One of the hardest things for new fiction writers to grasp is the concept of boundaries on what they can and should say and do as narrators.
Authors work with several types of narrators, dependent on point of view, but for the purposes of this article, we will merely deal with involved and uninvolved narrators, the difference being that involved narrators have both a stake, and a role in the story, and uninvolved narrators do not. While the involved narrator may at first seem the more privileged, in both cases, narrator restrictions are an absolute requirement of good story telling.
Narrators of both sort must be ever-vigilant to show the story instead of telling it, to refrain from using author's voice, and to use the diction and grammar appropriate to the sort of narrator that's speaking. Too often, narrators fail on those three levels, and as a result, stories suffer, and authors continue on their way un-noticed. Let's take a closer look:
Show. Don't Tell-
Consider this passage:
At that moment, I didn't care that he was the boss's son. He was just another stupid kid with a big mouth, and if his daddy hadn't taught him in twenty years, not to insult another man's wife, I was happy to oblige him the lesson. I balled my fist around a roll of dimes, and slammed it into the side of his face.
Novice writers might see that passage as pretty good. I'm here to tell you it's a nightmare.
Consider this, instead:
My face felt like it might catch fire. I reached into my pocket and wrapped my fist around a roll of dimes. “I don't care who your daddy is. You will watch your mouth or I will watch it for you!”
He looked toward the sign on the office door “Jeff Gantry- Proprietor,” and then back to me. He flashed the sort of cocky smile that only a 20-year-old prince-ling can. “What's your problem, Mack? All I said was that your wife –”
I snarled an unheeded warning, reeled back and slammed my fist into the side of his face. He stumbled backward and tripped on a bag of cement before falling to the ground. I advanced on him. He shielded himself and reached to rub his sore jaw.
“You will never mention my wife again.”
The difference in the two passages is simple. One tells. The other shows. Writers aren't exempted from the rule of showing vs. telling just because they choose to narrate the story in first person. The first person, involved narrator is every bit as much a character and subject to the rules of character development as any others in a story. While you lose some of the crispness that comes with commentary, the author's job is that of a camera and microphone – not a news anchor at the desk. Get in the scene.
Author's Voice
Authors voice explains, and describes, and sometimes judges, but it doesn't show story, and it has no place in story telling. That's not to say that an involved narrator can't make a judgment call, as Scout Finch does in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' or as Nick Carraway does in 'The Great Gatsby,' but in so doing, the author must be ever vigilante to make sure it is the character speaking and not the author themselves, and that there is not first, a more suitable way of showing the character's thoughts via showing, rather than cheapening the reader's experience by telling.
Author's voice most often appears when uninvolved narrators get involved in telling the story. For example:
Her skirt was much too short for church.
The narrator is making a judgment call, but as he is uninvolved in the story, he doesn't have a right to make that call. Commentary on her skirt is best left to the characters involved in the story:
Delilah stepped into the foyer of the church and caught the disapproving eyes of an elderly woman in a flowered fushia hat, whose friends stopped speaking and turned their attention to Delilah's bare legs poking through the bottom of her miniskirt.
Now, instead of the narrator making a judgment call, we are treated to the interplay to come. Will Delilah be embarrassed? Angry? Defiant? What will happen next? Is Delilah a local prostitute who has come to find Jesus in the only clothes she owns? Or is she the pastor's daughter reveling in teenage rebellion? How will Delilah's skirt play into what happens next?
Stories are about what the characters think of the elements of the story, not what the author thinks. Show. Don't tell. Let the characters live the story.
Diction and Grammar:
This is pretty straight forward: Uninvolved narrators are required to exhibit perfect grammar, without fail, period. No exceptions. Comedian Stephen Colbert who hails from South Carolina, a land flush with a distinct Southern Accent says this well when explaining his lack of accent: “News Reporters don't have accents.” He's right. They don't. Neither should uninvolved narrators exist in the stories they tell. Perpetrators of crimes may be “Perps,” for example to the characters, but never to the uninvolved narrator. Situation-reports may be known as “sit-reps” to some of the characters in the story, but again, never to the uninvolved narrator; etc.
Involved narrators, on the other hand must never break character. The fact that they are telling the story doesn't give them license to be any more or less sophisticated in their speech than their station in the story.
In story telling, the little things matter. A lot of attention is paid, when learning craft, to things like character development, plotting, dialogue and such, and those things are all important, but to the exclusion to excellence in the process of narrating story. It doesn't take much to make a reader more aware of the writing than the story. Make sure your story teller isn't the culprit in your writing.
Comments