(it's just 140 words, i swear)
They're probably right, I know they are, I just want to confirm and get a better sense of where exactly I'm going wrong to make my POV inconsistent, not having a POV at all, and every sentence being bad
in every sentence, just observing isn't enough, "non pov shrugged" or "the overhead light flickered" IS a switch to objective POV and describing a non pov's actions without my pov's thoughts on them IS head hopping
idk. they're probably right but would anyone be ok reading it for a second opinion?
Now that it's been like a day and a half I'm actually wondering if I was too quick to brush of reddit critiquer
I mean... they rewrote every sentence because nothing made sense to them / it was poorly written. They wouldn't have done that if it wasn't true?
And yeah maybe I do need interiority /2
well to be fair to them not everything they said was "bad opinions about third person"
they did also go through the snippet and rewrite every line and told me why it was poorly written, most of which they said were incoherent and they didn't understand them
i'm just snarking as a defence mechanism
and i'm cackling even harder at how they tried to argue that me describing another characters actions, without motivations or thoughts attached, was "head hopping"
like girl what? i'm showing you what my POV sees, how in the hell is showing you someone's OBSERVABLE ACTIONS head hoping
neither do i man neither do i
it had me bawling for 5 hours because i thought i was doing everything all wrong and wildly misunderstood third person and nobody corrected me on it until right then
took me another 2 hours before i calmed down enough to ask someone for a second opinion lmao
/i/ need to read third person? you're the one who thinks i need the povs name in every sentence or else it's a POV break
and /i/ am the one who needs to read (checks notes) basically the only pov i read
give me a goddamn break
i hope they follow me on here and see me publicly shaming them
let this sink in a second
i got told to "read third person" by someone who thinks you can't describe a non pov's actions or the environment without it being head hopping while also simultaneously being third objective
like girl i get wanting interiority but this was 150 out of context words from the middle of the chapter and if you need to be hand walked through every single thought process then you do you
but implicit interiorty / describing as the pov would, does NOT make it third omni
still thinking about the person who told me yesterday that if you write observations / non pov characters actions in third person, then you're writing in omniscient
like i got told if i wanted to write what my non pov character was doing or say the light was flickering i HAD to switch to first lmao
so are we agreeing that redditor rando was a fuckin moron bc i'm okay with agreeing reddit rando is a fucking moron 👏
like lol yeah i have thoughts and inferiority up the wazoo
but just today i described what my character sees, in super tight third, with free indirect and no filtering
and got told i was head hopping to the narrator / in omni until the one direct thought st the end. just confused me.
Oh use thoughts too don't get me wrong!
I just don't think that EVERYTHING needs to be in the characters thoughts
my whole thing's basically stream of consciousness / free indirect. but sometimes a non pov character can just do something without interjecting with thoughts that are already implied
that's what i thought
but three lines, describing WHAT my pov notices, implying her thoughts and feelings, by tone and word choices, even acknowledging the non POVs actions, got highlighted as omni pov
and two people even misunderstood who the POV is, and i'm just confused as to how
unless you filter it to say specifically POV saw or heard the thing.
Because this goes against everything I know about 3rd limited, which I near exclusively read, but someone was VERY adament to me today that you can only stick to pov with thoughts and not just what they experience. internal only
That just... describing what the character sees, how they'd describe it / how they feel about it, isn't enough, it's omni POV and head hopping to the narrator unless there's a direct thought attached. "non pov frowned" is omni unless you add "why what were they so mad about" at the end? or it's omni
Writing question
Do you have to give a direct thought in EVERY line to avoid slipping POV in 3rd person?
Like, if your POV character shares a scene with someone and the non POV shrugs, you can't say "they shrugged" without it slipping into omni POV?
Because I have been told that today
do you know how much it stings to have sent like, 150 out of context, mid-chapter words, to right off the bat get told "this serves no purpose in your story" and accused of never having read any third person (when that's all i ever read) and being condescended to "google it"
like fuck, man
popping in real quick to mini-vent bc today i shared a sixth drafted, workshopped, critiqued snippet for feedback on one thing
and got told i was utterly incoherent and incomprehensible
and the only line that made any lick of sense only made sense because it used a cliche
so thats demoralizing
they are out there and they are on reddit giving writing advice
god help us all
no but seriously, re, the main writing sub
every time someone tries to claim character descriptions are a waste of words and "no-one cares about the color of their hair or if they wear glasses!" i want to squirt 'em with a water bottle
who CARES if it's not plot critical you hemingway wannabe hack
brought to you by: reading someone asking about description and it took SEVERAL top posts to reach someone finally saying it's a bad idea to make every single sentence non-stop action and it can't be strictly doing all the time
god bless. you deserve more upvotes than the guy saying the opposite
how much of a snarky bitch would i be if i made a snarky "r/writing" bingo card of canned & wrong and & bad advice
willing to bet i could get a full card within a day
"show don't tell"
"he clenched his fist"
"avoid interiority"
"i hate description"
the thing just fills itself
Nah settings were fine lmao deleting it and retyping worked
Just bein silly and glitching or something
scrivener document marking the correctly spelled word open as a misspelling
the other day scrivener tried insisting that "open" isn't a word
scenes with more than 2 people are my achilles heel
(secretly it's yay editing)
(i will never say yay writing)
(drafting makes me want to microwave my laptop)
but yesss yay!!
you're 2/2 for solid suggestions you've given me so 🫡
also once again pls toss something my way if you ever want other eyes!
hey remember how you told me i hypothetically could cut out the stuff about the window out of that scene but you didn't want me to
i did. because i realized i liked the flow better without it AND it works way better in chapter 2
you get partial credit lol thought you deserved to know
WHAT IS YOUR SECRET
i literally just need an "in" to get in the groove, and im decent at finding my scene starting points so thats easy?
mid chapter? flow gone. it's like baking half the cookie dough one day and trying to go back the next lmao you can't
