliver a good story. That means that she wants to know how the story ends. If you know who the bad guy is, you need to tell your editor. If you’ve planned a super-cool, extraordinary, knock-their-socks-off surprise ending, you need to tell your editor.
There is a loophole here. If you look closely, you’ll see that I used the words “If you know.”
What if you don’t know the ending? Well then, you can’t tell the editor, can you?
What if you think you know the ending but when you go to write it, an even better one weasels its way into your brain? As long as it’s a better ending, your editor will forgive.
What if you tell the editor an ending that makes sense, but you’re holding in reserve an even better ending? Well then, you’d better be able to fib Xtremely well to your editor and convince her that you never had an inkling the real killer was Throckmorton until you got to the last chapter and there he was with a bloody knife in his hands and only then did you realize that it wasn’t Fredholm after all, even though his fingerprints were all over Griselda’s iPod.
Now for Alice’s second question, is it ever legitimate to tell the reader something that the POV character doesn’t know?
This question is a little like asking, “Is it ever legitimate for an elephant to be a tiger?”
Go ahead and try to answer that question. Neither “yes” nor “no” seems to be appropriate. An elephant CAN’T be a tiger, so questioning the legitimacy of an elephant being a tiger misses that essential point. Let me unpack that a bit.
You have several different choices for the point of view of any given scene. One of those is called “omniscient POV” and it allows for you, the narrator, to tell the reader things that no character knows. In “omniscient POV” you don’t actually have a POV character. You can get inside the heads of your characters, but none of them is “the POV character.”
The reason is that in order to have a POV character, you implicitly make a decision that the scene is being filtered through the senses of one character. If you show part of the scene in some other way, then you are breaking POV.
Is it legitimate to write a scene in omniscient POV? Of course. Many fine novels have been written in omniscient, but there is no POV character when you make this choice. Instead, you have a “focal character.” (Tragically, the word POV is being asked to do double-duty here, as both a noun and an adjective, and that makes things seem more ambiguous than they actually are.)
It’s also legitimate to choose first person, third person, or even second person (this is rare). In any of these, you have an actual POV character. But when you make this choice, BY DEFINITION, you have chosen not to show the reader things the POV character doesn’t know.
It’s legitimate but fairly uncommon to use the “objective third person POV,” in which there is no POV character, there is only a “focal character”. (Again, the word POV is being used as both a noun and an adjective in the above sentence, which explains the apparent paradox.) When you write a scene this way, it’s perfectly fine to show the reader things the focal character doesn’t know. In fact, it’s common to do so, because the only way you can show emotion is by showing the physical responses of the character (like they do in the movies, where you also can’t get inside the character’s head). Most of those physical responses are not visible to the focal character.
One final question is whether the “head-hopping POV” is legitimate. In this choice, you get inside the heads of multiple characters in a scene. This is quite common and accepted in the romance category, where many readers want to experience the thoughts and emotions of more than one character in the same scene. I know good writers who claim this is legitimate. I know others who consider it the very work of Satan.
Personally, I don’t like head-hopping, but I think if it’s done well, it can get the job done. When the author skips back and forth between heads, never giving the reader the chance to identify with any character, that seems to me a clear case of bad head-hopping and there’s no POV character. When the author makes smooth transitions, it seems to me that the scene is simply being written with one POV character in one part and a different POV character in another part.
It seems that Alice likes omniscient or objective third person. Her friend likes first-person or third-person POV. Those preferences are a matter of taste, not a matter of legitimacy.
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.
As a reader, it annoys me when one character appears to be the POV character and then there is a sudden head-hop to another character, usually if the POV character leaves the scene. Having said that I am forgiving of a good writer (Ian Rankin does it in his Rubus books, occationally) but it still jars.
I prefer it (again as a reader) if there is a line break which makes it clear the scene has changed in someway. You could therefore have a scene break and switch to a different POV (or no POV) and show the thing that your character didn’t see.
I knew Throckmorton would kill eventually.
I struggle with the head popping in my own writing, mostly because one of my favorite authors does it frequently in defiance of a strict POV. Of course, he also knows how to write excellent first person novels as well, so it’s clearly a case of knowing a rule before you break it.
But if I were to venture WHY it works for him so well, it’s probably because the works that he does it in are all ensemble pieces, in a way. There is not a focal character so much as there is a focal group, and when that group is conversing amongst itself, the reader is privy to many characters’ thoughts, the same way a close group of friends might “know” what their friends are thinking in a given situation.
Also, it helps that he uses the head popping mostly for comedic effect, and sticks to one POV when the story turns more dramatic.
Although the question was actually about POV, I’d also have to suggest using technique to inform the reader without the POV character discovering what they did not already know. In other words, hide the truth, or make it obvious to the reader and oblivious to the POV character.
Let’s see if I can come up with an example (but this is on the spot in really bad form LOL).
The reader has discovered the antagonist is sending anthrax through the mail in plain white envelopes from Juno, Alaska. The POV character walks into a post office and sees an envelope fitting that description. The POV is completely oblivious to the fact even if the reader suspects what it is. I think this idea would work well in suspense/mystery because even seeing this event, the reader still isn’t 100% sure they are seeing what they think they are. They MUST ask questions about the story which brings them along for the ride.
I made this mistake with my first novel. I put in a twist at the end that I loved and hinted at in the book, but when I finally got an editor to look at it I never mentioned it…
I got a call – not saying “you’ve got to improve your writing” or “this isn’t the genre we’re interested in” – the complaint was “You’re a pastor and sending people to hell!”
Turns out they weren’t interested in a novel that deals with life when it doesn’t make sense.
But giving some warning on my part may have avoided that phone call.
Richard: Yes, but how would the reader know that the antagonist is mailing anthrax envelopes in the first place, unless we’ve already made a jump out of the POV character’s head previously in the story…
If one is querying agents or sending submission packages to editors (usually 1st 3 chapters + synopsis), unless one is an established fiction writer, possibly with that house, it is unlikely that the author will get an acceptance on a proposal, where the author hasn’t actually finished the novel. In that case, it seems unlikely that the author would not know the ending.
What is the style called of the old Matlock or Columbo series, where the viewer (reader?) sees the murder being committed – sometimes actually seeing the murderer, sometimes just the feet or hands.
Is this pertinent to the discussion here?
Thank you for answering my questions, Randy! I’m sorry for the late reply, I was away from my computer…
I understand that you have to be very careful to avoid head-hopping (or at least to write it well), but what I meant (I think) is more like if it is legitimate to hop from third-person POV to the objective third person and back during one scene? Like, for example, if we look at the events from the POV of one character – then there is no POV at all – and then we go back to the same character’s POV. Should this be treated the same as head-hopping or is it a bit different? (Or am I just getting more confused??)
@Lois: I think in Columbo series the story is told from the POV of the bad guy, because we usually see things as he sees them (except for the scenes where he’s not present, but even then we see Columbo from the POV of somebody else and we don’t know what goes on inside his head).