As a refresher from my copywork blogpost (click here to read the full post), here is the color coding on the highlights:
- Orange for Action beats
- Green for Descriptions
- No highlights for Dialogue
- Yellow for Summary/Transition
- Blue for Thoughts
- Pink for Authorial/Narrator Intrusion
- Purple for Exposition
A double highlight means that a sentence is functioning with more than one mode.
On page 1, Humbert prattles on about his obsession with Lolita, which quickly establishes our impression of this character. We are not anchored to a specific place or location. Rather, we are sitting next to Humbert inside his prison cell, talking to us like we are good friends with him. Or a jury to be swooned by his "charm." The narrator doesn't hide the fact that he utilizes "a fancy prose style."
On page 2, we are given exposition that is relevant to the narrator's history and build-up. We get hints of his parentage and upbringing, which could have contributed to his obsessions. Once more, Humbert mentions his prose style, but then tells us that he's writing under observation. This suggests that his narration is written with subterfuge, letting us know that Humbert is unreliable.
On page 3, concrete beats start to appear. But these beats are disconnected from one another, thus a scene is not established.
On page 4 and 5, there are beats that seem like action but are actually summaries. Humbert keeps us inside his head until the end of this chapter.
This was a fun yet challenging exercise. The narrator writes in a flowery prose, which was purposefully designed by the author. The narrator is a manipulative person, using words as his weapon of choice. In this chapter, he tries to woo us with his poetry and style of writing.
Compared to The Wasp Factory (click here for that analysis), this was hard to highlight. The Wasp Factory has more concrete beats and it was set in a scene whereas Lolita has more abstract beats and mostly keeps us inside Humbert's head.
But I feel that Nabokov gave us a hint of a concrete location. By letting Humbert mention that he's under observation, we can imagine ourselves sitting next to him in a prison cell. Nabokov may rely on our imagination by setting this chapter as a discourse between reader and Humbert. If this was Nabokov's intent, then it would be the reader's anchor point, planting themselves somewhere rather than floating in abstraction.
Below is a graph of the narrative modes of the copied scene. This shows the rhythm between abstract and concrete beats. It scales from -3 to +3 with the following sequence respectively: Exposition (as -3), Intrusion, Thought, Transition (as 0.5), Description, Dialogue and Action (as +3).
There you have it, folks! Keep writing!
Click this to join my newsletter
Follow me @jonmayowriter
---
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
No comments:
Post a Comment