Bugs Bunny is famous for missing that Left Turn at Albuquerque. It got him into all sorts of interesting situations. While trying to get an outline done for “Salvage Run”, I ended up missing that metaphorical left turn as well. Instead of visiting plot points and rising action, I somehow popped up in the land of POV and Voice.
I’m glad I did.
I’ve been listening to the Writer Dojo podcast with Steve Diamond and Larry Correia these past few weeks. If you’re a new author interested in writing fantastical fiction of any kind (SF, fantasy, horror, thrillers) I can’t recommend it highly enough. A couple of the recent episodes I listened to were on voice and POV. So as when I sat down to write up an outline, I had that in mind.
My outline was basically a spreadsheet with columns for “Location”, “POV”, and “Action”. Time and place where things were happening; who was narrating; and what was going on. Nothing too complex. A list of scenes that I’d want to touch on, what information I wanted to convey or reveal in each, that sort of thing.
Five minutes into this exercise I realized I had no idea who was telling the story.
Honestly, that’s not a good place to be in.
I had scenes where I wanted the captain to be a focus, others where I wanted the cargo master, and so on. I started thinking about what it would mean, bouncing back and forth between them all. Especially since one character’s perception of another might be very different from their perspective on themselves. I didn’t want this to turn into a character study. I want to tell a decent SF horror tale.
That made me think of something Steve Diamond said on one of the Writer Dojo podcasts. He commented that a lot of horror is written in the first person to give some immediacy. Detective tales are similar. First person allows for a gradual unfolding of events and the revelation of information in a way that mirrors what the reader is experiencing.
OK, so I need a narrator. Ideally, it should be first person. As it stands, I already laid out the idea that there will be one person left at the end of the story… The Outsider. So it would seem perfectly natural to make the only passenger on the ship the POV character.
Once that clicked, I realized that it made a lot of sense. Someone unfamiliar with space travel would be “experiencing” the story through fresh eyes - just like my reader. Having a passenger on the ship changes the dynamics of decision-making for the crew as well, so including him in various scenes makes sense. I would be able to use his perceptions of characters to sketch out their personalities.
So - fantastic! Now I have a POV character. He’s the Outsider. A space travel noob, he’s a bit of a coward, and… wait. Where did that last thought come from?
No idea, honestly. Somewhere along this line of thinking, I got it into my head that the Outsider was running from something. What, I don’t know. He’s doing his best to keep his head down and stay out of everyone’s way. He’d rather they not even remember he’s there, for the most part.
Now, here’s the thing. Do I need to understand what he’s running from?
Nope! Let’s leave it at that. In fact - let’s state it, but hand wave it away as unimportant…
I kept to myself. I was running - well. That’s all you need to know. I had scraped up enough money on short notice to get off-planet. Finding a ship like the Gigi with space for a passenger had seemed like a rare bit of good fortune at the time.
There you go. He’s a private man, and while he’s telling his tale, he doesn’t want to talk about what brought him there. Scandal? Fleeing the law? Broken heart? Only he knows. It provides him with an air of mystery, this fleeing man; and offers up the chance for him to have unexpected views or skills later on, if needed. So we’ll leave it at that.
The paragraph above is from a longer segment I wrote last night, to try and get a feel for what having the Outsider as the POV character. I was actually really happy with the result. TheOutsider’s voice is terse - “just the facts, ma’am”. He is in an uncomfortable situation that he has to endure, and just wants it to end.
Even better, I can see the other characters through his eyes. A quick couple of scenes helped me get an idea for how he would think and see things as he interested with the Captain and crew. I think that I will have him as a dispassionate observer at first, but then draw him in and have him become more emotionally involved as the story proceeds. Again - hopefully, like the reader.
It also let me work on my narration. I tend to go long, and overly descriptive. I’ve got a lot of exposition to pack into this story. Logn paragraphs about the state of the ship need to go out the window. A few adjectives - a dent here, a smell there, a sound in the night - should be enough to sketch out scenes and help establish mood.
So now I have a narrator, and I’ve got some idea of what kind of person he is, and what kind of voice he’ll have. I have a handful of quick scenes already written to experiment with both, and they feel like they work. So next post, I’ll try to backtrack to Albuquerque and get back on track towards producing that outline.