Conventional forms of narrative allow for different points of view, but for this book I wanted a structure whereby each of the main characters contributed a distinctive version of the story.
quote by Penelope Lively
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
Sometimes films ignore other points of view because it's simpler to tell the story that way, but the more genuine and sympathetic you are to different points of view and situations, the more real the story is.
quote by Ang Lee
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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It's also possible to have two third person singular points of view, as represented by two characters through whose eyes the story is told in alternating chapters, say.
quote by Arthur Herzog
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I did not think much what I was writing them for, except that I knew I wanted my next novel to be in some less conventional form than straight narrative.
quote by Nicholas Mosley
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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So I wanted to explore all points of view of that, not just the girl's but his point of view as well. Only by directing it could I explore all the points of view.
quote by Andrew McCarthy
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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We must consider the distinctive characters and the general nature of plants from the point of view of their morphology , their behavior under external conditions, their mode of generation, and the whole course of their life.
quote by Theophrastus
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I have seen that technology has contributed to improved communication, that it's contributed to better health care, that it's contributed to better food supplies, that it has contributed to all the basic human needs.
quote by John Warnock
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Narratives
Narratives we tell to show
who we believe we are deceive
the listeners who are forced to go
with that one version they receive,
because we’ve may others we
can tell to different people to
impress them with our pedigree
and perspicacious points of view.
Do we from truth take long excursions
by changing tales about ourselves,
to find as many different versions
as books in volumes on our shelves?
No, there’s some truth in each refrain,
for every life is like a ballad
with different verses that explain
its variations, each as valid
as the next one, contradictions
all harmonized with disappearance
of prejudice about the fictions
that help to give the facts coherence.
Inspired by Benedict Carey, who writes about narratives we tell of our lives (“This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It, ” NYT, May 22,2007) :
For more than a century, researchers have been trying to work out the raw ingredients that account for personality, the sweetness and neuroses that make Anna Anna, the sluggishness and sensitivity that make Andrew Andrew. They have largely ignored the first-person explanation — the life story that people themselves tell about who they are, and why. Stories are stories, after all. The attractive stranger at the airport bar hears one version, the parole officer another, and the P.T.A. board gets something entirely different. Moreover, the tone, the lessons, even the facts in a life story can all shift in the changing light of a person’s mood, its major notes turning minor, its depths appearing shallow. Yet in the past decade or so a handful of psychologists have argued that the quicksilver elements of personal narrative belong in any three-dimensional picture of personality. And a burst of new findings are now helping them make the case. Generous, civic-minded adults from diverse backgrounds tell life stories with very similar and telling features, studies find; so likewise do people who have overcome mental distress through psychotherapy. Every American may be working on a screenplay, but we are also continually updating a treatment of our own life — and the way in which we visualize each scene not only shapes how we think about ourselves, but how we behave, new studies find. By better understanding how life stories are built, this work suggests, people may be able to alter their own narrative, in small ways and perhaps large ones. “When we first started studying life stories, people thought it was just idle curiosity — stories, isn’t that cool? ” said Dan P. McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and author of the 2006 book, “The Redemptive Self.” “Well, we find that these narratives guide behavior in every moment, and frame not only how we see the past but how we see ourselves in the future.” Researchers have found that the human brain has a natural affinity for narrative construction. People tend to remember facts more accurately if they encounter them in a story rather than in a list, studies find; and they rate legal arguments as more convincing when built into narrative tales rather than on legal precedent.
5/22/07
poem by Gershon Hepner
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The Case Of A Waterfall
a waterfall can be seen in different angles
different versions can be said
how a waterfall falls from a very high cliff
the first version is the waterfall itself
the second as you turn clockwise
gives you the version of a fog hanging on a cliff
or a horizon of white clouds
the third version, as you turn another quarter
again on a clockwise direction gives you a water fountain
going up the sky
and the last version on another clockwise
or quarter turn gives you the rage of the river
flowing to the sea
that is how reality appears to our very eyes
some points of view
how life becomes depends on how we see it
coupled with our faith
within ourselves
to one who sees a twisted point of view from a dog's eyes
life appears like a tick sucking blood from the armpit of
a puppy
blood is drained and stored on a bloating stomach
of the tick. Life is actually, how you see it.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Structure
One with a topic,
Must adopt structure.
With an effectiveness,
That seduces unexpectedly.
Without structure,
A captivation wished...
Never comes to satisfy.
Or acknowledges before it leaves.
And those with desires,
To get their points across...
Will someday realize it is structure,
That intensifies and pleases all of their needs.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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The Stories
The stories
Night bed its mats
And also we are
Wait and see
The narrative begins with the story
The stories of long time ago
Between fact and fiction
The stories from the ends of the earth
And depth of the ocean
We draw the characters and imagine
Live roles
And sail far and far
And overwhelmed with happiness
And the longing pulls us
And eyebrows painted terms on our faces
The story behind the story
Delight our nights
The stories of my grandmother.
poem by Mohammed AlBalushi
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A man called DAVE
I am a man, called DAVE
My story is boring
But you will be amazed to find
I am a man called Dave
Ordinary sometimes kind
A man called Dave
I wear a size eight shoe
Never get the blues
Never been done in
Nor comitted a mortal sin
And my childhood was full of grey and rainy days kept in
Monochrome at best but never black or blue
I was never starved or beaten
And I never went to Eton
Or grew up in a town house with a silver spoon
I can be quite erratic
But was never locked in an attic
I was never a fanatic
Apolitical
Never spiritual
Devoid of potent points of view
I am a man called DAVE
You may have seen me on the news
For being boring
And being conventional
A one dimensional
Just like you and you and, (you)
I could have changed name to JOE
Joe Public just like you
But I am Dave a man called Dave
And I'm so extraordinary for being square
Devoid of any point of view
I'm on the telly in the news
Soon to publish 'BORING SNORING'
my life story
Coming to a cinema near you!
Dave MY NAME IS DAVE
MY IDLE HOUR AWAITS
soon to be forgotten
Cos I'm like YOU and YOU and (you)
poem by Yvette Smith
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In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.
quote by Northrop Frye
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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And when I'm writing, I write a lot anyway. I might write pages and pages of conversation between characters that don't necessarily end up in the book, or in the story I'm working on, because they're simply my way of getting to know the characters.
quote by Norton Juster
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book.
quote by Jon Ronson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Today, there are too many points of view of equal value and prestige, each showing the relativity of the other, to permit us to take any one position and to regard it as impregnable and absolute. Only this socially disorganized intellectual situation makes possible the insight, hidden until now by a generally stable social structure and the practicability of certain traditional norms, that every point of view is particular to a social situation.
quote by Karl Mannheim
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed; that's how my book begins, too, but I hadn't noticed the parallel before, two characters forced to share a bed, reluctantly.
quote by Michael Chabon
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Mirror Image
How many times when reading a book,
do we identify with the characters within?
Their traits they have we share,
their loves and heartaches
their lives go through somehow mirror our own.
It’s as if the author was writing about us.
As though he has put us under a microscope
and then writing down everything, he saw.
However, we know this isn’t so
because he or she has written
segments of their own life
and by accident they happen to mirror ours.
Every writer will tell you
that they have their characters under control.
Having written numerous novels,
I know the characters take on a life of their own
and do what they want to do.
We become their instrument as they guide us on our way.
We end up writing what they want us to say.
To every writer his characters are real,
they live, breathe and feel.
The more you write about them,
the more alive they become.
So the next time you pick up a book
and the characters seem real,
they probably are to the author
who looks after them.
24 September 2008
poem by David Harris
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The Swords were still interesting but by then a cast of characters had started to appear and go on from book to book, and other things about the world began to feel constricting. And there were other things I wanted to do, so I closed the series up and stopped it.
quote by Fred Saberhagen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I was thinking about what I wanted to write next, after my first novel, and had decided that I wanted to write a story with a lot of strong female characters in it.
quote by Joan D. Vinge
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A conventional playwright tries to tell you more about the characters than they know about themselves.
quote by Timothy West
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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