Joined: 4/4/2013
Posts: 18
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I learn best from good, solid examples, not theoretical lectures. Randy Ingermanson's blog was referenced elsewhere in BC as providing a basis for understanding MR Unit based writing that shows "... a way of placing the reader into the footsteps of the protagonist." After reading the theory, I moved onto the example - Oxygen: A Novel by Randy Ingermanson.
With apologies to Randy, a critique from a reader's standpoint. And the bolding is mine, to clearly distinguish between the text and my comments.
"VALKERIE WOKE UP SCREAMING."
An unknown person, female?, about whom I know nothing and about whom I don't care, is now awake. And she is screaming. Let's read on.
"A viper bat clung to her face with fishhook claws, smothering her with its thin, leathery body."
Ah. Cool. Valkerie is female. She's awake and in actual danger from a viper bat, and we know what it looks like.
"She tore at her face, but the creature had dug in too deep."
Damn. Valkerie is in real danger. Maybe I should worry about her. Maybe I'm in her skin and worried about me!
"She could already feel its venom burning into her lungs, constricting her chest in a long, convulsive cough."
Wait. I'm not in her skin. If I were, the story would say something like: It's venom burned into her lungs...etc. Instead, I'm told, from a distance, what she feels (filtering). Not what is happening to her. And somehow the image of "constricting her chest in a ...cough" doesn't ring true.
"Struggling for control, she traced the contours of her face with tingling fingertips."
I'm being further distanced from Valkerie, told that she is struggling for control rather than actually living that struggle. More filtering. What if the story read something like: Her hands shook and her lips spasmed as she traced the...
"Slowly, the clinging creature melted into her skin, fading back into the world of dreams."
Well crap. It was all a dream. I close the book and look for another. But, if I stuck it out...
"The nightmare gradually faded, giving way to a new, more gripping terror."
Didn't he already tell me it was a dream?? And it was scary?? You don't have repeat all that, telling me it was a nightmare. Anyway, now she is terrified for real. I don't have any idea what that terror is, and I don't feel it. I'm just told that it's there..
"Valkerie was wide awake now. There was no such thing as a viper bat. But she still couldn't breathe."
Yup. It was all a dream. Didn't he already tell me that? In reality, Valkerie was having an asthma attack. Or something.
"Valkerie flung herself from the camping cot and thudded to the floor. She lay on her back, gasping for breath."
Camping cot? We're in the woods? Maybe in Yosemite? Damn. I thought we were on a spacecraft. This is a SciFi story afterall. But now I'm sure it's asthma. Or is it HAPE? Anyway, get the doctor. Next book please.
I'm still looking for solid examples of MRU based writing which places the reader solidly inside the protag. Got a suggestion?
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Joined: 6/18/2012
Posts: 228
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Anyone have MRU-based writing examples for Three?
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Joined: 3/17/2011
Posts: 88
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Hey Three B,
Yeah, Ingermanson's got some lovely analysis to share with us, but, dayum, his writing can be so...blerghk! Sorry, but his novels read like mediocre YA with thirty year olds standing in for the teenagers.
Where he completely drops the ball again and again for me is in his sorry, weak verb choices. Look at the example he gives us here: "She traced the contours of her face with trembling fingertips." This to describe the actions of a woman fighting for her life! "Traced" is an awfully delicate way to describe what your fingers would do when there's something on your face trying to suffocate you. "Traced" and "countours" and "trembling" and "fingertips" would be nicely descriptive in a YA love scene, but here as his EXAMPLE of gripping action? It's embarrassing. He's just tone-deaf.
As for other examples, I'd say just grab a good (contemporary, genre) book and analyse what goes on. MRU is pretty much just logic and natural perceptual processing.
Here: Ingermanson drives me up a wall, but nonetheless, I'd say the first couple paragraphs of my book on BC has this structure. The first paragraph could be seen as the scene and the second as its sequel. To wit:
(M) I hear them over the purr of my police whisper-rig before I see them: a thousand miniature screams and the thunderous murmur of twice so many pulsating wings. A vast flock of redwing blackbirds surges up over the trees in my rearview and (R-feeling/reflex) I can't help ducking my head, even safe within the vehicle. (M)They sail across the fields in a liquid mass that ripples out as big as the sky for an instant, unfurling like a flag, and just as suddenly contracts in on itself to vanish over the hill before me. (R-action) I gun the turbine in pursuit, but by the time I crest the rise, (M) they're nowhere to be seen.
(R-analysis) A thing like that can steal the wind right out of your certainty. All the civilization drains out the soles of your feet and you find yourself casting about for a spear to shake at the sky. (R-action) I power down the cruiser and climb out to get a better look. (R-analysis) Where could they have gone? Did I really see that? I catch myself trying to think like a redwing blackbird: where would I go?
Does that help at all?
-Kevin
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