about uninterrupted narrative and reading experience in modern YA

Windcutter · Sep 10, 2014

I'm pulling this bit out of the Length thread, because it belongs to a different topic and because I'm curious about your opinions.

eyeblink said:
I've heard readers say that earlier SF "jumps around" a lot. Back then, a character might leave A at the end of one chapter and arrive at B at the start of the next; nowadays you'd get a few pages describing the journey.

You know, this is actually the kind of comment I've been getting a lot. That my scene changes are too abrupt because the character ends scene #1 being in one place but begins scene #2 in a different place. I used to think this is my screenwriting experience showing, because I definitely get a mental montage of those scenes, like shots edited into a sequence (that's just the way my imagination works), but then I noticed that it's a contemporary trend. Not just in SF.

Especially if we get to experience the story through first person. In a book written 20 years ago, chapter one might end with MC having a conversation at school, then chapter two will start with MC arriving home after school, because nothing important happened in between. In a book written one year ago, the scene will most likely go on, MC will describe the end of school, the way home, etc, etc, even if it's just a tiny bit of description, a few sentences. The narrative is flowing in an uninterrupted way, unless the plot covers several years, there won't be many jumps or time lapses. If the story only covers, say, a week, we might never do a time leap, the reader might never leave MC's side, not even for trivial matters like breakfast or shower.

I don't think it's just a tendency towards padding and bigger books, though. I think it might have something to do with the reading experience. The uninterrupted (unless MC sleeps or faints) narrative leads to a more 'live-through' experience. Think of a first person video game. You are always looking through your character's eyes. Your screen will only go black when your character is knocked out.

What do you think?

JustSarah · Sep 10, 2014

When I was writing about high school, I found myself skipping classes (in the text I mean, not playing hookie), because I'm not really sure how to structure a classroom experience without losing the point of the story or boring the reader.

In fact I usually just have math teachers be computers printing out ISS slips anyway. But other than that I generally prefer not to skip scenes. Even if its a boring train ride. Because you know know if they might be boarding a haunted train to nowhere.

Liosse de Velishaf · Sep 10, 2014

I think you can still make fairly big jumps at chapter breaks, but scene breaks do seem to be getting less and less jarring these days.

dancing-drama · Sep 10, 2014

It often throws me off balance if those sort of cuts happen without an empty line between paragraphs. If the "scene" just continues line after line and suddenly the MC is somewhere completely different, it just confuses me.
My brain can comprehend the empty line and continue reading normally, but if that line is missing, I'm thrown out of the story and have to puzzle together what just happened and where the time jump happened.
Even so, the empty line isn't ideal. I agree, that it works a lot like a movie cut - but a book isn't a movie.

I don't like 3 pages of boring train ride either, though.

My preferred method of dealing with those small time gaps is to give them two or three sentences. Totally bad example b/c I'm tired but something along the lines of "The violent shaking of the train on its old tracks made me regret the burger I'd had for dinner. Closing my eyes, I leaned my head against the cold window and waited for the ride of hell to be over. Three hours and forty minutes of knots and twists in my stomach later, my feet finally hit solid ground again." --- and then the arrival scene, which would presumably be an important scene, can be full-length again.

http://de.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

The_Ink_Goddess · Sep 10, 2014

Windcutter said:
I'm pulling this bit out of the Length thread, because it belongs to a different topic and because I'm curious about your opinions.

You know, this is actually the kind of comment I've been getting a lot. That my scene changes are too abrupt because the character ends scene #1 being in one place but begins scene #2 in a different place. I used to think this is my screenwriting experience showing, because I definitely get a mental montage of those scenes, like shots edited into a sequence (that's just the way my imagination works), but then I noticed that it's a contemporary trend. Not just in SF.

Especially if we get to experience the story through first person. In a book written 20 years ago, chapter one might end with MC having a conversation at school, then chapter two will start with MC arriving home after school, because nothing important happened in between. In a book written one year ago, the scene will most likely go on, MC will describe the end of school, the way home, etc, etc, even if it's just a tiny bit of description, a few sentences. The narrative is flowing in an uninterrupted way, unless the plot covers several years, there won't be many jumps or time lapses. If the story only covers, say, a week, we might never do a time leap, the reader might never leave MC's side, not even for trivial matters like breakfast or shower.

I don't think it's just a tendency towards padding and bigger books, though. I think it might have something to do with the reading experience. The uninterrupted (unless MC sleeps or faints) narrative leads to a more 'live-through' experience. Think of a first person video game. You are always looking through your character's eyes. Your screen will only go black when your character is knocked out.

What do you think?

I've noticed a similar thing happening to me! I too operate a kind of jumpy experience, because often things that happen to my characters HAVE to happen over time, because even though I now prefer to open with existing relationships, I now have a recurring irritating habit of starting stories that need to meet new people and build a relationship from the ground up. So because I don't want to pad out the narrative with 25,000 words of bonding scenes, I tend to skip around between weeks/months. I never specify how long it is but it always feels 'unnatural' to me, because YA novels seem like things where the plots should happen fast and immediately.

rwm4768 · Sep 10, 2014

I've noticed that I have less of a tendency to cut to the next scene when I stick with a single point of view character. In multi-POV novels, I usually use that boring section as a moment to end the chapter and go to a different character in the next chapter.

lottarobyn · Sep 11, 2014

As a reader, I prefer a continuous narrative with as few as possible time jumps. That said, I don't want to read a laundry list: "I went to Algebra, where we had a subsistute teacher. In second period English, we read the first act of Hamlet. Then I went to Phys. Ed. where a basketball hit me in the face..."
(Unless you've created such an amazing character that I want to perch on their shoulder every second of the day)

The one hangup I have with a continuous narrative: those time jumps can provide a good spot for a reading break. A good book with a continuous narrative has led to many sleep-deprived nights for me...

Stiger05 · Sep 11, 2014

I actually like time jumps while reading, so I implore them when writing too. In the back of my head, I always have the advice that every scene needs to move the plot forward and every word should have a purpose. For me as a reader, I skim the passages where nothing is happening but moving a character from point A to point B. Unless something important happens on the bus, or train, or in the afternoon classes at school, it just bores me.

As a writer, I've done the "I stormed out of the house and onto the first bus I saw. Three stops later I jumped off at my favorite spot in the city" but only for short moving-the-character scenes. If the character, say, gets on a plane, unless there is something special about the plane I don't think the reader needs to see the character buckling her belt, adjusting the air, getting out a book, putting the book up, checking the time, asking for a drink, getting out her tablet, handing her trash to the flight attendant, watching the clouds, and on and on.

It largely depends on the type of story I'm reading/telling, though. Scene jumps keep up the pace in a thriller/mystery/anything with action. I admit, I'm a very fast-paced writer, so those scene jumps keep the pace moving a nice clip for me. A slow, meandering contemporary, on the other hand, benefits from continuous narrative.

beautyinwords · Sep 13, 2014

As a reader, I guess I don't mind the jumps in time as long as I don't feel like I've missed anything.
As a writer, I jump forward in time if I find my characters doing "boring" things. Can I skip the scene where they eat breakfast and get them into the action? That sort of thing.

IdrisG · Sep 13, 2014

I've noticed a similar tendency to skip the boring bits when writing. Those moments really stop a story for me; they're my primary source of writer's block aside from love scenes. Oddly enough, when I finally return to writing those bits, I usually just skim over the boring parts with a few concise sentences to get my characters from the current point to the next exciting moment. No need to agonize over the interim.

Here's where I run into some trouble. When I'm starting up a new chapter and I'm condensing the events that followed the last chapter and led to the character's current situation, I often feel like I'm doing way too much telling. As a general rule, nothing important is happening in that brief synopsis of events, but it still feels lazy. Not sure what to do about that.

Zoombie · Sep 14, 2014

Apparently against trends, I have been experimenting with jump cuts in my narrative.

Like, I have a scene where one character goes: "Man, wouldn't it be funny if we found the bandits before our wizard even woke up?"

And then I have a scene break and the first line of dialog is, "...well, I didn't mean it literally!" And she and her friends have been captured by the bandits they have found.

Or, in another scene, they've tied up a bad guy and one character is like, "Do you know what you're doing?" And the other character is like, "Yeah, don't worry, I've seen Burn Notice."

Cut to the bad guy flying out of the a tenth story window and smashing to death on the ground and the questioning character going: "YOU SAID YOU KNEW WHAT YOU WERE DOING!"

"To be fair...I didn't know that windows broke that easily."

Debbie V · Sep 15, 2014

I think this depends on tone of the story for me. Zoombie's sounds like a light read.

I often have my main character drift into an important memory while, say, riding in a car. This way, I cover the time, but don't spend it describing what's out the window.

I also like the phrases like, "The next afternoon." Those phrases cue the reader that we are changing time and place without throwing a lot of boring words in to show it. To me, this is better than a blank line or filler.

about uninterrupted narrative and reading experience in modern YA

Windcutter

JustSarah

Liosse de Velishaf

dancing-drama

Priestly Up!

The_Ink_Goddess

we're gonna make it out of the fire

rwm4768

practical experience, FTW

lottarobyn

Stiger05

beautyinwords

IdrisG

the wicked wit of the west

Zoombie

Dragon of the Multiverse

Debbie V

Mentoring Myself and Others