Intro Point of View

[marycatelli]

I've run across it a few times:  the opening scenes are shown from a point-of-view which is shortly thereafter dropped, and a new point-of-view takes over, exclusively, or predominantly.  Usually done when the main POV character is outlandish, strange, or otherwise difficult to introduce at once.

Scratch that about "usually", come to think of it.  I've never seen it used in any other situation.


It has its advantages.  Both runs of Doctor Who started with modern-day human characters -- Barbara and Ian, and Rose -- facing a mystery and taking much of the episode to track down the Doctor as the person responsible, and to learn who he is.  Or in Brothers Of the Snake, which is a fix-up, having the first story be from the point-of-view of the characters who called for help, not Priad, the Space Marine who arrived to do so, though the rest of the stories are from his.  Or Spare Keys for Strange Doors, where we have a woman consulting a married couple who are the main characters, and then a ghost whom the husband invites home while he works out some issues before moving on.

Though the last does have a touch of the problem that can arise here:  even in the opening, you have to, somehow, make the main character more intriguing, and get the reader invested in him.  Or at least somewhat intriguing.  You can mitigiate this by having the introductory character hang about, so the readers' investment in him will induce them to read on, but if he's a one-shot (and has to be, in the story strucutre), making him too interesting can be a danger.  At the very least, his problems have to be resolved at the end of his appearance.

Comments

[mythusmage.livejournal.com]

I think there was one story where the first POV character got killed.

[marycatelli]

Now there's a broad hint about relative importance.

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

Sure there's more than one, but one such example is "the diamond age" by neal stephenson.

[marycatelli]

Oh yeah, there's one. Quite dead, leaving his daughter to take center stage.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's a variant on a frame story, I suppose.

[marycatelli]

A frame story doesn't have any requirements about the character's involvement -- the character can be the main character, or not even appear in the story at all.

Anyway I was thinking of the ordinary chronological told story -- all my examples fit it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the situation you describe is much more particular, in exactly the ways you describe, but couldn't one see it as a special-case type of frame story? In that the characters who usher in the story have a story of their own that falls into the background as the main character comes to the fore?

I wasn't at all trying to deny what you're saying, just thinking that it seemed to be one pattern of frame.

[marycatelli]

What definition of frame story are you using to come to this conclusion? I have never heard anyone use it to mean anything except a frame about a story consisting of a secondary story about how primary story is told.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

By 'frame story,' I'm meaning, 'layer of story surrounding the central story, but only peripherally (if at all) related to the central story.' I'm thinking of the convention wherein someone writes a letter to someone else, and within the letter tells them the whole novel (like in Frankenstein), or like in The Scarlet Letter, where you have the business in the customs house, where the narrator finds the letter. Or like the first part of Wuthering Heights, where Nellie Dean tells the narrator the story of the first Cathy and Heathcliff.

Maybe the Wuthering Heights one doesn't count as a true frame, because the story does keep on going. But I'd like to come up with a handy term that does encompass cases like the Wuthering Heights one--or like what you describe-- because I think they're somehow related. They're like stands upon which the main narrative is displayed.

[marycatelli]

I have never heard anyone else use "frame story" to mean that, but that's moot, because what I'm describing is not necessarily peripheral, and often isn't. The beginnings of Doctor Who are how the Doctor starts traveling with these companions, which is central to the story. "Spare Keys" is a bit more episodic, but the first two stories are as much their stories as the subsequent ones.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Okay--very different, then :-)

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Well, depending on what you mean by scenes....

Lewis the frame narrator soon drops out of SILENT PLANET and THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH; so does some narrator from THE WORM OUROBOROS (obviously forgettable). Going backwards we'd have frames like Rider Haggard's. Seems like it happens in more recent books too.

[marycatelli]

Frames are another beast because they are telling how the story came to be told. These are scenes within the story itself. Barbara and Ian's interactions with Susand and discussions of Susan's pecularities, or Rose's return to her work place, are all an integral part of the story.