Past Tense or Present Tense...or Both?

Yesterday I read this short piece about whether it's okay to mix past tense and present tense in your writing, and my inner linguistics geek stood up and started stomping her feet, so here I am.

Let me remark something about grammar:

The effective use of grammar is not about what features of it appear on any particular page. It is about what the choice of a particular form allows you to do.

I hear the phrase "mix past and present tense" and I blink. What does that mean, "mix"? Does it mean, just write along and don't pay attention and whichever one comes out is okay? Well, then I'm entirely against it. On the other hand, I have written an entire novel which uses a diarist's point of view, and in her diary she discusses things that have happened to her - in past tense - and things that are going on at the time when she's writing, including things happening around her and her assessment of people's current qualities - present tense. In early drafts I had a couple of readers, confused by the unpolished prose, call me on "tense-mixing" - but it wasn't tense-mixing, it was just that I hadn't shown enough of the setting for the current ongoing events part, and so the proper context for the use of present tense wasn't clear. Once I properly established that, the problem went away. My use of verb tenses didn't change at all.

Example from Through This Gate (Dana writing in her diary about trying to figure out her new roommate Shannon):
Maybe mom was hinting that Shannon has some kind of granola-head thing going and I shouldn't let myself be influenced, but I'm not sure that fits with the makeup, or the computer either. Anyway, when the last box was in, Mom looked around my empty half of the room as if she didn't notice the bare blue mattress or the battered furniture. "This is great," she said, gesturing - I swear, the woman could conduct orchestras.

There are a lot of "traditional" past tense narratives out there in the fiction world. We grow up with them, and because they are the environment we're steeped in, we've long since stopped finding the use of past tense remarkable. On the other hand, if you're really paying attention, I think you'll find that all these past tense narratives also contain uses of the present tense - you'll certainly find them in dialogue and direct expressions of a character's thought. I hope you haven't been thinking that those examples of present tense in a past tense narrative "don't count." Sure, they count - they are in present tense precisely because they are doing something different from what the rest of the narrative is doing. If we were listening to a narrative read aloud, the tense (along with prosody and dialogue tags) would be a major indicator of when we were listening to dialogue.

Example from The Once and Future King by T.H. White:
Kay looked at his father. He also looked at the Wart and at the sword.
Then he handed the sword to the Wart quite quietly.
He said, "I am a liar. Wart pulled it out."

We also shouldn't forget that we change our verb tenses all the time when we narrate stories verbally. We'll be in the midst of recounting something that happened and when we get to the crux of it, we'll switch into present tense to place the listener more inside the moment when that exciting thing happened.

Example: "I went to talk to my boss about it yesterday, right? So I'm walking in there and I say..."

Honestly, I'm not sure this one works effectively in written narrative - but I do think that it is realistic to have such use of verb tenses in dialogue when one of the characters is engaged in that kind of storytelling.

I've also seen tense used what I might call "aggressively." The term is an exaggeration, but what I mean is, the tense gets deliberately changed for a particular effect. In her book The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood begins in present tense, creating a dreamy effect where there's no sense of the passage of time; then, as the main character's viewpoint changes, she switches to past tense and suddenly the story begins to achieve a sense of momentum. It's unusual, but it's deliberate, and really cool. As for me, when I'm working in alien point of view, I deliberately choose present tense, and I do it so as to force the reader to align more thoroughly with my alien's impressions, emotions, and judgments. I've been told my alien point of view stories are "challenging, but worth it." The fact is, present tense gives me a kind of intensity that I can't achieve with past tense.

Example from "Cold Words" (Analog Oct 2009):
I scent human outside the door: our linguist, Parker. He never comes to the Ice Home while I attend Cold Council - he must bring important news! I bow to haunches, then excuse myself from Majesty's presence, quickly as I can without inviting snarls from the others.

So I guess I'd conclude by saying I don't think it's okay to "mix" present and past tense - because that implies a lack of care and precision. It's perfectly all right, however, to challenge yourself and your narrative, and your reader, and use whatever verb tense you need in order to serve your own purposes.

What does choice of point of view (POV) mean? How does it challenge a writer?

I can't tell you how many lengthy discussions I've witnessed, and participated in, on the topic of point of view. With every visit to Absolute Write (a terrific site for writers, so check it out if you haven't) I'm almost guaranteed to find a discussion of point of view going on in one form or another... so I thought it was about time I revisited the topic.

Most people come to the topic of point of view through the basic categorization scheme of first person - second person - third person. It's not too hard to learn that first person means "I," second means "you," and third means "he" or "she." Where things get tangled up is in the further categories that get imposed, particularly on third person. So for today's post, I'm going to start by talking about some general characteristics of point of view, and then make a checklist to talk about what effects each basic pronoun permutation has, and what challenges it presents to the writer.

The most basic thing that point of view does is allow you, as a writer, to control information. In any given social situation there is so much available sensory information that you can't possibly capture it all. This was brought home to me in quite dramatic fashion by one of my professors in grad school. He asked the people in the class to write down everything he did from the point when he said "go" to the point when he said "stop." Then he went outside the door, said "go," walked in and up to his desk carrying a book, set down the book, looked up and smiled, and said "stop." After doing that, he had each person read the description he or she had written. Every single one of twenty descriptions was different from every other.

As a writer, you're in charge of what information makes it into your story. What gets in there should be whatever information is most important for the reader to understand - this is true whatever pronoun you choose to use. The different pronouns, however, create different effects - especially when used in conjunction with different verb tenses. I'll try to lay out some of the differences, and the complications that come with them, below.


1a. First person present tense (sometimes, "first person concurrent")

• How we identify it: "I" is in the subject position when the narrator acts; main action verbs are in present tense, "am," "go," "walk," etc. though there will also be progressives ("am doing") and modals ("should be").
• The narrator is the character reporting while in the process of experiencing the story. That means that his/her knowledge is restricted. Unless he/she has experienced something, or been told something, he/she cannot know it. He/she cannot know anything about what will happen before it happens. However, he/she is free to speculate, and to judge, and to regret, etc.
  
• The narrative feels very myopic and immediate. Often readers will feel an extreme sense of intensity. This makes it a good choice when you want people to identify with the visceral experiences and emotions of your narrator. The narrative also carries the individual voice of the character.
  
• The writer has at least three challenges here. First is to make sure to keep all information restricted to the character's own perceptions, judgments and actions without letting author knowledge creep in. Second is to make sure to include enough information and orientation that readers don't become disoriented. Third is to make sure to exclude filter words that distance readers from the narrative, and to include enough of others' behavior, and of judgment-laced description, that the narrative doesn't fall into a constant repetitive pattern of sentences starting with "I."

Example from "Cold Words" (Analog Oct 2009):
I scent human outside the door: our linguist, Parker. He never comes to the Ice Home while I attend Cold Council - he must bring important news! I bow to haunches, then excuse myself from Majesty's presence, quickly as I can without inviting snarls from the others.


1b. First person past tense/retrospective

• How we identify it: "I" is in the subject position; main action verbs are in past tense, "was," "went," "walked," etc. though there will also be progressives ("was doing") and modals ("should have been"). Certain verbs may appear in present tense because of ongoing states.
  
• The narrator is the character reporting the story after it has happened. Some authors put the narrator in a sort of nebulous, unidentifiable later time, but I think it's particularly interesting when the later context is more specific. The character may be an old woman talking about her youth, or someone who has just survived the climactic battle reporting on events of the last six months, or possibly someone in the afterlife reporting on the cause of his/her death (so this choice doesn't necessarily make readers doubt the peril the narrator is in).
  
• The narrative feels less directly immediate than present tense narration. It may be infused with a distinct sense of storyteller voice, particularly if the narrator's context means he/she is reporting as a storyteller after the fact.
  
• The writer's challenges are similar to those of the present tense narrative, in that information must be systematically restricted to the perceptions, emotions and judgments of the main character. It is somewhat easier to keep readers oriented because of the "storyteller" factor. The narrator may also (though not necessarily) make reference to events in the future of his/her past self, because they are in the past relative to the place where he/she is currently sitting while telling the story. It's also good to avoid filter words and overuse of the simple first person subject "I" to begin sentences.
  

Example from Blue Fire by Janice Hardy:
I watered the lake violets in the front sunroom. Just busy work, but I had to do something other than sit in the town house worrying while my friends were out risking their lives. I should have been out there with them, but I'd been recognized on our last rescue mission, and it wasn't safe outside for me anymore. Not that Geveg had been all that save in the five years since the Baseeri invaded; but being hunted by the Duke, his soldiers, Geveg's Governor-General, and who knew how many trackers added a whole new level of danger.

1c. First person mixed present/past tense
I included this one because it's more unusual, but makes perfect sense if, for example, you have a narrator who is sitting and writing a diary entry, commenting on both things that have happened in his/her past, and things that are going on while he/she is writing.

Example from Through This Gate (Dana writing in her journal about trying to figure out her new roommate Shannon):
Maybe mom was hinting that Shannon has some kind of granola-head thing going and I shouldn't let myself be influenced, but I'm not sure that fits with the makeup, or the computer either. Anyway, when the last box was in, Mom looked around my empty half of the room as if she didn't notice the bare blue mattress or the battered furniture. "This is great," she said, gesturing - I swear, the woman could conduct orchestras.


2a. Second person

• How we identify it: "You" is in the subject position when the narrator acts.
• The narrator is placed in a position which is the same as that of the reader. An assumption is made that the reader will accept an alternate assignment of identity. However, the protagonist is not actually usually the reader, but a character in the story as one would expect with other pronouns.
  
• The narrative feels demanding and provocative. There may be a sensation that the actual protagonist is standing behind the reader, acting, but mostly invisible.
  
• The writer's challenge grows directly out of the problem of narrator=reader. In order to enjoy the story, the reader must accept that they are conditionally being placed in the position of both character and reader. Not all readers are willing to do this. The actual identity of the narrator will grow out of that narrator's judgments and actions. Because of the sensation that the character is standing invisibly behind the reader, the identity of the narrator becomes a major factor in driving the story. Story entry is of special importance, because often the reader will have an easier time accepting this unusual subject position if the writer eases them into it slowly, rather than saying something extreme like, say, "You're a cyborg and you want to take over the world!" It's also important to keep the focus of the point of view restricted to the perceptions and reactions of a single character. If it's hard for a reader to accept being one other person, adding extra information will only make it harder.
  

Example from If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino:
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want you to watch TV!" Raise your voice - they won't hear you otherwise - "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.


3a. Third person limited (also, "close third person")

• How we identify it: "He" or "She" is in the subject position when the narrator acts.
• The narrator is a character in the story. The information in the narrative must be restricted to what that single character knows, perceives, experiences, or judges, just as if it were written in first person.
• The narrative feels idiosyncratic, carrying the character's voice. This voice may differ depending on the placement of the narrator either in the action (present tense) or after the action (past tense), but it reflects the character's identity.
• The writer's challenge is to manage the story while maintaining the limits on the information a character can experience. Since both the protagonist and other characters will be marked with "he" and "she" pronouns, it can sometimes be harder to keep this discipline. Some authors using close third person point of view choose to change from one character to another over the course of the story in order to drive the story from different directions, so that no single character has all the information that the reader does. The challenges in this case become keeping the narrative voices distinct when using different characters to carry the narrative, and making sure readers don't get confused when point of view switches occur. A common means to reduce confusion is to mark point of view changes with chapter or scene breaks.

Examples from "The Eminence's Match" (Eight Against Reality, 2010)
POV 1
Shadowless in the light of two hundred and twelve electric bulbs on his vaulted stone ceiling, the Eminence Nekantor frowned down over his naked ribs. Look: two gold buttons at the waist of his silk trousers. Fastened, both of them, completely fastened. Deceptively fastened. They had been fastened wrong: lower-then-upper, not upper-then-lower. The difference stuck to the buttons like fingerprints. The difference felt like fingers pressing on his mind.
POV 2
Xinta bent into a half-bow, watching a gang of six noble boys surround him. They had a new leader today: Grobal Rennerik, with reddened knuckles on his right fist that matched a mark beside the former leader's left eye. The followers' gazes flickered hungrily between them. Clearly this encounter was to become Rennerik's demonstration that his leadership was deserved. That would mean a difficult task - but if he could carry it out, he could prove his worth in love and loyalty to all of them at once.

3b. Third person omniscient

• How we identify it: "He" or "she" is in the subject position when any character acts.
• The narrator is not a character in the story. This makes third person omniscient different from any of the other points of view mentioned above. It means the narrator is free of any restriction of person, time, or place that the story itself may impose on characters.
  
• The narrative feels distinctly as if it is being related by a storyteller. Sometimes the voice of the narrator is distinctive (grandfatherly, or like an epic poet, etc.), and sometimes it is more invisible, but it does not match that of any character in the story. Readers don't share the myopia of any single character, though the narrator may show it to them.
  
• The writer's challenge is to decide how to restrict the information included in the story. The narrator knows all - everything about the setting, about the characters' motives, perceptions, judgments, emotions and actions - but cannot tell all, for the reasons I mentioned above. Generally the narration will stick relatively close to the main character, because the goals of that person, and the stakes that person faces, are what keep the main conflict of the story driving forward. However, some narrators will create tension and drive by showing how different characters misunderstand one another. Because the narrator is not a character and has his/her own distinct voice, authors are free to show different characters' viewpoints in relatively close succession. The challenge becomes keeping the sense that the narrator is located in a place outside the story, distinct from the viewpoint of any character, so readers don't get confused when they are told what one character experiences so closely after hearing about another.

Example from A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
"Here we are, Sara," said Captain Crewe, making his voice sound as cheerful as possible. Then he lifted her out of the cab and they mounted the steps and rang the bell. Sara often thought afterward that the house was somehow exactly like Miss Minchin. It was respectable and well furnished, but everything in it was ugly; and the very armchairs seemed to have hard bones in them.


You may notice at this point that I have not discussed some other variants of third person, like third person limited, or third person distant. These are questions of narrative distance, which I don't have time to discuss in this post. I'll try to take them up in the near future. For now, though, I encourage you to pop over to Janice Hardy's The Other Side of the Story, where she's going further with questions of omniscient point of view.

Superpowers of the grammatical subject

You know what I mean by the grammatical subject. "The subject of the sentence." Oh, yeah, no problem. It's the agent, the do-er, the entity or person or thing that engages in whatever the verb says. It's always a noun phrase. Examples:

I slept.
He hit me.
Reyes tried to escape.
The white-furred cat jumped over the fence.

If you only consider it from the perspective of its grammatical definition, though, you might miss its most important function. It focuses reader attention and gives special importance to whatever magical noun phrase gets that all-important, first-in-the-sentence spot*. When we choose to make something the subject of a sentence, we're exercising a great power. *(I'll consider exceptions below)

I'm deliberately going to quote Spiderman: "With great power comes great responsibility."

The easiest way to see the power of the subject demonstrated is by looking at what happens when we use it in unfortunate ways.

Teleporting readers into the air
Readers will be looking to ground themselves at the beginning of any story. What you chose to use as the subject of your first sentence thus becomes very important. If you begin, "The apartments at 200 Smith Street," then your readers will find themselves floating over said apartments. If, on the other hand, you begin, "I couldn't believe my eyes," then your readers will find themselves looking through the eyes of a person, "I," about whom they'll be looking to learn more. If you give them a name, like "George found the body at midnight," then they'll instantly be transported to George's location (beside him, or in his head, yet to be determined). An enormous amount about your narrator will be evident very quickly. Because I do very close internal point of view, I'm always tempted to start with internalization in my first sentence (implying the presence of a character rather than showing it). However, I always try to get the name of my protagonist in as the subject of a sentence within the first paragraph - and usually in the first sentence. Since I don't intend my readers to float on air, I don't want to transport them there accidentally.

Losing readers in a trance
The subject of the sentence can be a noun phrase, and it can vary in length, but because we're snagging a reader's close attention with it, if we let it get too long we've got trouble. Check out the difference between these two sentences.

The white-furred cat jumped over the fence.
The white-furred cat which my brother found over Christmas break and nursed back to health with the help of three friends jumped over the fence.

I often try to add extra information into the background of a sentence by using long noun phrases, but there's a limit to how much you can do without having your reader hit the word "jumped" above and go, "What?" They're engaged in trying to figure out precisely whom they'll be watching for the next few sentences (as subjects usually establish referents that get carried forward) and will follow the details... and when the verb finally breaks them out of the trance, they may no longer have any idea where they are or what you were saying! It's good to watch out for that.

Telekinetically striking readers over the head
A grammatical subject is a strong statement. By placing someone in grammatical subject position at the start of a paragraph, you're essentially saying, "Reader, you'll be hearing about this person for the next few sentences." This means you don't need to do it more than once. I talked some time ago about the hierarchy of reference. The hierarchy of reference basically says that you use a name for someone the first time you mention them, and then typically a pronoun thereafter unless you have to disambiguate between several possible pronouns, in which case you can use a brief description (more extensive details are here). A possible sequence of subjects might therefore be: Tagret, he, he, the noble boy. Now, imagine what would happen if you said, "Tagret, Tagret, Tagret, Tagret." By the end of it your reader would be begging for mercy. The same effect can also be achieved (far more easily) with the pronoun I: "I, I, I, I, I, I." Ay-ay-ay! Have mercy on your reader and don't always use the identical subject, but vary your sentences.

Transforming readers into fish
Think about the close attention that the subject demands, and then ask yourself where you're putting it. If your reader is working through the first paragraph of a story, and the first two or three sentences are internalization which implies the character rather than showing him/her, then by the time the reader reaches the end of that paragraph he or she will be looking hard to find the character subject from whom these internalizations are coming. Like this:

Where were the diamonds? This place wouldn't be safe for long, for sure and certain. Garmin's feet crept quietly across the floor.

Your reader might not realize it, but he/she has been looking for Garmin. But you haven't provided him for the reader; you've only provided his feet. Through the power of the grammatical subject, your reader's eyeballs have been transformed so all they can do is give the fish-eye view of what's going on. Not only will it give a strange feeling of an exceedingly close view of disembodied feet, but the reader may experience uncertainty about whether Garmin is really the character he/she is looking for. If Garmin's your protagonist, this is not a good thing.

Casting a glamour on readers
This one is a broader extension of the last power. When a fairy casts a glamour, the victim can't see what's real. When you choose not to put your protagonist as the subject of the sentence, you're deliberately making that person less visible. If you put your subject after a long "when," "before," "as," etc. clause, you're hiding your subject behind a screen. If you provide a body part, or a piece of clothing, or other evidence of the character's movements as subject, it will make the reader feel far from the character as if they're observing them externally (often from the fish-eye view!). If you choose to put your protagonist in the grammatical object position, you're making him/her into a victim and someone or something else into the position of agent/actor/do-er. If beta readers tell you your protagonist isn't ever acting or taking initiative, check to make sure he/she isn't spending too much time outside the subject position. Simply putting the protagonist in subject position isn't going to make him/her into a strong, pro-active character necessarily, but it's a step in the right direction. Furthermore, when people talk about not using passive verb forms, they may actually just mean that objects or thoughts or ideas or body parts are spending too much time in subject position in your story, rather than THE ACTOR, the protagonist, the one who should have primary place there. The flip side of this, of course, is that if you want to make someone invisible - such as when your protagonist discovers some terrible crime has been committed by an unknown (invisible!) agent - in those cases you should use the passive for whoever committed it. If your protagonist did it, but is in denial about having done it, one way of expressing this would be to have that person think about the act without placing him/herself in subject position, using passive instead. This is done deliberately in politics all the time, because by speaking in passives, politicians cast a glamour over their listeners and make invisible the actors behind critical events. It's a great tool for writers, too - but when you're dealing with your own protagonist, perhaps you can see why making the main character invisible (or distorting our vision of him/her) isn't such a good idea.

I'm sure there would be more I could say on this topic, but I think this is as much as I can fit into the extended metaphor this morning! I hope you find it interesting and helpful while you consider drafting and revisions.

Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop: Making the Amnesiac Work for You

Welcome to Week 2 of the Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop! I'm not always going to be counting weeks like this, but it feels good to be past week one and know that my methodology is going to work for all of you. As I did last week, I'll start by picking out worldbuilding words in color, then discuss some of the issues, and then go back through the excerpt with my thoughts and chit-chat.

This week's excerpt comes from Megs, who describes her world as "a doozy to walk into." Let's give it a shot.

***
Surfacing was hard. Her mind spiraled slowly upward through the dim fog of unconsciousness. Her eyelids cracked open and a wave of nausea crawled over her. Her stomach heaved, but she held it in and sat up, battling her own weak limbs and empty body.

She waited for her vision to clear.

Pale rose chiffon curtains hung down around her on a wide, soft bed. The coverlet was silken smooth with fire red and gold threads weaving circles of light and dark—joy and pain, her mind whispered—beneath her hands. Light streamed faintly in through the layers of sheer fabric all around her. No way out. She caught a shaky breath and lifted her hand to the chiffon, letting her fingertips touch it, see where she could barely see from the heaviness weighing down her eyes and hurting like a spreading ache throughout her entire body.

Her stomach rebelled again and she leaned over the side of the bed and emptied the emptiness in her stomach onto the stone slabs of the floor, etched with their ruby and flashing gold.

"You're awake."

She did not look up.

"I had hoped you would wake soon." A man's smooth, rich voice rolled over her, dark and deep, a low murmur beneath it drawing her out.

A flash of fire in her gut, her mind recoiling, sharp resentment spiking. She did not know why. She did not answer.

The man chuckled low, rumbling in his throat. "I have been waiting for you," he said.

Her hand clutched the chiffon curtain, grinding fingers into sweaty palms, marking the spread, scoring the curtain. She heaved again, then shook with the effort of staying alive.

Emptiness threatened to swallow her up.

Nothing. Nameless. Cryless. She swallowed at the emptiness inside her, heaving from the emptiness, losing what was not there to lose.

The man did not speak.

She answered, "You are?" The word was soft, lilted out in a heavy voice, strange to her empty ears. The language... It was nothing like the language of this man with his low, rumbling, smooth, drawing—manipulative, her mind whispered—voice.

"Ah." The man drew forward.

She felt him nearing her, drew her body up with effort and pulled away, but he was there, so close, his eyes and hair dark, skin fair, smile curving the lips pleasantly, dark clothes, hand rising and cupping her chin to make her look at him finally.

"You have come out of a place of darkness, my child," he said soothingly. "You are home now."

She stared at him wide-eyed, breath rasping between them, staring into the dark and knowing eyes.

A place of darkness...

It is something else, her mind whispered. A place—

But there it stopped. Words stilted. Memory bent.

His hand was warm against her skin and she leaned back her head just slightly, eyelids shuttering. She yanked her chin away and looked up at him with eyes of resentment, an unnamed fury boiling beneath her skin.
***

In this excerpt, we've got many fewer worldbuilding cues than the last one, but it's important to keep in mind that the avid SF/F reader is going to be thirsty for the world and surrounding context. Therefore, you can expect that they will extrapolate from anything available. Though many readers will come to a story with expectations (or at least having seen the cover!), I'm going to approach this as though I have no previous idea of what kind of story this is.

The first paragraph gives me "surfacing" and "wave," which tells me this is a world where people know water; "dim fog," suggests some possible climates and natural environments, but so far we could be almost anywhere, even a science fictional alien world. That's why I marked "eyelids" and "stomach," because they're suggestive of human anatomy. Indeed, people who are working with aliens often go to extreme lengths to mention strange elements of physiology, so these unremarkable body parts actually are a pretty solid indicator that our protagonist is human.

Our first concrete world indicator is the chiffon curtains. These could actually be present in our own world, as could the bed, but a silken coverlet has a very fantasy feel to it, and the red and gold threads contribute to that effect (I don't see a lot of red and gold silk in the homes I visit!). The next useful piece of information is the stone slabs of the floor. My vision immediately expands outward and I have her in a castle. I could be wrong - after all, this could be a rich merchant house with a stone floor, but castle is the first prototypical location on my list that fits with a stone floor under a curtained bed with silken covers. Especially once the word "ruby" is used (though I don't think there are actual rubies in the etched floor - are there?).

I'm also getting something interesting in the language. There are obviously two groups involved here, and two languages, and our protagonist speaks both of them. That added to the rage and hatred she feels for the man in the room suggest there may be enmity between these two groups, though we don't yet know much about it. It also makes me pretty sure that the man isn't telling the truth when he says that she's home. It gives me considerable curiosity about what will happen next (well done, Megs!).

As I read this scene, I can't help remembering that scene in the film, The Bourne Identity, where Jason Bourne is sitting at a diner and listing all the things he knows he can do, but can't explain. It's the contrast between what the amnesiac remembers, and what he or she doesn't remember, that teaches the reader the most. Most importantly for the purposes of world entry and grounding the reader, an amnesiac can generally still judge his/her surroundings in spite of considerable confusion and lack of specific memories. It's those judgments that will teach readers the most and make the author's job easier.

Okay, my thoughts and comments are below. For those just joining the workshop, please be aware that these are not corrections. It's more of a think-aloud critique exercise than anything else. Because I'm working with an amnesiac narrator, I'm going to be talking a lot, because I want to make sure we're noticing as many opportunities as possible.

***
Surfacing was hard. Her mind spiraled slowly upward through the dim fog of unconsciousness. Her eyelids cracked open [we might feel more grounded here if you used the subject pronoun "she" and let her open her own eyes. Our lack of a sense of place here seems to stem from her unconscious state, suggesting that we're in her head, but using a body part instead of a personal pronoun keeps us feeling more distant and less grounded.] and a wave of nausea crawled over her. Her stomach heaved, but she held it in and sat up, battling her own weak limbs and empty body.
[I notice that even though we're restricted here by the half-conscious amnesiac narrator, there are about seven metaphors in these first two sentences. 1. surfacing. 2. mind spiraling. 3. unconsciousness as a dim fog. 4. eyelids cracking open, perhaps like eggs. 5. nausea as a wave/6.? nausea crawling. 7. battling against weak limbs/body. Metaphors offer a terrific opportunity to show the terms in which your narrator thinks. Her memory may be gone, but her categories of reality will not have changed. Already I can hazard a guess that she knows how to swim (possibly plot relevant) and that she's got a strong will (surely plot relevant). These metaphors can be even more powerful if you align them with her personality and background.] She waited for her vision to clear.

Pale rose chiffon curtains hung down around her on a wide, soft bed. [If she can recognize chiffon curtains, she's probably still capable of judging things as familiar or unfamiliar, agreeable or disagreeable. What does she think of the pale rose chiffon? Does it suggest wealth to her? Is that good or bad? Does it seem like something she ought to recognize but doesn't?] The coverlet was silken smooth with fire red and gold threads weaving circles of light and dark—joy and pain, her mind whispered [I like this. It makes me wonder whether there is some personal or cultural association between those colors and the emotions she identifies] —beneath her hands. Light streamed faintly in through the layers of sheer fabric all around her. No way out. [I'm surprised by this. Yes, the fabric is all around her, but it's not binding her and it's pretty filmy; light suggests there is an exit nearby. So I'm not sure where she's getting this impression. It could be an instinctive assessment of her situation, but if so, maybe you could put in a "but" to contrast it with the curtains/light description] She caught a shaky breath and lifted her hand to the chiffon, letting her fingertips touch it, see where she could barely see [her being unable to see seems surprising because she had waited for her vision to clear, and her previous impressions are for the most part visual. Maybe this is a resurgence of fatigue?] from the heaviness weighing down her eyes and hurting like a spreading ache [a simile provides another possible place to hint at her background through your choice of what to compare the pain to] throughout her entire body.

Her stomach rebelled again and she leaned over the side of the bed and emptied the emptiness in her stomach onto the stone slabs of the floor, etched with their [maybe an adjective of judgment here. Does she think they're pretty? overly extravagant?] ruby and flashing gold.

"You're awake."

She did not look up.

"I had hoped you would wake soon." A man's smooth, rich voice rolled over her, dark and deep, a low murmur beneath it drawing her out.

A flash of fire in her gut, her mind recoiling, sharp resentment spiking. [This is interesting, because she's got such an ambivalent reaction to this man. I'm curious particularly about the fact that he attracts her first, repels her second. This seems like it should be meaningful. I wonder if there's a way you can identify one of these reactions as the reaction of her confused self, and the other as that of her core self, somehow.] She did not know why. [This is also interesting, because this is the point at which she becomes self-aware, i.e. aware of her own ambivalence and lack of understanding] She did not answer.

The man chuckled low, rumbling in his throat. "I have been waiting for you," he said.

Her hand clutched the chiffon curtain,[this is another place where I think a "she" subject might improve our grounding. She's having an intense emotional reaction, but we're only given the external effects of it. In fact, we've already seen that she's capable of verbal internalization (joy and pain), but we haven't heard any internalization from her since then. Is this a continuation of her revulsion for the man? How does she feel about the idea that he has been waiting for her?] grinding fingers into sweaty palms, marking the spread[so is she also holding the spread?], scoring the curtain [how, with her fingernails?]. She heaved again, then shook with the effort of staying alive.[this surprised me, because the grounding so far hasn't shown her emerging from a deathlike state, so much as a sleeplike state. I think a better picture of her judgment of her own internal states, even if confused, could clear this up.]

Emptiness threatened to swallow her up.

Nothing. Nameless. Cryless. She swallowed at the emptiness inside her, heaving from the emptiness, losing what was not there to lose.

The man did not speak.

She answered, "You are?" The word was soft, lilted out in a heavy voice, strange to her empty ears. The language... It was nothing like the language of this man with his low, rumbling, smooth, drawing—manipulative, her mind whispered—voice.[This is one of the most interesting points in the 500 words for me (language geek!). Given what I know about the differences between native languages and learned languages, I'm not sure about her being surprised by the sound of the language she herself speaks. Maybe, surprised that she has unconsciously chosen not to speak his language (which would be the polite option)? Does she have some reaction to the language he's speaking when he starts to speak at first? It is very common for people who speak multiple languages to place different kinds of moods and values on each one; you could take advantage of this.]

"Ah." The man drew forward. [You've used "draw" to describe his voice pulling her; this reappearance of the same word gives me the gut impression that the pulling is happening in a different direction. Did you intend this?]

She felt him nearing her, drew her body up with effort and pulled away, but he was there, so close, his eyes and hair dark, skin fair,[are there races in your world? any emotional reaction to this combination?] smile curving the lips pleasantly, dark clothes,[perhaps a single detail or two to help us see him (and his world) more clearly by grounding a sense of fashion?] hand rising and cupping her chin to make her look at him finally.

"You have come out of a place of darkness, my child," he said soothingly. [what is his view of this place of darkness? Does it have some special significance (religious or other) that might be reflected in his wording of the dialogue?] "You are home now."

[as I said, I get the immediate impression that he's lying. Even if she's going to believe him, this moment of mental vulnerability might be a good place to have her feel uncertainty, if not actual disagreement.] She stared at him wide-eyed, breath rasping between them, staring into the dark and knowing eyes.

A place of darkness...

It is something else, her mind whispered. A place—[and an evaluation. Fear? Awe, for something religious? Maybe part of this is that she has a different sense of what darkness means, or that she thinks the darkness was possibly caused by him; these things can potentially be expressed in metaphor.]

But there it stopped. Words stilted. Memory bent.

His hand was warm against her skin and she leaned back her head just slightly, eyelids shuttering. She yanked her chin away and looked up at him with eyes of resentment, an unnamed fury boiling beneath her skin.[This is the same sequence we see earlier, of appeal followed by revulsion. I like the way you have the ordering match. I'd like to see some internalization cues to give me a clearer sense of her internal struggle.]
***

Thank you very much to Megs for her courage in sending in this excerpt! I hope you find my comments helpful.

I've spoken in the past on the blog about cultural metaphors for life and daily activities; those metaphors, and gut evaluations of the value certain types of situations - racial appearances, objects, materials, etc. are all potentially very valuable to you. When you are working with a self-aware character, they can form an under-layer of cultural identity; when, as here, you are working with a character who is amnesiac, they can provide the reader with valuable cues which nonetheless don't detract from the reader's conviction that the person truly does not remember who they are.

I welcome any questions, or constructive and supportive comments.

The right narrator

I'm designing a new story. I always enjoy designing because most of it I can do freely in my head any time I want, and not have to worry about whether I can find the time to sit down at my computer. Those who know me well also know that I design by talking out loud - so I do a lot of design while bouncing ideas off various friends (you know who you are - thanks so much!!!).

I've talked before about story design, and the various steps I go through to get a linguistics/alien story going (linguistic problem, aliens, technology level, plot, language, to summarize briefly). This time, though, I'm not dealing with aliens; I'm writing a fantasy story about ancient Japan. This gives me real-time research instead of intensive world and language design, but in fact my attitude about getting close to the thinking process of the people involved remains almost the same. I'm at the last step now, which for the aliens was "language," i.e. deciding what kind of language to use to portray the alien point of view.

For this story I'm calling the step "narrator." I could always generalize and call it narrator for the other type of story too. It's really important to think through:

1. who your narrator is, i.e. how they allow you to get the best point of view on the core conflict of the story, and
2. what their voice is like

I'm not going to spend much time on voice here because I've posted about it several times before. I'm going instead to talk about #1.

Protagonist narrators are the most common in all the works I've read. These come in a number of varieties - I'm not so much talking about 1st versus 3rd person narration here but about whether the narration is delivered in the moment or retrospectively. (I'll talk about non-protagonist narrators below.)

In-the-moment narration works well if you're looking for a sense of visceral closeness to the story. The reader shares sensations, judgments and discoveries with the protagonist as the protagonist has them. This type of narration also allows your reader to experience the protagonist's particular form of myopia, including unreliability (due to insanity, bad judgment, or ignorance). It keeps you as a writer from having to withhold information deliberately and potentially irritate your reader.

Retrospective works well for other purposes. A retrospective narrator has more control over the flow of the story, and can orient the reader on the meta-level to the story as a whole. This allows the writer more freedom to play with chronology because it typically involves less requirement for the end of one section to stick to the beginning of the next. The protagonist can comment on his/her past judgments and orient the reader to a larger moral/general message, like saying what a fool he was when he was a kid. And I'm sure you've often seen retrospective narration used for foreshadowing with phrases like "little did we realize at the time..."

Of course, you can also use more than one narrator. I don't think that switching point of view should be done lightly - it should have a distinct purpose. Crime novels will sometimes dip into the antagonist's viewpoint in order to increase the sense of peril. I personally use point of view switches to show misunderstandings, sometimes within the very same conversation. Part of what I try to do with a switch of narrator is show my readers that no issue is as clear-cut as it seems to any one character in the story, and that even the most reliable characters can still be a little bit wrong. This is definitely the case with my story, The Eminence's Match (forthcoming from Panverse Publishing) - not one of the characters is entirely reliable.

I promised I'd talk about a non-protagonist narrator, and here I am: when you're thinking about who the narrator is, you should think through what the consequences of your choice are for what the story is about. The story I'm designing right now is about a young woman in Heian Japan who goes mad and enters an alternate world (trying to avoid too many spoilers as yet). She's most definitely the protagonist, but there are some difficulties with the idea of using her as a narrator. The biggest one is that she goes mad and becomes unable to tell what is real and what isn't. This makes her a pretty tough vehicle for the reader if I want to keep my reader oriented in the story. I could go for distant narration, but I'd lose some of that sense of closeness that I enjoy so much. So I've just decided to have the story narrated by one of the people who is trying to influence her life (save her vs. cast her down). One of the effects of this is that the story isn't about her "figuring out what is happening" any more - an advantage, since it's going to be tough for her to figure out anything at a certain point. The story shifts when the narrator changes, into a story about three different people trying to influence her in different directions, and which one is going to win. I need to make sure that I keep the focus on her, but this is still a much cleaner model, and I'm very excited about it.

I hope you find these thoughts give you some insight into your own story design process.

Narrative Distance Comes Full Circle

I've been having thoughts about narrative distance. For those less familiar with it, narrative distance is the sense you get that you are either close to, or far away from, the narrator of a story. It's related to point of view because it has to do with how deeply the reader gets enmeshed in the perspective of the narrator. The choice of first or third person pronoun is only part of the issue. I've heard people say they've been told to get closer to their protagonist, and that they think they should consider switching to a first person pronoun because "you can't get closer than that." Let me just say that pronouns aren't all of it.

I'm not going to go into depth (in this post) about what contributes to narrative distance, but as I said in my 2006 article on point of view, you can use lots of niggly little grammatical tools to create a sense of closeness. Articles can convey the internal knowledge of the protagonist; deictic pronouns (this that here there etc.) can add a dimension of closeness by implying the physical and temporal location of the protagonist; choice of words with implied desires, volition or judgment can infuse your narration with the sense of your protagonist as someone with wants, goals, and judgments.

Another thing that can contribute to narrative distance is the choice of how to express thoughts and perceptions. The more instances of "I/he/she saw," "I/he/she thought," etc. that appear in the narration, the more distance the reader is going to perceive. People don't think of themselves in these terms. For example, we don't stand back from ourselves and say "I see someone coming in" - we say, "Gee, someone's coming in!"

In this post, I thought I'd share with you something about narrative distance that I thought was just fascinating. It concerns the Royall Tyler translation of The Tale of Genji, which was written in the year 1009 in Japan by a woman known as Murasaki Shikibu. Here's the kicker, and why it's related to the issue of narrative distance: in the ancient Japanese in which the Tale was written, there was no such thing as indirect quotation.

Think about it. No way to say, "He said he would take the carriage." You could only say, "He said, 'I will take the carriage.'" Similarly, there was no way to say, "She thought she would die of grief." Instead, you had to say, "She thought, 'I will die of grief.'"

Here's a quote from a lecture by Royall Tyler (the lecture itself can be found in full here):

Murasaki Shikibu seems to have been the first Japanese writer to exploit interior monologue fully as a narrative technique. When it appears, one suddenly finds oneself listening directly to a character's thoughts, as in the following example from chapter 49. A young man whose great love has died nurses his sorrow, even as his politically advantageous but otherwise unwelcome marriage approaches. The text shifts from third-person narration to first person interior monologue and back again.

At heart he knew he would never forget a loss he still felt keenly, and he simply could not understand why, when they had clearly been meant for each other, they had nonetheless remained strangers to the end. Oh, how I could love someone whose looks recalled hers a little, even if she were unworthy in rank! If only I might see her again, just once, at least in the incense smoke of that old story! He was in no hurry to consummate this exalted alliance.

It is almost as though he sang a brief, first-person aria. However, first-person musing like this is unusual in English, and previous translators therefore rendered it in the more common third person, as in "He said to himself that...,'' "It seemed to him that...,'' "He reflected that...,'' and so on. I cannot blame them, since I too started out that way. However, when I understood the importance of the first person, I adopted it completely and refined my use of it even as the author refined hers.

Tyler says,"...first-person musing like this is unusual in English." I think this was true for a very long time, but on the other hand, Orson Scott Card's book Ender's Game springs immediately to mind as an example of a book that uses this precise kind of switch from third person narration to first person expression of thought. Today isn't the first time that I've told people they'll be closer to their narrators if they avoid such expressions as "he thought" and the like.

The effect is dramatic. The culture of Genji's Japan is removed from us by a millenium, but when you read Royall Tyler's translation, you feel it with amazing immediacy. The most remarkable thing to me is that the immediacy in the narrative isn't just a decision made by the translator, but a more accurate reflection of the actual use of the language of the time.

The Tale of Genji comes alive. And narrative distance comes full circle.



Those who are interested in learning more about Royall Tyler and his translation can check out an interview with him, here.

Point of View, Unreliable Narrators, and Subjective Experience

The other day I was writing about point of view and the value of separating a character perceiving, noticing, and understanding - and I realized that there was a connection there with the idea of unreliable narrators. I've posted about unreliable narrators before, here, and one of the things I remarked was that every narrator can be unreliable to some degree.

Because anyone can make a mistake.

Let's say you have an event - say a line uttered by someone - that your character witnesses. And let's say that your character mishears that line, because he or she is in a state of shock at the time, having just....something. Learned terrible news, or had an arrow shot through her arm, or discovered his lover was unfaithful, etc.

First of all, let me refer to the tried and true (if frustratingly opaque) adage, "show don't tell." In a close point of view, I personally would rather not be told by the narrator that a character is in shock and can't hear properly - that dumps me right out of the narrative. So what I would look for is evidence inside the text that the character is in shock. This would be things like incoherent thoughts, distraction by pain, etc. that you can demonstrate easily if your narrative is directly reporting the internalization of your narrator. Here's an example (made up on the spot :) ).

"Donner fell back, staring at the arrow that had impaled his arm. Anika was shouting - God, he couldn't move his fingers, he'd never be able to join the guard now! A figure in black loomed over him, while her footsteps thumped up behind - was this the physician?"

Ok, so at this point if you have Anika say something, the reader will know that Donner is in a highly distracted state and not able to string thoughts together rationally. The choice for the writer then becomes whether to have Anika actually deliver the line.

If it's not important for the reader to know the content of Anika's message, then you can just have Donner pass out, or you can figure some message was delivered when she shouted but Donner didn't get it. If this is the case, you can have Anika refer to this event later, saying something like "but I warned you that that was Ghori coming to finish you off - I couldn't have shouted it any louder." To which Donner could reply "Good thing you'd brought your broadsword, Darling."

On the other hand, if it is important to the reader to know the message content, you can have her deliver the line perfectly clearly. "Watch out, Donner, that's Ghori - and he's got the crystal!" Donner can perceive the words, allowing the reader to do so also, but so long as he doesn't react to them in a way that shows he has noticed or understood, he can show his lack of comprehension later and readers will not be surprised or confused.

Close rendering of subjective experience is a great way to show a character's understanding without leaving readers behind. In the case of a large battle, for example, the author would do well to know what is going on behind the backs of the nearest soldiers, but the point of view character will only perceive the most local evidence of that larger picture. As a writer, you can choose to use other points of view to put the larger picture together later.

If you happen to be working with a very unreliable narrator - an insane person, for example, or someone who is drunk or high, then all of these tools for the separation of perception and judgment - even action and judgment - will come in very handy. Cold Words (which is written in first person) contains a sequence where Rulii eats a drug-containing plant and then runs home: I had to take him from rational to irrational, gradually removing all of the kinds of thoughts that showed measured judgment, before I could finally have him take actions that were impulsive and dangerous to his friend Parker (and very uncharacteristic of Rulii's normal personality). In that scene, I reported Parker's actions only in the most basic way, and I wrote all of Parker's lines quite clearly, but never had Rulii respond as though he took them seriously.

A final observation: one of my pet peeves in reading stories is when I feel an author is keeping secrets from me. My measure of that comes from the choice of point of view. In a movie, where I have no evidence of people's mental states, I'm more willing to accept that "wait, that guy was working for the secret society all along." If I've been in his head, though, his motives are very important to his internalizations and his choice of action, and if the character knows something, I feel I should know it too. I actually find it more suspenseful when I know who's working for the bad guys, and I know that the good guys aren't aware of the same things that I am. This is one of the reasons why I tend not to use omniscient point of view, because then my authorly hand is more obvious, and I think readers can tell when I'm deliberately hiding/avoiding certain information. But when I can filter the story through a character's subjective experience, then I have a perfectly good reason for a piece of information to be secret: it isn't known to the POV character.

I love point of view tools. They can do some really amazing things.

A crazy anthropologist's view on close POV

Those who know me well (and even some who don't) know that I love to talk about point of view. On my publications page you can find a whole article I wrote about POV in 2006, for IROSF. This link will take you there if you'd like to see it - it deals with the tiny little words that authors use in order to create the sensation of point of view.

For this post, I thought I'd look at close point of view, but approach it from a slightly different direction. I call it the "crazy anthropologist's view" because later in this post I'll be talking about techniques I learned for writing field notes. What I'm really doing here is considering the distribution of two types of information:

1. information that the point of view character is aware of
2. information that the point of view character is NOT aware of

I'll start with information the point of view character knows. This can include perceived sensation, emotional reaction, and judgment based on past experience. It may or may not be conscious.

I've seen discussions on Absolute Write forum (among others) about the problem of using the pronoun "I" too much in first person narrative. In fact, I'd say it would also apply to the overuse of a character's name, or the pronoun "he/she" in close internal third person narrative.
In order to avoid this myself, I operate on the assumption that people are not highly self-conscious. One function of the pronoun "I" is drawing a distinction between you and another person, and it involves stepping outside to look at yourself a little. Here is my general rule:

Use "I" for actions by the protagonist that involve conscious will.

"I look at him."

I use this sentence when the protagonist is deliberately turning to look at another character, out of curiosity, surprise, indignation etc. Compare that with a situation where the protagonist looks at the other character and observes something, but hasn't turned intentionally to look. In that case, I'll be more likely to use something like this:

"He's looking at me, suddenly."

In order for the character to know that someone's looking, he must have observed the fact himself - but the action of his observation here is less important than the content of what he's observed. This will apply to all kinds of sensory perceptions including sound, smell, taste, etc. Judgments can be delivered by your protagonist without him or her having to use a pronoun for him or herself.

"It's hot today." "That curry was spicy." "Boy, what an idiot!" etc.

I go on about judgment a lot. This is because it's one of the major tools I use for characterization. You can learn a lot about an individual based on the way he/she/it reacts to a given situation. Here's an example I've cited before in other contexts, from "Cold Words."

"I've told him many times that decorative cloth is most appropriately displayed on a wall, not dragged through mud and weather, but I won't chide now."

In this sentence, Rulii is expressing his judgment about the fact that Parker wears clothes. I've seen aliens judge humans for their clothes before in SF/F, so it's not an unfamiliar problem. In fact, Tom Ligon was the one who pushed me to take this concept further than just the typical one of surprise or disdain. When I wrote the sentence, I was taking advantage of the fact that people (of all sorts) do a lot of teaching of manners to those unfamiliar with them (children, newcomers, aliens), and had Rulii react like a parent/teacher of his culture toward Parker.

Let me call attention to the word I use for the clothes, "decorative cloth." Having Rulii use this word does something very specific: it establishes the function of cloth in his society for the reader. This is information that Rulii knows, and though it's not something he thinks about consciously, it's something really important, because it lies close to the heart of the misunderstanding between humans and Aurrel.

One of the things that I learned in my anthropological studies was how to pay attention to the words that people use to describe things. In particular, it was critical to pay attention to the metaphors people use for familiar and unfamiliar things, and to the judgments implied by those words. Anthropologist Edward Sapir (working in insurance before he got into anthropology) noticed that people tended to smoke around empty gas cans - a far more hazardous thing to do than smoking around full gas cans because of the volatility of gasoline vapor - because they felt reassured by the word "empty." To them, the word "empty" implied on an unconscious level that they were safe from the dangers associated with the presence of gasoline. Not such a good plan.

When you think about your character's judgments, think about labels he or she uses, which can imply information that he or she knows unconsciously about the society he or she lives in. This can allow you to create sensations of belonging, of closeness, or of discomfort and alienation, without having to explain them.


Enough for now on the topic of what the POV character knows. What about things he or she doesn't know?

This is where I like to call on the difference between observing something, noticing it, and understanding/judging it. Here's an example from my experience in language classrooms: a student can listen to Japanese or French all day, but unless they notice features of the language, they can't possibly learn them. On the other hand, they can notice these features and learn to use them without ever being able to explain how they work.

Say you have a boy and a girl talking to each other, and you happen to be in the boy's point of view, but you want to tell the reader something about what the girl is thinking. This is a moment when you can easily go "argh!" and throw up your hands, or decide that close POV was a mistake and you really need an omniscient narrator (which is a perfectly valid choice, if not always the right one).

This is where I go back to my experience learning about taking field notes. Field notes require the anthropologist to observe social interactions and write down every detail of what happens as quickly as possible without casting judgment. So instead of saying "the atmosphere was tense in the boardroom" you would record that the CEO was red-faced and scowling, and the people at the table were either sweating or sitting in closed body positions with their legs crossed in a direction away from the CEO, and that one guy was biting his fingernails every few seconds, then pausing, then biting them again. The idea of this kind of recording is to remove the level of summary judgment that we can so easily fall into, and provide the evidence to a reader, so that the reader can draw the same conclusions that we do.

This is exactly what we do as writers.

So let's go back to our boy and girl.

Situation 1: The boy is keen on getting a good reaction from this girl and having her judge him favorably. He'll be observing her, looking for evidence of that. So we can have him look at her: "He looked at her." Then we can describe what he sees on her face, in her body posture, her movements, etc. and show her feelings - or in this case, his perception of her feelings, for the reader to understand. We can then show the conclusions he draws from her motions, and his emotional response to the receptiveness, or standoffishness, he perceives in her. This situation thus includes all three parts: observing something, noticing it, and understanding/judging it.

Situation 2: The boy wants a good reaction from this girl, and observes her as they talk. He sees her posture and movements, and her expressions - notices them, but doesn't understand them. We still show the evidence of her emotional state so that readers can pick it up clearly, but instead of heading into his conclusions about her emotional state, we can give him expressions of uncertainty and confusion about the meaning of her behavior. This gives us observing and noticing, but not understanding it - which leads to a different kind of judgment. On the other hand, it doesn't have to mean leaving the reader behind.

Situation 3: The boy would be better off if he got a good reaction from this girl, but he doesn't know this and doesn't pay proper attention to her. Maybe he's looking at something else in the room, or talking about his own prior concerns. In this case, we can't give lots and lots of descriptive evidence of her state of mind, because he's not paying attention and wouldn't be able to notice. However, if it's critical for readers to understand her state of mind, we can still give her one highly relevant cue of body posture, expression or words that he'll observe, and which will deliver an explicit message to the reader who is looking for it, but he will remain in the dark. This is observing, but not noticing or understanding.

One of the things I really enjoy about using these distinctions is the possibility of creating something in a story that I can share with a reader - but not have any of the characters be consciously aware of it. When one of my critique partners comes back and shows that they've noticed what I've done, the crazy anthropologist in me gets an enormous grin on her face.

Unreliable Narrators

Unreliable narrators can be fascinating and frustrating - both to read and to write.

Over the past few days, I started thinking through possible types of unreliable narrators, and I've come up with this list:

1. An insane 1st person narrator
2. A sane 1st person narrator
3. An insane 3rd person limited narrator
4. A sane 3rd person limited narrator

Insanity is not a requirement for an unreliable narrator - it's merely the most extreme case. Because it's extreme, it can be pretty easy to recognize when you're listening to the voice and internal thoughts of an insane person. For the writer, establishing the patterns of an insane voice will take some effort, but at the same time, the voice itself provides critical evidence of the narrator's unreliability. Thus, it isn't quite so critical to give the reader external evidence for the narrator's bad judgment.

A sane narrator can also be unreliable, for any number of reasons. All they have to do is be wrong about something. There are plenty of ways for this to happen - as many ways as there are for the character to cast judgment. Maybe the character misjudges a situation, or misjudges people in a systematic way.

One of my own characters, Imbati Xinta, is unreliable because he constantly denigrates and undervalues himself. The tricky part is that his unreliability is difficult to recognize, because he's reliable in his judgments of just about everything else. How, then, can you tell that he's an unreliable narrator in the first place? That's where you need evidence.

For the misjudgment of a situation, you can contradict a narrator's stated/internalized judgments about a place, or people, using details of the situation. Say a character enters a room and thinks it's not dangerous - the writer can place an object in the room that belongs to the antagonist, for example. The writer can have the unreliable narrator see this object, yet not recognize its significance. Then, provided that the reader can identify this object as indicating the possible presence of danger (or the antagonist him/herself), the contradiction works and the narrator is shown to be unreliable.

Anytime the reader can read a situation differently from the judgments expressed by the narrator, it will become clear that the narrator is unreliable.

In the case of a character who misjudges himself, like Xinta, it's tricky. I can plant counterevidence to his view of himself in a number of ways. I can have people be respectful and deferent to him, or compliment him on something he's done. I can show him getting things done properly even though he isn't satisfied with his own performance. Or I can always switch to another point of view so readers get a view of him that isn't colored by his own judgment. Mind you, this doesn't always mean the second POV character is correct in all judgments, either!

I love a situation where every point of view character interprets things a little differently, and nobody is precisely right.

One thing I would say is that as a writer, I don't ever want to lose the reader's trust. So giving the reader an impression that is later contradicted has to be done carefully. If it's a discovery made by the point of view character, the reader who is identifying with that character is likely to accept it. If it can be interpreted as authorial deception, however, the reader may abandon the story right there. This is why I would never try to have a third person omniscient narrator be unreliable - because that person is trusted to be omniscient!

Colin F said that "having a sane narrator talk about an insane character strikes me as being a rather sad story." This could be true, depending on who the narrator is, and whether he or she thinks it's sad. There are many permutations of this, however. There's the criminologist who's trying to get into the head of the insane criminal. There's the loved one who can't understand their beloved's condition. There's also the person who's been cured, looking back on his or her mentally ill years from a new position of sanity.

I think it should be clear at this point that unreliable narrators can take many different forms, and be unreliable in many different ways. It's fun to explore ways in which your narrator might be unreliable - because in my experience, I find that narrator unreliability adds a new level to the reader's experience. I love to feel like I'm sharing a secret with my readers, and giving them the opportunity to say "I know something he doesn't know!" That sense of confidentiality is something I love as a reader, too.

Genly Ai: A Ridiculously Close Look

Today I thought I'd take a look at Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. This is possibly my favorite book of all time; certainly it's a source of inspiration to me in my own writing. The opening is actually quite complex, because it involves three different voices. The first one appears in the title of the first chapter:

"1. A Parade in Erhenrang"

Let's start with the phrase "in Erhenrang." This gives us a location with an entirely foreign name, so it's clearly some alien place (assuming that we've come to the first page knowing we're looking at science fiction).

The second thing I'd like to point out is "a parade." The word "a" has a special function, that of introducing something that is new - specifically, something that is new to the reader. It's the word "a" here that gives me a sense of a narrator, and a subtle sense of "once upon a time." So this is the over-narrator's voice: as close as we'll get to hearing the voice of the author herself.

Then we hit the second voice:

"From the Archives of Hain. Transcript of Ansible Document 01-01101-934-2-Gethen: To the Stabile on Ollul: Report from Genly Ai, First Mobile on Gethen/Winter, Hainish Cycle 93, Ekumenical Year 1490-97"

This is a voice of ultimate authority, the notes that would head a scientific report, and thus it gives us the sense that what will follow is a completely factual account. Notice that there are no verbs in this excerpt. No verbs means no subjects, and thus no actors - the sense of agency, of identity and intent is completely removed, leaving us with a sourceless truth. This impression is strengthened by the word "archives," a place where history is recorded, and "transcript," a completely accurate re-copying of something not originally in text form.

Along with this we get "Hain," another unfamiliar place but obviously the source of this authority. The word "ansible" may be unfamiliar but it clearly must produce documents, and in particular, messages ("To the Stabile on Ollul...").

Think about the number of alien names in these few sentences. The feeling I get from all of this is that the protagonist, clearly indicated to be Genly Ai, is a small individual in the context of a very large and complex overarching institutional structure. This structure not only incorporates separate planets (notice the use of "on" in "on Ollul" rather than "in" which we saw in the chapter title) but it also dictates its own measurement of time.

So from the chapter title we've backed off to the voice of the greater institution, and then LeGuin takes us into this:

"I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling..."

Here, beginning with the word "I," suddenly we hear our point-of-view narrator's voice. LeGuin indicates that this voice belongs to Genly Ai by linking back to the previous piece with the phrase "my report." We get confirmation of the outer space setting in the world "homeworld." But rather than starting to recount events immediately, Genly Ai says, "Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling..."

This is a fascinating move. Le Guin sets us up to receive facts, using the lines from the Archive notes, and then immediately has her narrator question the nature of truth and fact. (By the way, we don't actually get to the parade until the fourth paragraph on page 2).

It strikes me that this is intended to be deliberately disorienting. It sets the reader up to take the story seriously, but to be prepared for alienness and a great deal of ambiguity. It prepares us for the voice of Genly Ai, who comes out of an Earth-born storytelling background, but does have the skills of a linguist and anthropologist, as well as (to some extent) a political negotiator. It also fits well with the way Genly Ai himself feels disoriented a lot of the time.

Throughout the novel, we get the very succinct chapter titles which give us a calmly reflective sense of the story's progress, but the complexity of the characters, the world, and the situation just grows and grows. That LeGuin is able to keep it all driving forward and pointing to a dramatic conclusion is a measure of her skill.

There's a reason this book won the Hugo and Nebula awards. Read it.

The Sparrow: A Ridiculously Close Look

I've been meaning for the last week to get back to looking at narrators, so today I'll do a short entry on the opening of Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. Fascinating book. One of the things that always surprised me about it was the omniscient narration. I think I was sensitized to it by the fact that I'd begun writing tight third person narrators, and kept expecting to find them all around. But the omniscient narration in this book is well done.

I'll start with the first sentence, the way I did with my last post, because an opening has to tell so much about what is to follow:

"It was predictable, in hindsight."

The first thing I notice is that this is not a personal sentence. This sentence isn't giving us a person to relate to, because it has no content pronouns at all, only the word "it" which refers obliquely to a situation.

On the other hand, "it was predictable" does imply a narrator - because it expresses an opinion, and therefore must involve someone to opine. This someone is left deliberately absent, so we have to wait for further information to identify where the opinion comes from.

"In hindsight" also implies a narrator, because it also expresses judgment. Judgment is something that does not require POV pronouns, but can be used well in something as simple as this five-word sentence.

Look, too, at the juxtaposition. "Predictable, in hindsight." Something was predictable, perhaps even should have been predicted, but since we are "in hindsight", obviously it was not. What does this give us? Curiosity, of course. A desire to read the next sentence, which is this:

"Everything about the history of the Society of Jesus bespoke deft and efficient action, exploration and research."

I don't want to discuss every word on this one, but I will note a few things. First off, this sentence depends crucially on the one before it. If we didn't know that there was some event, predictable but not really predicted, this would make less sense and do less to draw us in. But since we do know, we can gather here that the event in question also involved deft and efficient action, exploration and research.

We can gather from the brevity of the phrase "everything about the history of" that the history itself is not relevant, but that if we were to ask, it would serve to support the narrator's contention that the Society has a tendency toward the aforementioned deft action, etc.

The last things I'll point out are the words "Society of Jesus" and "bespoke". They do fit together well. Bespoke to me has a distinct biblical feel, particularly when it accompanies Society of Jesus (without that phrase I might accidentally interpret it as the particular type of telepathy used by Ursula LeGuin).

Also, I'll point out that the word "Jesuit" doesn't appear in the book until sentence number three. Since that word is probably more commonly known to the general population, why wouldn't she use it first? Well, because in saying "Society of Jesus," which is what the Jesuits call themselves, she gestures toward their point of view. The story itself is about a group of Jesuits who go to another planet, about their judgments and the consequences thereof. So the implication here is entirely appropriate to set up reader expectations.

Even when you're in a third person omniscient, point of view never goes away. Don't forget that even tiny alterations in choice of words can tell you a whole lot about what's coming.