#i was trying to write an unreliable narrator

[heliomanteia]

Another thought: Epic so far (surprisingly) gave no song to Penelope (while even Telemachus already had musical presence), which makes me perceive the whole narrative as an almost entirely Odysseus-centric one with his feelings and reading of the situation dominating the narration. The fact that by the end of the Vengeance Saga he is the only narrator that either escaped or got rid of all of his narrative mirrors also means a lot to me.

With that being said, I think Epic (accidentally?) raises a question of the making of the casus belli.

What I mean by that is, Penelope (and I'll focus on her mostly since she has most presence in Odysseus' thoughts) is consistently brought up as that bargain chip that Odysseus uses to reconcile with his own morals.

I'm just a man who wants to get back to his wife.

I need to see her.

...with my wife.

Looking past the surface "he just loves his wife", I want to specify that in none of these episodes do we see Penelope's perspective and her feelings. Specifically in Epic, Penelope is present through Odysseus' (and once through Telemachus' and Antinous') lens. She is not there as herself, yet. The choices Odysseus makes justified by Penelope — I wonder how she would feel about them? Obviously, they both want to reunite, I presume, in this media too; but will we ever get to hear her point of view on how much Odysseus changed? This is not the man she watched leave for war, this is a ruthless beast that justified many crimes with her name. How does it... feel, to be loved so much you're the reason someone betrays himself and turns into a person he once avoided and feared to become?

Epic omitting Penelope's narration for most of the musical makes it less clear, to me, how she feels. How hard it is for her. This musical is a primarily Odysseus-focused story and it's sure interesting.

[wetslug]

.

[nemaliwrites]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Félix Fathom & Amélie Graham de Vanily Characters: Félix Fathom, Amélie Graham de Vanily, Colt Fathom Additional Tags: POV Second Person, Writing Exercise, Quintuple Drabble, Experimental Style, Implied/Referenced Abuse, POV Félix Fathom, Pre-Canon, Bad Parent Colt Fathom, Sentimonster Félix Fathom Summary:

Open your eyes. Breathe. Remember that you are alive.

--

so @torvalvt recommended me The 3AM Epiphany the other day, which is a book full of ‘uncommon’ writing exercises, and i decided to give it a try! 1 out of like...200 done 💪🏽

[fudgelling-away]

A question for readers about an unreliable narrator

Voting is anonymous!

For the purpose of this poll I think it doesn't matter what kind of narration the author uses.

For example:

I notice that X is struggling to contain his anger.

You notice that X is struggling to contain his anger.

Y/N noticed that X was struggling to contain his anger.

Now, what does this sentence make you think about X?

1st option

He's clearly angry. The narrator says he is, so he must be. I do not give it a second thought.

2nd option

I take a mental note that X seems to be angry and I may analyse it later down the line. I am open to changing my mind and I'm eager to get to know the narrator just like any other character in the story.

3rd option

I try not to look at the story through the subjective lens of the narrator. My first reaction is to analyse the narrator's relationship with X. Do they hate each other? Has Y/N been stressed out lately? What could make the narrator jump to the conclusion that X is angry? I think about it all and form my own opinions.

___________________________________

Important note: I think most people sooner or later start to analyze the characters and their motives. In this poll I am just trying to figure out what is your general approach to the described events.

[prince-liest]

You inspired me to write! And I got up to 2k words for the first time ever when it comes to writing for myself... but I'm struggling a bit 😅 Do you have any advice about narrator POV and how you use your verb tenses? It's like I have no idea how you manage to "head-hop" while still being an omniscient narrator so smoothly & effortlessly. And verb tenses. if I write "was" one more time I might pop a gasket lol. any help is appreciated <3 have a good one!

First of all, that's freaking amazing! 2k is a lot, congratulations! That might sound weird coming from me considering how many words I put out, but I 100% remember the struggle of being newer to writing and hitting multiple thousands of words for the first time - I'm so happy for you!

Second of all: I actually write exclusively in third person limited POV, not third person omniscient! Even though I'm writing in third person, the narration is fully from the perspective of the point of view character, which I personally enjoy a lot because it allows for a lot of unreliable narration and also characterization through how their train of thought manifests (choppy, stressed, dreamy, etc). That's why when I'm writing from the point of view of character A, for example, any assumptions about character B's motivations are what character A is thinking, not an omniscient narrator informing you.

That said, you still have to head-hop specifically to write the actual visible actions and dialogue of the second character, and that's actually the most recent thing that I used to struggle with in writing specifically because I got most of my initial writing experience doing roleplay where I was only ever responsible for one character's thoughts and actions at a time.

Honestly, the main thing I can say is that it gets much, much easier with practice. When you start out, it will genuinely just take you longer to switch from the mindset of one character to another! I used to take character notes to put together little snapshot profiles of character headspaces to re-orient myself between the characters I was writing when I felt like I was getting lost. They included things like a few traits to keep in mind, behavior mindset, and snippets of dialogue that I thought were very representative. I don't use these anymore, but I do still do things like rewatch episodes or reread portions of books when I'm learning new characters to orient myself to their personality. It's like code-switching to me nowadays.

As for verb tense: I was a consummate Homestuck, so I started out writing in second person present tense, hahaha, and while I've adopted the third person POV (and believe me, this took adjusting), I've kept writing in present tense as a personal preference. I like it because it makes things feel more in-the-moment as they're happening, because there's less grammatical fuckery involved when describing the past vs the present, and just because I'm used to it. That said, past tense is more common and stands out less to people, and I think that you are finding all of your "was"s a lot more noticable than a reader would! People generally don't really notice the tense of what they're reading once they get into the flow of it.

[nomsfaultau]

Writing advice

Writing Mandatory Family Reunion has gotten to the point of emotionally convoluted that I'm making scene roller coaster charts and color coding parts of the text by topic. Which, I highly recommend these writing tools. A roller coaster map is something I picked up from theater, and is useful for structuring emotions. A quick example below:

Its where you plot a timeline oscillating between positive and negative emotions, and how quickly they're switched between. It helps to know where you want the emotional peak/pit for a scene/chapter/story, so you can arrange plot beats accordingly. Many stories try to have escalating conflict, so you can use this method to gauge the intensity of reactions to crisis in order to achieve this. The problem I had with my chapter was whiplash between emotions, so by charting it out I could see where transitions needed to smooth jarring flips between emotional extremes. Flooring the gas pedal can also be bad, so the roller coaster method lets you see how quickly you switch between major emotions, and where breathing room may be helpful.

There is a problem with the axis being positive to negative. While capturing the intensity goes alright, it's hard to distinguish different types of emotions. Anger, fear, and sorrow are all negative, but also feel very different to a reader. So at peaks/plummets I made little notes about the majority emotion there. I found the roller coaster method made it easier to understand how my character's would react based off their accumulating emotional/mental state, and you can multiple to track the journeys of multiple characters.

As for the color coding method, I use it for structuring ideas. I took sections of the text in a scene and colored them based on the topic. Using comment options can also be super useful. A following example, redacted so I don't spoil my readers lol:

This helped with tracking the development of an idea in a scene where many interweaving subjects were being covered. I first focused on just how that idea changed over the course of the scene, and the next and next. Then, I looked at the transitions between each colored block, mostly the last/first two sentences between the concepts. That way I could see if there was a clear flow of logic between one topic to the next. Then, I started rearranging the parts into a way that structured a more solid scene. The scene felt a little bit like a puzzle, trying to get transitions to line up, switching around colored paragraphs into an order that made sense both for the individual argument angle as well as how it contributed to the other topics. I personally was using this for an internal monologue heavy scene, but I imagine it could also work pretty well for conversations.

Anyway, these are just some tools I use when I dislike a scene but can't figure out why. Visualizing the story can really help when trying to structure the ideas and emotions. Happy writing!

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

I love Monkie kid and the way they tell stories but oh my GODS this unreliable narrator stuff starting to stress me out

(Note: i've only seen up to ses 4 ep 8 no spoilers in the tags please)

[froggywritessometims]

ive been thinking about writing a story about a person in a psychiatrist hospital and it would be told from their journal entries and notes by doctors (like therapy notes and nurses observations) about psychiatric abuse and anti psychiatry

[passthroughtime]

sunday six (but i don't write anything beside kuwagami)

@jichanxo @four-white-trees @overdevelopedglasses @mike----wazowski

i'm getting my groove back with chapter 5 and don't really want to distract myself with something else, so this week's kuwagami is the ever-changing edition

He got to know. He had to figure out what to do to help Kuwana. Even though the best help he could possibly provide now would be to step away, Yagami wasn’t about to do that. He wasn’t good at that. And if he didn’t do something, then… It was proven time and time again that he couldn’t ever leave anything in Kuwana’s hands.

Out of the two of them, Kuwana was the most prone to fucking up. He was reckless. He was used to taking risks. He wasn’t concerned about his safety— about his life.

Yagami had to do everything for him. How irritating it was, that he cared about Kuwana more than Kuwana cared about himself. He had no right, no capacity to deal with it on his own. How couldn’t he understand? How could Yagami possibly step down and let everything run its course, trusting Kuwana to follow sound judgment? He had none. Yagami knew that better than anyone, and because of that, he had to make sure Kuwana hadn’t done anything stupid and was staying away from further trouble.

If it came to it, Yagami would even risk his life and safety; wouldn’t be the first time, right? He never promised Kuwana that he wouldn’t, and Kuwana had to know him better than to hope his plea was listened to. He should’ve already come to realize just how stubborn and unruly Yagami was… unless he didn’t know him at all.

[aquaquadrant]

If the htp au was a big media franchise, there would be dudebros falling for your in-world propaganda <3 (compliment)

hadgksgs cursed thought…

“no but if you think about it atlas isn’t even really a villain?? players make mob farms all the time why is a mob hybrid farm any different”

[ha-youwish]

i love writing neku sakuraba with many undiagnosed mental issues

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

snippets from the tesilid/hestio fic bc it's not like im going to be able to post to full thing any time in the next half a year anw 💀

[malrie]

me on the poppy war hate island alone and unloved but clear of mind and content 🤭

[litt1e-prince]

saw a post about how DBK and PIF are bad parents and if I had less self control I’d make a whole post explaining why they are good parents cause you see-

[desperatepleasures]

anyway i opened tumblr bc i was gonna make a post bemoaning the He Would Not Fucking Say That nature of the bit in the maidmer story where conrart denies that he sleeps with men but then i remembered he's saying it to gwendal and actually as far as im concerned conrart lying to his family and/or downplaying his sex life is entirely in the realm of He Would Fucking Say That so hats off to the author for writing her own character correctly i guess

[perenlop]

the thing about unreliable narrators also is that they arent just “oh the narrator is wrong lol”, typically what makes a narrator unreliable is that you can see holes in their own story. you have to put in some effort to see if what the other characters are doing match up to the story, or if their story makes sense like “oh did this character actually see the ghost of her predecessor or is she just projecting her insecurities onto a hallucination?” like theres more to it than just “oh the protag is a bit of a dick and everyone is weird and ooc around him and this is the same for every other pov he doesnt narrate”