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Narrative POV and similes

  • 17-12-2013 1:03pm
    #1
    Branoic
    Registered Users Posts: 1,742 ✭✭✭


    Hi,

    Bit of a technical question.

    I'm writing in what I guess would be a "3rd person limited" narrative style - ie, there's a handful of different POV characters and the narration switches between them generally at each chapter break, and sometimes at breaks within chapters.

    Anyway, I had a situation yesterday where I wanted to describe my character as coming across another person who I wanted to liken to a walrus as I thought this was a nice little simile to use - big, fat, folds of flab around his face, a moustache of bristley white whiskers.

    But then it occured to me - the character whose actions I was relaying at this time would realistically have no conception of what a walrus was or looked like. Its a fantasy novel, the character grew up in a backwater town in a hilly / forested area. In fact, I doubt anyone in the novel would have any idea what a walrus is.

    So does that scupper the walrus simile? Should all descriptive passages only be comprised of elements which would be within the participating character's knowledge, even though the reader will (likely) know what a walrus is? Or is this one of those little rules that can be broken in service of the writing?


Comments

  • #2
    ciaranmac
    Registered Users Posts: 495 ✭✭ciaranmac


    Make up a creature native to that area with a face like a walrus.


  • #3
    Branoic
    Registered Users Posts: 1,742 ✭✭✭Branoic


    ciaranmac wrote: »
    Make up a creature native to that area with a face like a walrus.

    Hmm, yeah, that's certainly an option - but would require a little bit too much work for the pay-off, which really is just a quick description for a secondary character who really isn't very important at all and appears on briefly in one scene.

    You'd basically be reversing the problem - by creating a similar looking native creature, you'd have a reference which the character would understand, but the reader wouldn't unless you spent time at some point beforehand describing the creature, and there'd really be no place in the story-line for such a description so that it didn't seem forced.

    I think if it were a choice between laying the ground work in order to use a native creature, or just scrapping the simile, I'd just scrap it :D


  • #4
    Leafonthewind
    Registered Users Posts: 62 ✭✭Leafonthewind


    Could you use a bulldog instead? It has similar features. Plus jowls.


  • #5
    Branoic
    Registered Users Posts: 1,742 ✭✭✭Branoic


    Leafonthewind wrote: »
    Could you use a bulldog instead? It has similar features. Plus jowls.

    Not a bad idea at all! Thanks!


  • #6
    EileenG
    Registered Users Posts: 5,775 ✭✭✭EileenG


    Basic rule is that you can only think or describe anything which your pov character would naturally think or describe. This is great for preventing boring infodumps, even if it occasionally means you lose a good simile.


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  • #7
    echo beach
    Registered Users Posts: 1,252 ✭✭✭echo beach


    EileenG wrote: »
    Basic rule is that you can only think or describe anything which your pov character would naturally think or describe. This is great for preventing boring infodumps, even if it occasionally means you lose a good simile.

    That is a very good rule. Pity so many authors completely ignore it.


  • #8
    Agent Weebley
    Registered Users Posts: 450 ✭✭Agent Weebley


    ciaranmac wrote: »
    Make up a creature native to that area with a face like a walrus.

    I had originally thrown a "reply" comment into the fray, but after further comments not referencing mine; i.e. not "kicking the can down the road," I re-thought my contribution as being offaly trite, or maybe tilliwaggers (sic,) so I did something I rarely do, which was to delete my comment.

    That action has bothered me to no end ever since.

    My comment was something along the lines of "fabulous: an interface!," which in itself is nothing very eventful, but the next sentence was something I had never really thought of as being true, and my general M.O. is to write something that at the time is, in my view, humourous, but later the supposed joke becomes not so funny as it takes on a deeper meaning.

    I am referring to the possibility that the second sentence in my comment: "by the way: I am the Walrus" could possibly be true, as we all know John said publicly that the walrus was Paul.

    Anyway, if a hillbilly, not unlike John boy Walton, has no idea what a walrus is, then there is little chance he would know what a bulldog is either, but stranger things have happened in tham thar hills (or mountians,) such as a snake-oil salesman happening upon the hillbilly whilst John boy is on an errand in nearby Rockfish, purveying the natural healing oils of a mysterious and freakish looking sea creature with big jowls, and the impressionable hillbilly drawing a parallel between the sea creature and the snake-oil salesman's own dramatic jowls, as the snake oil salesman repeatedly implores the hillbilly to believe: "I am not a crook."


    Anyway, I nixed the comment, but it's back - with the can kicked down the road just a little.

    I hope you enjoy the pearls ^^^^ Pick an oyster - any oyster.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51VugyjYHfc


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