Agents of Shield - Season 4

[Christopher]

I'd also add that, generally speaking, even a third person omniscient narrator tends to only go into the head of the protaganist, not everyone.

No, the general pattern in modern third person omniscient writing is that you can write from the viewpoint of any character in the story, but it's preferred to focus on only one character's viewpoint per scene. In older books, it wasn't uncommon to jump around between different characters' internal monologues within a single scene, but the modern standard is that if you want to switch to a different character's point of view, you need to put in a scene break or a chapter break before doing so. For instance, I might write a scene from Kirk's perspective on the bridge of the Enterprise, then cut to a scene from Scotty's perspective down in engineering, then cut to a scene from Spock's perspective leading a landing party. And if I then want to switch to McCoy's perspective on the same landing party to show what he's thinking about Spock, I still need to put in a scene break and do the next segment strictly from McCoy's perspective.

One of the choices I generally have to mull over before writing a scene is whose POV I should write it from. It's generally best to go with the person who has the most emotional stake in the events being described, the one who has the most to lose. Although if one of your characters has some deep dark secret, like they're the murderer or they're an impostor or they're an enemy pretending to be an ally, then you want to stay out of their head until the secret comes out -- which runs the risk of making it too obvious that they're hiding something.

Sometimes a story stays mostly within a single character's head even in omniscient third, but that's generally for shorter works. It can be good for a novel that's centered on a single lead, but if it's more of an ensemble story, then it's better to jump around among various perspectives.

 

[Greg Cox]

One of the choices I generally have to mull over before writing a scene is whose POV I should write it from. It's generally best to go with the person who has the most emotional stake in the events being described, the one who has the most to lose. Although if one of your characters has some deep dark secret, like they're the murderer or they're an impostor or they're an enemy pretending to be an ally, then you want to stay out of their head until the secret comes out -- which runs the risk of making it too obvious that they're hiding something.
.

Bingo. When I'm writing a novelization, one of the first things I do is go through the movie script and figure out who the POV character should be in each scene. Sometimes I have to fall back on an omniscient perspective because screenplays aren't necessarily written with POV in mind, but I try to avoid it.

(If the scene in question is a long tracking shot through an empty ghost town or ancient ruins or whatever, it can be hard to find a POV character.)

And, yes, nine times out of ten the POV character should be the one who is under the most stress, physically and/or emotionally--unless, as noted, there's some deep dark secret you have to hide. I think of this as Terry's Rule, because I got it from the late great Terry Carr, but it's served me well for decades now . .....

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Which kind of emphasizes my point, though. Thought bubbles are willy nilly pointing to every character. If you were doing one character per scene, the caption boxes work just as well for thoughts.

 

[Christopher]

Which kind of emphasizes my point, though. Thought bubbles are willy nilly pointing to every character. If you were doing one character per scene, the caption boxes work just as well for thoughts.

But that's prose we're talking about. Comics are their own medium, with their own language. They shouldn't have to copy what works in a different medium. They shouldn't try to be more like movies or more like prose.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I've seen comics where various characters thought boxes are in different colors in order to differentiate. I've seen other clever ways of getting across the point of whose caption boxes is whose.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I've seen comics where various characters thought boxes are in different colors in order to differentiate. I've seen other clever ways of getting across the point of whose caption boxes is whose.

Yeah, I've seen that too. I've also seen use of different symbols. Frankly, under those circumstances, I don't think caption boxes really can be justified. I think it adds more confusion and clutter than thought bubbles.

 

[bbjeg]

Back to Agents of Shield, did anyone else nerdgasm during this scene? My favorite scene of AoS this season.

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[Mr Light]

That was great, yeah. I never noticed that bullet hole in his skull. Hope we get an explanation.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Well, the point isn't really that private thoughts are hokey, it's that slapping a giant flashing sign on them makes them feel less private and therefore less real. And the same holds true in prose, which is why most authors will work hard to show you a characters thoughts in a more natural way rather than just writing a sentence and adding 'he thought' at the end.

There's no privacy in fiction. The omniscient narrator, whatever person they're speaking in, will tell you thoughts, feelings, and information about the character that the character may never reveal even on pain of death. In prose, a writer may even directly quote a character's thoughts in italics, which is essentially a literary version of the thought balloon.

I would also add that most narration styles are much more visually appealling, whereas thought bubbles (needing always to be directly attached to the character) literally get in the way of the best part of a comic book (the art). And that it feels, at least to me, like a somewhat annoying inconsistency in presentation.

This is where the synthesis of words and pictures comes in. An artist, when creating sequential art, has to not only know how to tell a story in pictures, but to compose those pictures in a manner that is inclusive of the balloons and captions. If he's drawing a panel where the script calls for a substantial thought balloon and leaves no place for it to naturally fall within the composition, he's not doing a good job.

 

[YLu]

Which is kind of a silly way to look at it when you remember that prose fiction delves deeply into the "private thoughts" of characters-- at least good prose fiction does. And, again, sequential art is a synthesis of words and pictures and should be using the tools of each to its best advantage. Thought balloons are far more appropriate for the medium because they have greater immediacy. I think the real issue is that thought balloons are unique to comics and strongly associated with comics, and, as subsequent generations of superhero fans and creators have become increasingly embarrassed with the genre, there have been ill-advised attempts to make comics look less like comics. This has resulted in all kinds of negative side effects, from the awkwardness with costumes to the naive attempts at maturity-- and, apparently, to treating word balloons like a relic. I hope they at least got a gold watch.

Uh-huh, Scott McCloud, pretty much the Anglophone world's biggest advocate for comics' unique power as a medium, the guy who almost literally wrote the textbook on that very subject, is ashamed of them and wants to make them more like other media

Anyway, he's not saying "private thoughts" = bad. He's saying it's better to convey private thoughts through first person narration boxes than thought bubbles because, to him at least, the former creates *more* immediacy. A narration box, done in first person, is just as much a window into a character's thoughts as any bubble.

 

[YLu]

But that's prose we're talking about. Comics are their own medium, with their own language. They shouldn't have to copy what works in a different medium. They shouldn't try to be more like movies or more like prose.

The interesting question then is: *Why* does showing multiple characters' thoughts within the same scene work better in comics than prose? It's not like it isn't something perfectly possible in prose. Plenty of older prose fiction did it (as you've pointed out), and you can find occasional modern works that do it.

So what makes most modern novelists resistant to multiple viewpoints in the same scene? And whatever the answer to that question is, what's different about comics that it doesn't also apply there?

Me, I don't think it necessarily does work better in comics than prose. I think narration boxes' replacing thought bubbles is, partly at least, in line with modern prose's aversion to multiple viewpoints in the same scene. Two sides of the same coin.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah, I've seen that too. I've also seen use of different symbols. Frankly, under those circumstances, I don't think caption boxes really can be justified. I think it adds more confusion and clutter than thought bubbles.

The difference between the two is purely cosmetic. The preference for the former is I think partly because thought balloons evoke more "cartoony" look that clashes with the tone of more serious books.

 

[Christopher]

The interesting question then is: *Why* does showing multiple characters' thoughts within the same scene work better in comics than prose? It's not like it isn't something perfectly possible in prose. Plenty of older prose fiction did it (as you've pointed out), and you can find occasional modern works that do it.

It works better because comics are a visual medium. The fact that the thought bubbles are visibly connected to their thinkers makes it easier to keep track of who's thinking what. Prose is just a single stream of words, and seeing different people's thoughts within that stream, with no break in the narrative between them, can be confusing. But comics use the visual space and composition of the panel to convey that information more easily and clearly than prose can. Balloons aren't an imposition on the art, they're part of the art and composition, and their own design and layout can convey a lot.

So what makes most modern novelists resistant to multiple viewpoints in the same scene?

I'm not sure, but I've heard it suggested that it may be an attempt to distinguish prose storytelling from cinematic forms, by emphasizing the ability of prose to get inside a character's personal perspective as opposed to the omniscient, outside viewpoint of film or TV. At least, I've heard some Star Trek novelist (maybe Dave Mack or Greg Cox?) suggest that's the reason why Trek novels favor the single-viewpoint-per-scene approach.

Comics, meanwhile, have commonalities with both the prose and cinematic forms, and it's that in-between nature that makes them distinctive.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Cinematic forms almost never let you hear what a character is thinking (and in all but the rarest, usually comedic, examples, never show multiple cases). They rely on showing it through action, expression, etc. (something comics are capable of doing as well). It may be fine to say comics are "different," which is why they should do it, but it's not correct to say they're "in-between" prose and cinema when neither prose nor cinema show the inner thoughts of multiple characters in a scene.

 

[Christopher]

Cinematic forms almost never let you hear what a character is thinking (and in all but the rarest, usually comedic, examples, never show multiple cases). They rely on showing it through action, expression, etc. (something comics are capable of doing as well).

Yes, that is exactly my point -- that comics, film, and prose can all do things that the others can't, as well as overlapping in many of the things they can do.

It may be fine to say comics are "different," which is why they should do it, but it's not correct to say they're "in-between" prose and cinema when neither prose nor cinema show the inner thoughts of multiple characters in a scene.

That's getting it backward. I'm not saying it's in between because it can do that single specific thing; I'm saying it can do that specific thing because it is, in general, a medium that encompasses the strengths of both cinema (i.e. imagery-based sequential storytelling) and prose (i.e. the use of text to convey information including dialogue, narration, and interior thoughts). This specific point is just one of the ways that comics differ from the other media and share elements of both.

Also, your final statement is too absolute. Many works of prose in the past have shown the thoughts of multiple characters in one scene. It's hardly impossible; it's just not currently favored. It could be that it's fallen out of favor because it's confusing, or it could be that it's confusing to modern readers because it's fallen out of favor and we're no longer used to it. But it was pretty common in older books, and it still happens in some today.

And as you acknowledge, it is possible for the filmic medium to do the same thing through voiceovers; again, it simply isn't a fashionable practice in modern cinema. True, the fact that it's a matter of style in the other two media supports the idea that it's a valid choice for comics to change their stylistic preferences as well. I just feel it would be a mistake for comics to do so if the only reason for it were to emulate one of the other media.

 

[Greg Cox]

So what makes most modern novelists resistant to multiple viewpoints in the same scene? .

Because it's potentially confusing and disorientating. You have one character experiencing things, and reacting to events, and pondering mysteries and questions from their perspective, so that the reader is (hopefully) sweating and fretting and puzzled in the same way, right in the thick of things.

And then, abruptly, without any line breaks or chapter changes, you're getting the reactions and opinions and viewpoint of a different character. And suddenly you're not in the first character's skin, experiencing the story through their senses . . . you're God, looking down on the characters from above and jumping from one head to another, instead of being immersed in the events and emotions and despairing or rejoicing or being baffled along with whatever character is the focus of the scene.

Sticking to one POV per scene is more immersive and visceral, in theory.

 

[Richard Baker]

This is interesting but I will be happy when the show returns to broadcast

 

[Turtletrekker]

According to Gabriel Luna, Marvel has already mapped out potential avenues for Ghost Rider's future. Loose talk of a potential feature or Netflix show.


http://comicbook.com/2016/11/09/ghost-rider-netflix-series-gabriel-luna/

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Good to read!

 

[RJDiogenes]

Anyway, he's not saying "private thoughts" = bad. He's saying it's better to convey private thoughts through first person narration boxes than thought bubbles because, to him at least, the former creates *more* immediacy. A narration box, done in first person, is just as much a window into a character's thoughts as any bubble.

Well, to each his own. Scott McCloud's expertise notwithstanding, I disagree with him.

The difference between the two is purely cosmetic. The preference for the former is I think partly because thought balloons evoke more "cartoony" look that clashes with the tone of more serious books.

Yeah, I think this is pretty much it. It all comes down to fashion.

Sticking to one POV per scene is more immersive and visceral, in theory.

I don't disagree, but that makes me want to write an immersive scene with multiple POV. It's the contrarian in me.