Lobelia the adverbially eclectic

It is very odd that you have mentioned this. When I wrote my first fic, that never got posted. The beta had a go at me because I was writing in the third person, and I kept writing the internal thought processes of different characters. She said you couldn't do this, and that even when writing in the third person, you can only write from one character's pov per part. You can't write as if you know what all the characters are thinking.

I was asking people the other day if this was true, and they seemed to think it wasn't. I still prefer to write from only one point of view, even in the third person. If I was describing a room, the description of the room would be coloured by the mood of the main character. I think this heterodiegetic thing is more difficult, because the writer has to work harder to show empathy towards the characters, and not patronise them.

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I was writing in the third person, and I kept
writing the internal thought processes of different characters.
I think this kind of narration, by an omniscient narrator who can veer in and out of various characters' heads, is a wonderful thing to read. They say it's most typical of 18th and 19th century novels but I've also encountered it recently, e.g. in Anne Marie McDonald's wonderful Fall to your Knees where at one crucial plot point you're suddenly in the mind of the *cat*. Quite astounding. I find it incredibly hard to do, though. I experimented with it in the Karl/Dom epic but I could never really get a grip on it. It can be very bad, if not done with control (note bad!fic!!!). I sort of spoofed it in "When we are human".

I suppose if you go in and out of people's heads, you are being heterodiegetic as a narrator (unless you are a clairvoyant alien within the story).

I now remember where I tried the Hemingway heterodiegetic route: with 'Different Tastes' where it was all just dialogue and terse description of action. That was fun to try, actually.

What I found useful about this extract was the insight that grammatical person is *separate* from viewpoint. A third person can be as intensely interior as a first person narrative. For that matter, a first person can be objective and removed - though I can't think of any slash examples!

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viva-gloria.livejournal.com

Seems to me that one can play games with this homo/heterodiegesis, regardless of POV. The narrator can play a role in the diegesis without understanding that role at all -- extreme example,

eyebrowofdoom's 'Flint' (I think) with truly clueless 1st-person narrator. And that self-referential 'authorial' narration, when first-person, surely counts as heterodiegesis.

And while your invertebrates are a part of the action, it's not voluntary -- their participation is iconic, at most. 'When We are Human' seems closer to heterodiegesis than most slash I've encountered.

Am also still pondering the show/tell issue, with side-thoughts on how very tedious a narrative can be which shows everything and tells nothing. .. If that doesn't sound sensible, insert 'absolutely' before 'everything': there is a role for allusion, elision, omission, extrapolation, which is not admitted by the show/tell dichotomy.

But I digress ...

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And that self-referential 'authorial' narration, when first-person, surely counts as heterodiegesis.

It might be tempting to play with the idea, but typically it counts as homodiegetic.

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viva-gloria.livejournal.com

If the author is not part of the 'story', but is commenting in omniscient authorial role on the events / characters / flow of the 'story', is the author considered part of the narrative and hence homodiegetic simply by the act of commenting?

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No, if the narrator (let's not say author, because the narrator may be someone who reads aloud a diary) is not part of the narration (when you say 'story', I hope that you mean narration, and not a substory inside the story), it's heterodiegetic. But you said the narrator can play a role in the diegesis without understanding that role at all. Then, since he plays a role in the diegesis (diegesis IS the narration), it's homodiegetic.

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Yes, this is what I meant. Author is not narrator. And, as I said in the comment above, story is not plot. And sub-stories get even more complicated because then people (well, Mieke Bal, whose book on *Narratology* I just pulled off my shelf in attempt to de-confuse myself - hah, instead confusing self further) then go on to classify embedded stories on all sorts of levels (stories within stories within stories... Scheherazade-like).

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No, if the author is not part of the story - the diegesis, the author is heterodiegetic.

Hah! I have since gone and looked this up in other books. It is, of course, the proverbial thread of wool: pull it and watch everything unravel in something more complex than you had thought. (That analogy does not make sense, I realise, but you know what I mean.)

Anyway, the difference to consider here is that between story and plot. (Mieke Bal calls 'story' 'fabula' and 'plot' 'story' just to confuse me but I will stick with 'story' and 'plot'.) The story is the fictional action, the events of the story world; the plot is how these are told (in flashbacks, in first or second person, in the form of a novel or a movie etc.). So I suppose the omniscient narrator (*not* the author, because author is not equivalent to narrator) you describe is part of the plot (the commenting) but not part of the story .

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The narrator can play a role in the diegesis without understanding that role at all -- extreme example, eyebrowofdoom's 'Flint' (I think) with truly clueless 1st-person narrator
Yes, but that narrator is still nevertheless a heterodiegetic narrator because Billy is part of the story, very much so. His very cluelessness is totally woven into the fabric of the story. So omniscience vs. er, nihiliscience (??) is a different issue.

I think a prime example of a heterodiegetic narrator would be someone like David Attenborough telling the story of the sperm whale's migration. Because he ain't in that ocean with them.

But I think that's sort of what you meant, anyway.

And that self-referential 'authorial' narration, when first-person, surely counts as heterodiegesis.

Not sure what you mean by 'self-referential authorial narration'. Example?

If David Attenborough starts referring to himself in the first person ('These sperm whales always remind me of my first orgasm') that still leaves him outside the story of the whales. But, I suppose (ack), inserts him into another story: the Story of First Orgasm.

But in When We Are Human, the narration takes place in the second person, i.e. it's not bugs doing the acting but the reader. Although I guess that is pedantic - we think of the bugs as outside ourselves, never mind how many 'we's there are strewn around the story.

See what I mean? Complicado!

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viva-gloria.livejournal.com

Your Attenborough example -- narrator outside the story -- is what I meant, give or take; but leaves me with a terrifying image of Attenborough / whale fic. (I'm afraid I'm leaving the execution of this to you!)

Yes, had forgotten the second-person in 'When We Are Human' (here, forgetfulness=coping mechanism due to prolonged absence of much-appreciated Key Author) -- it's distinctly the reader who sees (or doesn't), whose face is pressed (by the author) to the glass, without being able to reach in and influence the events.

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I know! I launched into Attenborough example with all intent of academic innocence when wale images attacked me from behind and corrupted my brain! *shudders*

And I feel, on second thoughts, too spooked by analysing *my own fic* so, ack, I will desist.

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"The narrator can play a role in the diegesis without understanding that role at all -- extreme example, eyebrowofdoom's 'Flint' (I think) with truly clueless 1st-person narrator"
Yes, but that narrator is still nevertheless a heterodiegetic narrator because Billy is part of the story, very much so.

I think you mistyped here. Viva gloria said 'heterodiegetic' and you corrected her by typing again 'heterodiegetic', but you apparently mean homodiegetic.

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Haha!

Homo, hetero -- it's the *associations* of those prefixes! They bamboozle me!

Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, in *her* book on Narrative Fiction, uses the terms extradiegetic and intradiegetic as well (ack), and Mieke Bal doesn't use any of these terms but refers to external narrators and character-bound narrators (helpfully [?] abbreviated to EN and CN).

*brain needs vitamins*

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Rimmon-Kenan is a *woman*? She's mostly quoting from Genette. I found the stuff pretty clear, I must say.

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Yes, she's a woman! 'Shlomith', as in 'Shulamith'. Israeli name.

I discovered this only last year myself. Heh.

I have yet to read Genette. *hangs head in shame*

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gabbyhope.livejournal.com

are heterodiegetic because they subsist almost entirely on dialogue.

huh. Wait, so dialogue makes it different somehow? Rather than narration itself, you mean? Should that not be considered homodiegetic when the character who is narrating takes part in the "action" of the piece? This is new to me. And I'm utterly confused.

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No, the dialogue doesn't change anything.

Should that not be considered homodiegetic when the character who is narrating takes part in the "action" of the piece?

Yup. Even if he's just present in the story, hanging around or whatever.

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I replied to this here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lobelia321/129111.html?replyto=616279

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*is completely thrown but not completely, on second thoughts, because remembers having qualms about typing the word 'dialogue' to begin with*

*flips pages of learned tomes to come up with some reply -- dialogue falls under 'direct speech', right?*

Okay, have looked at relevant sections in Mieke Bal's book 'Narratology'.

She defines dialogue as the most dominant type of 'embedded text', text embedded within the 'primary text'.

Dialogue is a form in which the actors themselves and not the primary narrator, utter language. ... Such embedded texts share that characteristic with dramatic texts. ... The dialogues embedded in a narrative text are dramatic in kind. The more dialogue a narrative text contains, the more dramatic that text is. (I find this highly interesting, btw.)

When between each utterance of an actor the primary narrator intervenes with additions like 'Elizabeth said,' or even more elaborate commentary, the hierarchical relationship between N1 and N2 remains clearly visible. When the clauses follow each other without intervention by the N1, we are likely to forget that we are dealing with an embedded dialogue.

N1 refers to the primary narrator, and N2 to the embedded narrator on the secondary level of dialogue or whatever (story within story).

I will now ponder over what happens when N1 and N2 are the same. As in: I was feeling nervous so I said, "Good morning, I am nervous."

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Most of Cinzia's S/V fics are heterodiegetic. The narrator does not participate in the story.

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Well, I am completely confused. Can someone clarify the following. In a book, if the narrator starts off by saying that they went on a journey to a certain place, and they describe people talking to them, and their internal response to the people, then this is homodiegetic. Yes?

If then, when the narrator arrives at the place, they describe the events that they see, and the people that they see, and the intereaction between the people, but the narrator never describes himself interacting with the people, how he feels about the events that take place, or any response he has to the way the people interact, then this section of the story is heterodiegetic. Yes?

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Forget I asked that, because I have looked it up online, and it all seems much simpler now:

Extradiegetic. When someone is telling a story, the situation of the telling is going on on a level above the story being told. I will call this level of narration the ĺextradiegeticĹ.The narrator is thus the ĺextradiegetic narratorĹ at this remove from the story narrated.

Intradiegetic. Sometimes a story being told will contain a scene in which a character within that story tells a story, in other words becomes a narrator. The narrator within the main story will be an intradiegeticnarrator.

Narratorial Ontology

Heterodiegetic. The extradiegetic narrator may be an anonymous third person ĺvoiceĹsomeone completely external to the world of the story narrated. Such a narrator is heterodiegetic, meaning it is ontologically different from the world of the story.

Homodiegetic. If the extradiegetic narrator is identified as living in the world of the story, perhaps even one of the characters within the world of the story, that narrator would be an extradiegetic-homodiegetc narrator.

The narrator of George Eliot's Middlemarch; is an extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator."Marcel" in Proust's Recherches des Temps Perdues; and "David Copperfield" in David Copperfield are extradiegetic-homodiegetic narrators.Scheherazade of One Thousand Nights and a Night is an intradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator: she is an embedded narrator in the larger frame tale which explains why she must tell stories, but she does not exist in any of the stories she tells.

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Hah! I also found this (or something similar) when perusing my narratology books upon finding that matters were more complex than I had at first imagined. Of course, the level of classification can get more confusing than just leaving it be but the intra-extra, homo-hetero I also found in Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan's book 'Narrative Fiction'.

I bow down to your superior powers of explication.

But to get back to your first post: I suppose if the narrator never mentions herself again at all in the book, she would theoretically continue to hover at the back of our minds but because we become immersed in the story world we may forget her existence altogether - otoh, she could be revived at the end, hey presto, here I am. I suppose it all depends on the individual story.

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According to this link:

http://www.english.wayne.edu/~beckwith/narrativeT&D.html

which is the site I've found that is easiest to understand, Fota is in fact an autodiegetic narrative, and not a homodiegetic narrative because:

Autodiegetic Narrative. A work of fiction that reads like a memoir or autobiography; the first-person narrator is also the main character.

and:

Homodiegetic Narrative. The narrator is actually a part of the story world. He or she may or may not take part in the situations and events recounted but is not the main character in that particular story. See Autodiegetic Narrator when the person telling the story is also the protagonist.

As for the example I was using, I think the whole concept of the narrator being at the events but neither participating or responding to them in any way, is used because this makes the events described more brutal, and the people involved are more effectively stripped of their humanity in the eyes of the reader.

Anyway, all this has diegetic stuff has just made me aware, yet again, of how ignorant I am. Thanks Lobelia. You are just too clever.

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Cleverer than you? *snorts*

Anyway, I don't think homo and auto preclude each other. Auto is a sub-set of homo.

Here's what Shlomit Rimmon-Kenan says:

The degree of participation of homodiegetic narrators (be they extradiegetic or intradiegetic) varies from case to case. Pip [Charles Dickens, Great Expectations] (extra-homodiegetic) and the pardoner (intra-homodiegetic) play a central role in the respective stories they narrate (protagonists-narrators) -- or, put differently, they narrate their own story (auto-diegetic narrators, in Genette's terms). On the other hand, Lockwood's role is subsidiary (witness-narrator).

Homo and heterodiegetic seem to be the more commonly used terms while auto-diegetic seems to me to have been coined by Genette and used by some authors. However, Mieke Bal uses neither homo nor hetero nor auto, she talks only of external narrators and of character-bound narrators, perhaps because she was sick of the jargonic confusion.

I would think that FOTA-Orli is an intradiegetic, homodiegetic, autodiegetic narrator. Hey! Intra-auto-homo!

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