This post is the sixth in the Story Course series. If you just subscribed or just discovered this post, please start with the first post.
A couple of posts back I mentioned that Until This Is Over doesn’t let us in on the thoughts of the characters, and that this is a choice made by the writer. What we’re talking about, of course, is point of view, and specifically third-person objective POV, in which the narrator of the story is a neutral reporter who sees and shares all the action but none of the thoughts of the characters.
The other common types of third-person POV are:
third-person omniscient — in which an all-knowing narrator not only reports the action, but also interprets the action and the characters’ behavior and may share the thoughts and feelings of any of the characters
third-person limited — similar to omniscient, but the narrator typically limits their view to the thoughts of a single character, and interprets the story from that POV
In that previous post, I proposed that we, the reader, are a character in any story we read, because the way in which the story is interpreted is necessarily influenced by our beliefs, attitudes, preferences, and values. By reading, and by interpreting what we read through our personal lens, we influence the story.
If a story has an omniscient narrator, who interprets the action and the behavior of characters for us and lets us know the characters’ thoughts and feelings, then there’s less room for our own interpretation. Not no room, just less room. So the more the narrator knows and tells us, the more that narrator feels like a character in the story, as though they are alive and there and in the action, and the less we feel like we’re there and in the action.
If you watch a horror or mystery film — any film where something is likely to jump out of the shadows and give you a shock — you’ll notice that it’s common for the sound in the film (dialogue, musical score, footsteps, etc) to grow softer when things get tense. This has the dual effect of focusing your attention and drawing you into the action — you may literally find yourself leaning toward the screen. Then WHAM! Something scary or surprising happens, and you jump out of your seat.
For me, this is what the third-person objective POV does in a story. It quiets all of the interpretation by the narrator and the characters, and draws us into the story where we can do that work instead.
I’m not saying that third-person objective is the best POV; there are wonderful stories told with all manner of POVs1. It’s just something I’ve noticed in my close reading of this story, and I think it’s particularly effective in creating the suspense and eliciting anxiety in the reader.
So, what are you feeling after reading Bit 5 of Until This Is Over? Here’s my inventory:
I’m feeling generally positive. The initial tension is broken, Teresa and Scotty have had an introduction, albeit a tense one, and now they’re unloading her furniture together. They’re getting to know each other with some casual conversation. Nice, right?
However, I expect conflict in fiction. So I’m still wary.
I noticed this sentence: “She smiled at his lie.” The lie was that the truck’s ramp was jammed; it wasn’t. We recognize this immediately, I think, as a white lie, a lie told in kindness, one that does no harm. But if we’re already distrustful of Scotty, does this lie bump the needle a little more toward the side of suspicion?
I also noticed this: “...as long as I don’t step off the edge, this shouldn’t end badly.” Scotty is talking about walking backward out of the truck, but it feels like foreshadowing, doesn’t it?
Another thing I noticed: “Everything in the desert has thorns.” This is Scotty again, and along with “as long as I don’t step off the edge,” this feels like another vaguely ominous utterance. This one is even more direct, almost threatening.
Finally: “No bed. I left him the bed.” This gives us some insight into Teresa’s life, the circumstances that brought her alone to this house, and perhaps explains her heightened tension with men. (Although I don’t think you need to have just gone through a contentious divorce to be wary of a stranger who walks into your home uninvited.)
Here’s what I’m wondering about: “...two days after I close on this house, they find that family.” What does that mean? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Were the family lost and now they’re found? That would be nice, but I don’t think so. Are they dead? Were they murdered? If yes, by whom?
Which leads directly to guesses about what’s next. I don’t know, but the brief sense of calm I felt has vanished, and I’m leaning in “toward the screen.” It’s going to get freaky, right?
Let’s see if we’re right. Here’s the sixth bit of Until This Is Over.
She waited, but he said nothing more. “Did you know them?”
“No. I think maybe I’d seen her and the kids sometimes when I was walking. If that was them.”
“Are you scared?”
“Not really.”
“Hmm. I’m a little freaked out by it.”
Abruptly she leaned forward and stepped quickly to him, gripping a fold of his shirt sleeve in her fingers, pulling his arm away from his body.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, more a question than a statement. He looked from her face to his own body at the circle of blood spreading through his t-shirt over his left rib cage.
“It’s a scratch,” he said, lifting his shirt just enough to reveal the oozing slash. “It’s okay.”
“God! That is not a scratch. It looks like a cut. What did you do?”
“No, it’s okay, really. Mesquite thorn stabbed me. I was trimming trees yesterday. I probably just bumped it while we were moving the table.”
She leaned in to examine the wound, then stepped back suddenly and crossed her arms over her own chest. “I’ll see if I can find some gauze.” She turned and walked briskly down the hall and disappeared into one of the rooms. He stood holding his shirt above the cut, watching a rivulet of blood crawl down his skin.
He sat on a cardboard box and let her wash and bandage the cut while he held his shirt pulled up near his neck. “You don’t have a bed,” he said, “but you have gauze.”
She ran her fingers around the edges of the tape to secure the seal, then stood and inspected her work. “Girl scout,” she said, then she turned and carried the scissors and tape back down the hall.
Letting his shirt drop around his midriff, he stood up, walked to the open front door, and waited. He heard the sound of a toilet flushing from behind a closed door, water running. He walked outside and up the ramp into the truck and picked up one of the chairs from the dining set. She came around the back of the truck, stood aside, and gave him a grateful smile as he carried the chair down the ramp. In less than five minutes they had the truck emptied, and she began closing truck doors. He lifted the ramp and slid it noisily back into place, then clambered up and pulled down the heavy rolling door. He followed her into the garage, and she pushed the button to the automatic door closer. Without waiting, she turned and went inside. He followed.
As she went to the refrigerator, he walked to the front room and closed the door. He twisted the knob to lock the deadbolt, then stepped back.
“Thanks,” she said, but he gave no reply, just stood and watched her as she picked at the label on her water bottle. She looked up suddenly and broke the silence. “You want to help me unload the kitchen boxes, then we’ll get some sandwiches? Let me buy you lunch.” Then, quickly, as though thinking better of it, “Oh, you probably have someplace to be.”
“No, I’m not expected anywhere.” He glanced around the room. “Sure. Let’s empty some boxes.”
She raised her water bottle in salute and headed into the kitchen. “How ‘bout you unpack boxes and I’ll put things where I want them.”
“Makes sense,” he said, rounding the corner into the kitchen. He found her standing, hands on hips, looking at the countertop.
“What did I do with the box cutter?”
He looked at her blankly for a moment. “Did you take it in the bathroom when you were getting me gauze?”
“Probably.” She moved past him and toward the hallway. “Do you still not want any water?”
“I’m good. I have the bottle you gave me.”
She went down the hall, and he stood and waited, listening to the sounds of boxes sliding on tile, objects being moved, paper rustling. She reappeared, her brow wrinkled and lips squeezed tightly closed. “I can’t find it.”
“It was right here on the counter.”
“Yeah.” She paused. “You don’t think you maybe slipped it in your pocket, do you? Just not thinking?”
He patted each of his pockets in turn, then again. “Nope. Nothing.” He shrugged.
“Okay. I must have moved it somewhere. It’ll turn up in a minute.”
“No place to hide in here.”
She laughed then. “No, no place to hide.” She walked into the kitchen and pushed a box toward him with her foot. “See if you can get that open.”
We’re fully into the complication phase of the plot curve now — more about plot curves in the next posts — so let’s apply all of our close reading skills. Read that bit of the story again a couple of times, paying attention to what’s in your head as you read:
What do you feel? And, in particular, how have your feelings changed?
What do you notice?
What are you wondering about?
What do you think will happen next?
Please share your thoughts with our group in the comments. Then click through to the next lesson.
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Does the “s” on the end of POVs bother you the way it does me? The phrase would be “points of view,” not “point of views,” so I feel like it should be PsOV, but I can’t bring myself to type that.
What am I feeling? At first, alarm bells are going off with the guy starting to act like a psychokiller but after rereading, I started to get annoyed with the woman. Why is she so trusting? Then I thought: She's too trusting, not because she's some kind of innocent, naive type who trusts everyone (which again, would contradict her recent bad experience, if it were true) but because she's faking it. She's a "Girl Scout" who looks capable and fit but was defeated by how to lower the ramp of the truck? I think a real Girl Scout would know how to figure things out, if she didn't find out ahead of time. No, I'm thinking she's an undercover cop or private detective--and that's why she doesn't have a real house-sized bunch of stuff and would also explain the apparently contradictory aspects of her character.
No way does a woman who's on her own and feeling vulnerable or as if she's escaped a bad situation, move into a neighborhood where there has been some horrendous crime and just accept all this help from a total stranger--also from one who has an oddly opaque way of talking, not to mention a sudden bleeding cut right before she "discovers" the boxcutter is missing.
The third person objective point of view here, and your discussion of POVs,* made me think of some of Agatha Christie's books in which she uses third person limited--we follow the murderer him- or herself in seeing what they do and SOME of what they think. I always found this technique a bit unfair--of course, the murderer would actually be thinking of the situation--but in a way, it was a challenge to figure out what thoughts were being left out and to try to get clues from the person's actions alone.
So after my rereading, I'm leaning toward the idea that the woman is some sort of person on the side of justice, who posed as a woman on her own in order to attract the predator who caused the crime we still know nothing about except that it involved a family.
I even flirted with the idea that she might be the murderer herself, but "Scotty" is giving us plenty of reasons to be suspicious of him. You commented earlier on names that are diminutives/nicknames sounded more folksy. To me, when an adult man has a -y name--Bobby, Tommy, whatever--it has an immature sound as of someone who never really grew up, though I know it can be a cultural thing and mean nothing of the sort. You pointed out that "Scotty" mentioned the desert as having thorns, which in the context of events sounds to me like someone with a chip on his shoulder.
Reading the guy's actions, it certainly seems like he locked the front door to keep intruders out for a nefarious reason, and that he rushed to conceal the boxcutter on his person, not having time to close the blade first and thus cutting himself. The fact that he doesn't seem to feel any discomfort is also telling. Then I questioned those assumptions and thought--What if he's a disturbed guy but not a murderer? What if he grabbed the boxcutter to harm himself? and hid it when he heard her coming back. But then why would he lock the front door?
I'm rooting for the solution that the woman is a private eye, master of karate type, with several weapons on her person, and quite able to defend herself--Why otherwise would she keep turning her back on this laconic stranger?? And of course I like when my guesses turn out to be correct!
*POVs did not bother me--in fact, I didn't notice it. It's correct to tack an -s on to the end of an acronym to make it plural, so no need to worry about "points of view" when it's spelled out because it wasn't.