wow.

This is good stuff.

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Honestly? I don't see the Narrator and Lecturer as being more than two faces of the same storyteller. Also, I don't think that background information is =incidental= to some stories, particularly those in the SFF genre, but there are notable examples among hoity-toity literature like Moby-Dick.

One of the reasons that I like some books/series so much is the world-building... and what's the point if there's =as little detail/background= as possible?

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but there are notable examples among hoity-toity literature like Moby-Dick.

at the workshop where I spend a bit of time, i do recall that we'd refer to very long stretches of background information, particularly on worldbuilding features, as "Whaling chapters/scenes."

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I suspect that the background info depends on the reader--and of course to the skill of the writer as well. Many readers adore Paarfi's clever infodumps in the Steven Brust books. (Paarfi being the Narrator who is named--the first person omniscient of classical lit right down through to the last 100 years.)

Many have complained about les Miserables which has entire chapters of discursion. I adore that book for those discursions: the history of the elephant after the Supreme Being Festival toward the end of the Revolution, before the bloodbaths that led to Napoleon; the story of the bells and slang of the nunnery; the story of prison slang. The story of the Parisian sewers. Utterly fascinating to me. Yet when I tried to read David Weber, I found myself skipping pages and pages of turgidly written info dump...I found that either I was getting a long explanation of something I'd already figured out, or of past history that felt fake and I didn't feel I needed to follow the action, or of weapons tech, which I did read, but skimmed.

All depends.

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So is she expecting the Lecturer to function as the "Expositer", responsible for all necessary exposition? What I've learned is that, when done well, all exposition and/or lecturing is instead funneled through the main POV character, either her interactions with the environment, or inner dialogue, or conversation. So that commment about the thaw (in a book which I've never read, either) should have come in reference to one of the characters, noticing the thaw, or the effects and/or commenting on them. I know that I attempt to weed out such lapses into "lecture" in my own writing.

Now that I think about it, I can think of some of my favorite stories that included that sort of "Lecturer" voiceover, usually at the beginning of a story or a chapter, giving background information and setting a scene. So it can be an effective literary device, depending on the skill of the author in using it... Hmm...much to think about, now.

Very interesting to think about.

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I think I'd argue that narrative voice is in significant part a function of point of view, and that the presence or absence of a perceivable Narrator thus varies from story to story.

That is, there is always a Storyteller -- but the relationship of Storyteller to Story, and also the relationships between Storyteller and Audience, and Story and Audience, depends on who the Storyteller is. Note that in some manuscripts, particularly nowadays when multiple POV characters are common, you may have a construct in which there are multiple Storytellers and an Editor, or Master Storyteller -- and the Editor's voice may or may not be directly perceptible to the Audience (independent of any role the Editor may have in the Story).

So I side against C. -- "Lecturer" can never be fully separated from "Narrator", because the very presence of Lecturer establishes a new level of Narration (or, if you will, an Editor behind the Storyteller).

Or to comment in a different context -- I have sometimes observed in reviews that a novel has been written in the style of history or biography. And what I mean by that is that the overall voice of the book is that of a historian or biographer, who is assembling a tale from whatever sources he has to hand and commenting or providing context for the account as he goes along. (For example, David Weber's "Honor Harrington" novels are in some sense histories of the milieu in which they take place, because of the way in which Weber periodically interrupts the story of "what happened" to analyze a battle, or describe how a spaceship's weapon systems work, or to point out some bit of exposition on a political point.)

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I disagree with C in at least two ways, at least insofar as my own process works with a third person omniscient narrator. For one thing, I consciously move him (usually he is a he, though not always) between narrative, expository, and digressive modes, and feel I've worked my best when I manage to statements working in more than one mode at once. Um — concrete examples. What comes to mind is expositing one character's actions by narrating another character's reactions to it (this works better in the compression of poetry than in prose, I think). Or better, and more characteristic: coming out of a digression that it moves the narrative forward, in either a narrative or, more commonly, expository way. (I don't think I've mingled all three at once, and I'm not sure how that would work.) Colorful similes in tall tales are narrative partaking of digression.

The other thing being, as implied, I distinguish between digressionary and expository modes. Though of course digressions need to do some sort of double duty, advancing the narrative or themes or expositions or whatnot, or they're dead weight and out they go. But they are distinct to me.

---L.

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C said that while the characters are taking a nice winter ride, the Lecturer blips in for one single line and provides the data that there had been a thaw and freeze so that treacherous ice underlay the snow.
In this example, I don't see the difference between C's Lecturer and the Omniscient POV, which Ursula le Guin prefers to call "authorial narration." (I've been reading "Steering the Craft" and think I should buy it so I can take the time to do the exercises.)
Maybe it's true in other disciplines, but it seems writing is especially prone to its various aspects and processes getting different labels from different quarters. People could be in agreement with each other and still argue because they are using different terms. Does it matter if I call it "Lecturer without narrator" or "Detached Author/Camera Eye narration", so long as I'm aware of the constraints of that storytelling method should I choose to use it?

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I don't think it matters a bit. Like I said above, I regard the Lecturer as part of the function of the Narrator. C works better to separate them. I once read an angry essay by a writer who took everyone to task for even talking about such hogwash as Narrative Voice--that person maintained that any terms put up between the author sitting at the desk and pounding out the words and the text is just a lot of la-di-da invented to mystify the writing process. That person was a successful writer who clearly found that what we regarded as helpful tools to be useless ephemera.

I think, in short, whatever way we find to make our processes conscious, at the rewriting stage at least, if not at the initial writing, is to the good. And one of the ways to do this is to find ways to separate ourselves from the text. Some writers don't need these things. I do.

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Agreed. Being able to isolate some aspects of writing certainly helps in being able to identify and fix problems in a given story. (And as being on LJ for even a short time shows, all the variances in definitions give rise to some very interesting exchanges of ideas. Very thought-provoking.)

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I'd agree that digression and exposition are different creatures.

I'm not sure what to make of breaking down the narrator into these two strands, though.

I'm not sure how to map it onto my own process, which is probably -why- I find it so interesting.

Do people find it helpful to dissect this way? Does the dissection translate into a more certain command of your own material? I'm not sure, in my own case, which is why I ask.

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For a logical mind it's probably like getting one's first pair of glasses: the blurs suddenly snap into clarity.

For a mud-brained fumbler like myself, it forces me to examine what I'm doing from different angles. It forces me to distance myself from the movie always trying to suck me back inside, so I can't see my text. Once in a while I can use some of these various techniques, but mostly I let it all sink into the primordial ooze beneath my conscious mind, in hopes it might help over the long run!

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All fiction is digression. At least to the extent that just about any story can be stated in a single sentence - An obsessive whaler chases a white whale which kills him - and what makes the fiction work (or not) is the flesh put around this bone. This can take all sorts of forms - describing the characters, detailing their conversations, describing scenery, digressing about what happened in the past or is happening elsewhere in the world, explaining the minutiae of what is being done and why, and so on and so forth. It doesn't really matter what form these digressions might take, a good writer makes them interesting, a bad writer doesn't, and it is the level of interest we find in the manner of telling that keeps us reading.

Do people find it helpful to dissect this way?

A very good question. In workshop situations I find it helpful - sometimes - to analyse a piece of work this way. But not while I'm actually writing. Over-intellectualising what I am trying to do before I start doing it just gets in the way and usually ends in complete silence.

Is there a Narrator? Is there a Lecturer? To be honest, I don't know and I don't particularly care. What concerns me, as a writer, is that there is certain information that must be conveyed to explain the story, and to keep the reader interested. There are many ways of doing this, and my job is to choose the one that works best for me in the context of the story I am writing, the way I am writing the story, and the effect I am aiming to achieve. This may be a Narrator or a Lecturer or an omniscient authorial voice or the voice of a character, or heaven knows what else. I don't want to go through a checklist of potential 'voices' for every piece of information I am trying to convey, I just want to find the best way of conveying that information. And if my first stab at it doesn't work I can go back and try more until I get the one that works. After the fact I might then decide: Oh, that is the Narrator voice - but never before I've written.

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I strongly agree with what peake says here, adding only for emphasis: some writers find all this dicussion just obfuscation. That's fine, too.

Anhd some writers like to consider these things after a book is written, as tools to consider the rewrite.

And some consider it, file it away into the backbrain, and forget about it, because they do not want the assemblance of 'tools' getting between them and the story, or it all dries up.

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And if my first stab at it doesn't work I can go back and try more until I get the one that works. After the fact I might then decide: Oh, that is the Narrator voice - but never before I've written.

This is a pretty fair description of the way I work, as well.

I find the Narrator/Lecturer discussion interesting in that it attempts to pinpoint what does -- and doesn't -- succeed in a novel's voice, so in that sense, I care. And, ummm, I've mentioned elsewhere that I really do find process discussions fascinating.

But I'm like sartorias in that I tend to take it -all- in and hope that it becomes part of the great writer-mind that lurks in the subconscious. I'm not sure how I would go about applying it consistently -while- writing; I think that would make my internal editor Mr. Hyde.

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I think it depends on the story and on how tight your POV is. For a loose POV (even if still only partial omniscient) this can be true.

I tend toward tight POVs, though, and in many of my stories, if the viewpoint character doesn't know something, the reader doesn't get it. If the viewpoint character knows something so well she wouldn't think to tell the reader, the reader often won't get that (at least not directly) either, though I do fudge on this point a little.

But if the viewpoint character does impart information in a tight POV story, it gets imparted by her, in her voice, in a way that it's believable for her to impart it.

In a tight POV story, for me, if the innkeeper removes the pretzels from the bar, the reader doesn't hear about it--unless the viewpoint character notices, and comments on it. Reactions of other characters, like everything else, are filtered through the character telling the story.

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And this is a justifiable narrative technique, too, where the narrator and the POV are fairly inextricable.

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Well this is interesting, but like many above I see it more as you do. Lecturer and Narrator are two pieces of the same, not something broken apart. While explaining about a culture or world, requires necessary information to be passed on, what gets passed on often depends on the frame of the story. OK, yes, not always. Some simply infodump and their devoted readers love this, while their critics can't stand it. I think your second to last para, though, really nails it.

I think about this a lot, actually. My POV characters are younger, and what they see as they walk down a street, what they notice or like or fear, isn't always what an adult would. I sometimes find it a challenge to give the sense of a created world, while also staying true to what a 12 or 15 year-old would notice.

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I think about this a lot, actually. My POV characters are younger, and what they see as they walk down a street, what they notice or like or fear, isn't always what an adult would. I sometimes find it a challenge to give the sense of a created world, while also staying true to what a 12 or 15 year-old would notice.

I think this might be particularly true for those of us who write for younger readers.

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BTW - have you read Le Guin's Steering the Craft? I just picked it up and am really loving it. I think the section on POV and voice is particularly wonderful.

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Yes indeed--in fact I've used it in teaching creative writing. Good book!

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For me, Narrator and Lecturer are two different applications of a single voice, depending on the needs of the particular story. Sometimes I have both; sometimes, in a very tight 3rd POV, what seems like neither.

Because narrative voice is one of my toys-of-the-moment, I'm very conscious of how I use a story's narrator as the factor that brings the story together as a coherent whole. Splitting my perception of the voice into Narrator and Lecturer would ruin that unified feeling for me.

Obviously, C benefits in his/her own writing from perceiving and crafting Narrator and Lecturer as two different tools. It is fascinating how we all come at a single end point from sometimes entirely conflicting positions.

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I do not believe I see the Narrator/Lecturer distinction offered here as having any meaning, quite the reverse; in that how one provided such information is part and parcel of the storyteller's voice; Paarfi of Roundwood's discursive datadumps are not to my mind separable from the other aspects of his perspective on his stories, nor at the other end could the background information we pick up as we go along in a Dashiel Hammett be delivered any other way without throwing the weight all out of kilter.

I would also take issue with the perception that "the best writers know how to employ their Lecturer device to get in and out fast", being someone who takes great delight in the discursivity of a late Victorian Dumas translation or a Neal Stephenson novel; I'll readily concede that they are not to everyone's taste, but this attitude seems to implicitly condemn the very idea of the infodump, rather than acknowledging the well-crafted infodump as a skill in itself.

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