First Person, Third Person and The Movie Deal

I recently conducted a small experiment: I went to see movie and then I read the book. And this got me thinking about the differences, because, believe it or not, and I guess you will believe it since I'm clearly a reader, this was the first time I'd seen the film of a book before reading the book! (Actually I think I may have seen 2001 before reading the book but that doesn't count as the film came first anyway, if I remember correctly)

So what was the film/book?

Pretty obvious, I suppose.

But why all that blather about first and third person in the title? Let me explain:

I came out of the cinema from watching The Hunger Games a tinsy bit unhappy.I'd enjoyed the film, of course, been thrilled and revolted in all the right places and so on. But I couldn't shake a niggling feeling that I really didn't like Katniss, that, in spite of few obvious examples of self-sacrifice, she was fundamentally a selfish and not very nice person.

And that bothered me because I couldn't believe that I was meant to be feeling like that. So what had gone wrong?

In spite of squeals of irritation from the kids, I had lingered in the cinema after the last scene long enough to see that Suzanne Collins had participated in the screen play. So the lack of author involvement couldn't be the answer. It had to be something else. And I sat down with the book to see if I could find out why. (Well, and just to enjoy it, of course.)



Now, at this point in the narrative, I need to bring in the fact that my online crit group have recently been discussing the differences between first person and close third person narratives (that's the one where the writer still uses he/she, but everything is written from the inside of the he/she's head).

Anyone who's read The Hunger Games will know that it is written in first person, that Katniss herself narrates the story. Of course, this means that we know from the outset that she will survive, after all,how else could she be telling the story? But Suzanne Collins does an excellent job of keeping us on the edge of our seats nonetheless. And this is no mean feat because one of the risks of using first person in an action story, and The Hunger Games is nothing if it's not an action story, is that the narrator's thoughts can so easily slow things down.

Of course, what it can also do is give the reader an unrivalled insight into the protagonist's inner thoughts and, in Katniss' case, turmoil. And that's why first person works so well for this book. You see the narrator's thoughts don't slow the action down in the book. Rather the action gets in the way of the thoughts. And what we are left with is a brilliant rendering of the sort of confusion and angst caused when you are just to busy fighting for your life to sort out what you really think, who you really love and even who you really are.

And I don't think you can depict all that in an action film.

So did I still dislike Katniss when I'd read the book. No. I wouldn't say she's the nicest sixteen year old girl around, but she is sympathetic. You understand why she does what she does and you also understand that she may not much like herself for doing it too. And for that reason alone the book is a hundred times better than the film.

And that's definitely the first conclusion of my experiment.

But there's a second too. If you're writing an action novel and you want to secure a movie deal that will conjure a true rendition of your precious protagonist, maybe you'd be best off writing it in third person!

Illegal by Miriam Halahmy

You have no idea how pleased I was when Miriam Halahmy's Illegal dropped onto my doormat a couple of weeks ago. I've known Miriam for a few years now and I even attended one of her workshop sessions at a SCBWI conference back in 2010. So I knew that the writing in this novel would be superb. It was. But there was so much more too.

Illegal is the second of Miriam's three Hayling Island cycle books. Each of these novels stands on its own but a minor character in one appears as a major character in the next. For those of you who don't know it Hayling Island is a small Island off the south coast of England.

Miriam has been visiting Hayling with her family every summer for many years. She knows it well and that knowledge and understanding seeps through on every page of this book. But more of this anon. Let's talk about the story:

Fourteen year old Lindy carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. Since the death of her baby sister her already disfunctional parents have completely disintegrated. Her father is now incapable of bringing in enough money for the family to eat and her mother spends the day in her PJs. Lindy's brothers don't help either. The oldest two are in jail and the youngest, Sean, relies on Lindy for all aspects of his care. So when her cousin, Colin, offers her a gardening job she jumps at the opportunity. The only problem is that the garden in question is a cannabis farm and Lindy soon finds herself being drawn further and further into Colin's dangerous drug-dealing world.

With this set up, Lindy could easily be painted as a victim. That she isn't is a tribute to Miriam's skills. The clue to her combative nature comes early with the depiction of her fearsome 'spearnail.' And her initial and intermittently continual assumption that the mute Karl is a 'retard' shows she can be just as bitchy as any one of the girls who have bullied her. Watching her ability to fight the inevitable grow is part of the joy of this book. Watching the dawning realisation of just what a catch Karl might be, is most definitely the charm.

And what of the island?

I'm pretty sure that I've heard Miriam talking about using setting as a character at some time in the past. But whether I have or not, Miriam is certainly an expert. Hayling island permeates this book; the inlets, the water, the tides and the Langstone Bridge are all there. You can taste it, smell it, hear it and in the end it is the island itself that finally does for Colin.This is one of the best examples of setting as character I have come across in a long time. I knew I should expect something good from Miriam and she delivered.

I love this book. It's fast paced and exciting, a great story with great characters. The social issues that underpin the story: drug and alcohol abuse, self harm, violence, mutism, bullying to name a few, are handled with delicacy and honesty. There's no preaching here and you don't feel like you've been forced to 'learn' something. And that, if you ask me, is the way to do edgy fiction.

So, pace Miriam, but if you wouldn't mind getting off that beech and getting on with writing the third novel, we'd all be very grateful!

(Note: This is a second version of the original review that Blogger mysteriously lost for me. I hope it's captured the flavour of the original and many thanks to Miriam for copying a couple of sentences onto Facebook so that I at least had something to work around!)

As I said above, Miriam kindly sent me this review copy. If you would like to get your hands on your own copy, then please do so via the link below. Then Amazon will send a small contribution to the maintenance of this blog.