#narratorial access

[bettsfic]

Hi betts! I was wondering if you had any advice for writing Feelings. I feel like my fic writing is often a lot of this happened then this happened and then this event happened. I want to make sure it feels like things are being told by my character and not just a robotic narrator reporting the events. I've been going through your writing advice tag but haven't found a super relevant post to this so thought I'd ask if you have any thoughts on injecting more Feelings into writing.

this is a great question! unfortunately it has a very Big answer.

i think it's important first to consider the greater historical context of prose. prose is a relatively new invention in the history of humanity. prior to prose, there was poetry, oral storytelling, playwriting, and what we would consider now to be nonfiction. the concept of written fiction is kind of miraculous. it allows us to perceive the nature of being another person, within the quiet of our own minds. in other words, prose allows us access to a consciousness outside of our own. a fictional story is thus one in which a given consciousness, translated into language, experiences events in a cause and effect sequence, which is called a narrative.

what you're talking about, injecting Feeling into fiction, is a concept that tends to invoke debate based on separate schools of aesthetic thought. i know writers who would read your ask and go, "uh, good? reporting events is what you're *supposed* to do." and i know writers who believe that the entire purpose of the form is simply to convey conscious thought, external events be damned. personally, although i respect the opinions of these writers, i think it's all kind of silly to think one kind of writing is better than another. it is, as all things are, a creative choice of the author. i, the reader, am only meant to bear witness to those choices.

visualize, if you will, a spectrum between these two schools of thought: the reporting of actions and external events, which we'll call exteriority, and the reporting of inner thoughts and feelings, which we'll call interiority. all fictional prose falls somewhere on this spectrum. on the exteriority side we have writers like william faulkner, cormac mccarthy, chuck palahniuk. on the interiority side, we have virginia woolf, henry james, garth greenwell, donna tartt.

this spectrum is one of narratorial access. how much access do we the reader have to the experiences of the narrator(s), and how accurate are those depictions? how much detail are we given? how are those details chosen and why?

the most exterior writing is what some call "cinematic." many people are in the exterior school of thought because they believe "show don't tell" to be literal. "show don't tell" is ridiculous for many reasons, the most obvious of which is that (when taken at face value) if i wanted to be shown something, i'd watch a movie. the real meaning of "show don't tell" is the idea you shouldn't tell the reader the conclusion they're supposed to be drawing from the events of the story. again, personally, i think it's baffling why anyone has an opinion on this, when the truth is that showing and telling is yet another spectrum and every story falls somewhere on it. to have opinions on these things would stifle my enjoyment as a reader and closes me off to discovering new things.

when the reader has the least possible access to the narrator, the events of the story can follow any character at any time, and detail only what can be seen from the outside. my favorite novel that does this is Plainsong by Kent Haruf. i once tried to write in this style and found it tedious and difficult, but i'm a very interior writer. nevertheless it was a good exercise for me, if for no other reason than it sharpened my understanding of my own style.

if you move the down the spectrum just a skosh toward interiority, you invite inner observations. these are largely sensory: what a character sees, hears, smells, etc. here's an example:

an exterior action would be, "the door slammed." an interior observation would be, "she heard the door slam."

i have heard many arguments as to why the latter is "weaker" writing. i've heard them called "filter phrases," and have even read an essay on why you should avoid them. which, again, ridiculous. it's far more important to know when and why you might deploy a "filter phrase" than to deny yourself use of a potentially necessary tool.

inner observations force the reader into the perception of the narrator. "the door slammed" is a fact. it can't be contested. the author is telling me this event occurred and i cannot dispute it or interpret it. "she heard the door slam" can be questioned. all we know is that she heard it; we have no evidence it really happened, only our trust in the narrator to convey events with accuracy, which is how we get the idea of an unreliable narrator.

let's move one notch closer to interiority. now we have inner reactions and opinions. exterior: "the door slammed. the woman stood up and locked it." now we have the opposite scenario to the one above. with an exterior action, we're given doubt. why did she lock it? we have to use context clues to determine motivation and emotion. interior: "she heard the door slam. in a rage, she stood up and locked it." the second sentence confirms for us that the door very likely did slam, and also tells us outright that she's mad at the person who slammed it.

the reader has to perform an equal amount of work for both of these scenarios. in the exterior example, they have to puzzle out the emotions and motivation of the character. in the interior example, they have to puzzle out the accuracy of events and reasonability of emotional response. both create different kinds of tension.

generally speaking, the closer we move toward interiority the less exteriority we have, because the external events of the story matter less than what the character thinks or feels about them. using our example above, an even more interior approach would be, "when she heard the door slam, she knew it was over. how had it come to this? he was no different than the last one, or the one before that, or the one before that. as she went to lock it, she vowed: never again."

since i don't have a full story drafted out, pretend "the one before that" are all examples of times this situation happened before, and so two actions, the door slamming and the woman getting up to lock it, might take ten thousand words to tell, to give us context as to why she's in a rage about it.

here's an example of nearly pure interiority from a novel i'm working on right now:

And the only logic that came to me was that everything was made up of the souls of the dead and the yet-living. It felt blasphemous—in Kinraden, the afterlife is unity in a place beyond limited human understanding. But I believed the opposite. I believed we all came from things and would return to things, and that everything, at its fabric, was the same as everything else. I was a toy truck rolling across a hardwood floor, and a sunflower opening up in the light, and a can of Campbell’s soup heated on the stove, and a pig headed to slaughter, and my father giving a sermon to an audience of people looking for answers in the wrong place, and everything has a soul and so everything suffers. And that suffering crushed me, not because it exists, but because it is eternal. Suffering is the base of everyone and everything. 

(i apologize for using my own writing as an example, but i tabbed over and this was the first paragraph i saw, and it was surprisingly relevant, even though i am 100% going to end up cutting it.)

i know there is no exteriority here because i can't tell you where his body even is while he's thinking these things. i also don't know when exactly this is happening. the physical existence of the scene and his body within it is irrelevant to the information being conveyed, which is a major life philosophy and how it differs from his father's. within one paragraph, he's building a kind of polemic that will hopefully allow the reader to understand exactly how he managed to defy his father's indoctrination.

even though there's no exteriority, though, there are still images present. toy truck, sunflower, can of soup, etc. and they create visuals to hang onto so that it still feels, in a way, exterior. those physical objects, however, are not actually physical, but metaphorical.

what's also important is that this is a super fucked up line of thought and builds the state of his emotional unreliability as a narrator. he's conveying the events of the story with relative accuracy but his logical and emotional responses to them are in constant conflict. (he needs lots of help, which he will get.)

there is kind of a default in fanfiction, particularly fanfiction based in visual mediums, to convey all information within a physical scene, i suspect to stay as close to the canon portrayal as possible, because film/tv are also sequences of scenes. when in scene (direct discourse), characters are always physically embodied in spaces, moving and doing and saying things, at a specific point in time. but, circling back to my initial point, prose does not have to be embodied. it's not film. you can be fully in the mind of a character and have no idea when or where they are existing, and merely recount the events from an unstated time, if any happen to be relevant (indirect discourse).

(side note: specifically direct and indirect discourse refer to dialogue but i'm using the terms more broadly. direct discourse: "i just want that sandwich, man," tommy said. indirect discourse: tommy said he really wanted a sandwich.)

even though i've talked at length about narratorial access as relevant to consciousness, i want to touch base again to the idea of Feelings. it's hard to convey feeling in fiction, because your only tools are brain and body. either your narrator expresses their feelings in thoughts, or they express them in the description of physical experiences. it's kind of a constant battle which path you choose, but i hope some of the above can help you decide.

so now that you know the broader theory around (Thoughts &) Feelings writing, here are some exercises you can try:

begin a story in direct discourse, present tense, the events of which can only be understood through prior context. (for example, two characters are having a heated argument with no explanation as to why.) then, through the POV character's narration, move into indirect discourse, past tense, to explain the events that led up to the argument.

find a story you've written in third person and rewrite all or part of it in first person. the trick here is to become as disembodied as possible. in fact, your approach can be that you're simply writing a monologue from the character's perspective, in their voice, with all their potential misunderstandings intact.

try swinging the opposite way: write a fully exterior story (the shorter the better). then go back and thread in internal observations. and then go through and add thoughts and opinions to the events that have occurred. and lastly, go through and add greater context and cognition to deepen our understanding of the external events.

whew. this was a lot. but i hope you found it helpful!

and because i am trying to be better about self promo, i'd like to mention here that i'm a freelance editor and writing coach, and also i have a newsletter with more thoughts on craft.

[books]

Writing Workshop Week 4:

A Narrative Imperative

My dearest Tumblrinas—

Sadly we’ve come to our final week of workshop, but I’ve saved the best for last. Rather, I’ve saved my favorite for last. This week’s prompt is one I’ve taught in every class, from developmental composition to advanced creative writing courses. In the hundreds of fills I’ve read over the years, I haven’t found one that has been poorly written or uninteresting. This prompt tends to bring out the fire in everyone, and I’m jazzed to see what you do with it.

Last week we talked about setting as a function of narration. This week we’re talking about narration as a function of…nothing.

The reason I say narration is the function of nothing is because you can strip a piece of writing of every craft element—conflict, character, imagery, etc.—and you’ll still have narration. Even emails have narrators. A narrator is simply the acknowledgement of a mind behind the writing, the vehicle of comprehension. 

Click through for this week's workshop and prompt:

Point of View

So many people know what a point of view is that we often see it as the acronym POV. It’s so commonplace that it’s almost difficult to pin down, but the definition we’ll use for the purpose of this workshop is the relationship of the narrator to the events of the story. 

In contemporary writing, the narrator is generally limited to a single character who exists in the narrative. This is called a homodiegetic narrator. A heterodiegetic narrator is one that is not a character in the story. For example, fairy tales often have a heterodiegetic narrator, a disembodied voice that’s telling you the story as if speaking it aloud. 

It’s only in the past century or so that we’ve seen a shift into the limited homodiegetic narrator as a kind of default technique. In fact there are some writers (and writing teachers, sadly) who are so dedicated to this style of narration that they consider any work that deviates from it “bad writing.” 

When we talk about limited narrators, we’re talking about narratorial access. In the mind of a single character in the story, we don’t have access to the minds of the other characters. Access is what creates an unreliable narrator—a character whose perspective of the external events of the story is in some way distorted, either in the literal facts of the events themselves, or in the interpretation to those events. An unreliable narrator is one who might lie in order to persuade us their actions are justified, or perhaps they struggle to perceive reality clearly.

Access also refers to how close we are to the narrator. How much access does the reader have to the true thoughts and emotions of the character we’re following? Back in Week 1, we talked about “show, don’t tell,” and if you abide by that rule to an extreme, you get a narrator who offers us little to no access to their perspective. Conversely, we can be so close to a narrator that we only have access to their thoughts and we lose sight of the external events of the story completely. (More on that in the Point of Method section.)

It’s possible that we could have access to multiple perspectives of the story, either by alternating limited perspectives or creating omniscience. The difficulty of omniscience, which is sometimes derogatorily called head-hopping, is that you’re tasked with infinite access. In Week 3, we talked about decision fatigue. Omniscience requires deciding constantly what information is given when and by whom and why. It’s exhausting. I don’t want to deter you from omniscience if that’s what you’re interested in writing, but I do think it’s more difficult than limited narration. When people refer to “head-hopping,” they’re usually saying the shifting access of the narrator is hard to follow or illogical. Your work, of course, is allowed to be hard to follow and illogical. No one is obligated to clarity. But if clarity is one of your goals as a writer, know that omniscience is often more obfuscating than illuminating. 

Point of Telling

Put simply, a narrative is a sequence of cause and effect. Thing A happens, and because of it, thing B happens. Because thing B happened, thing C then happens. The sequence doesn’t have to occur in order or chronologically. However, all narratives possess an order and a chronology. In other words, all narratives exist in time and space.

We talked about space last week. So let’s talk about time.

Unlike point of view, the point of telling is the relationship of the narrator to the timeline of the story. Here’s where things get confusing, because English has tenses, but in prose, past tense doesn’t always denote the actual past. You can write a story in past tense that doesn’t have an implied present. You can also write a story in present tense and give the narrator access to the future of the story via some kind of narrative magic or prophecy. So when we talk about point of telling, grammatical tense is irrelevant.

Currently the default of contemporary writing is to have a narrator who is experiencing the events of the story as they’re happening, which means they have access to their past but not their future, and their development unfolds accordingly. A narrator who has no access to their future is one who is limited to the biases of the present. 

However, you can also have a reflective narrator—one whose point of telling is the present and they’re reflecting on the past. Backstories and flashbacks can be reflective. Frame stories can also be reflective. What’s unique about the reflective narrator is that they have access to all the events of the story, and are unfolding them in a specific sequence, rendering them from the position of growth they’ve achieved from living those events. You can do cool foreshadowing stuff with a reflective narrator, like, “What I didn’t yet know was…” or “I would go on to believe that…” 

To me, point of telling becomes clearest when you have a child narrator. A child telling the present would possess a childlike narrative voice, but an adult character reflecting on childhood would have an adult narrative voice. The events of the story are the same, but the point on the timeline from which those events are told can vary, and therefore so can the voice.

Point of Method

Point of view is ubiquitous; I can’t remember where I first heard of point of telling; but point of method is a term Percy Lubbock defines in his book The Craft of Fiction. The point of method is the relationship of the narrator to the rendering of the story. Lubbock separates point of method by pictorial and dramatic, arguably the beginning of the adage “show, don’t tell” that we talked about in Week 1. A pictorial method is one that renders or “shows” a story; a dramatic one is one that “tells” a story. But The Craft of Fiction was first published a century ago and narration has changed a lot since then, so I’m going to offer some other ways of defining point of method.

Although it’s a false binary, I like to think of point of method as “in scene” or “in summary.” Screenplays are beholden to scenes—film is a visual medium and so it’s limited to what literally can be shown. In its simplest form, a scene is a discrete section of a story where a character interacts with their environment in some way. A scene is often portrayed in direct discourse, which means free and clear access to the actual dialogue the characters are speaking. In other words, we can trust the words in quotes to be what is really said—not an interpretation, summation, or distortion of what is said.

Many writers I work with develop a block when they pigeonhole themselves into scenic writing. Fanfiction is largely written in direct discourse and relies on sequences of scenes, I suspect because a lot of fics are based on canonical texts of visual mediums. When I point out that fanfiction is prose and can therefore access the interior thoughts and perspectives of a narrator, I think it can be pretty freeing for some writers. In prose, scenes are optional. 

On the opposite side of the scenic spectrum is summative writing. Writing in summary is kind of a zooming out of the narration, where events are rendered in a single paragraph or sentence. Summary can evoke indirect discourse, or interaction between characters conveyed within the narration. For example, “‘I’m sorry I rang the doorbell,’ she said” is direct discourse. “She said she was sorry she rang the doorbell” is indirect discourse. 

It’s important to remember that all narration is a negotiation of the internal and the external, or what I call interiority and exteriority. Interiority encompasses all thoughts, feelings, and interpretations of a narrator. Exteriority includes everything outside the narrator. “She heard the doorbell ring” is an interior sentence. “Someone rang the doorbell” is an exterior one. 

Scenic writing is not inherently superior to summative writing. Direct discourse is not inherently superior to indirect discourse. Exteriority is not inherently superior to interiority. They’re all just spectrums, and you get to define where your narrator lands on each of them.

This was a lot of vocab to throw at you. I’d like to offer a brief caveat that many of these terms are narratological, intended for criticism and interpretation of existing work, but I’m appropriating them as craft terms. To me, craft is the process of writing, and creating a lexicon of craft terms (ideally) helps us as writers to make more intentional decisions in our work and approach it with more confidence. 

Prompt time!

Although I’ve just told you about narration in relation to a sequence of events, we’re going to strip our writing of a formal narrative in order to focus solely on narration. 

First, I’d like you to read/listen to Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl.” (It’s short, about 700 words.) You can find it here, or you can watch Jamaica Kincaid read it on YouTube.

What I love about this piece is that it’s not technically a narrative, it’s a lyric essay with not one but two narrators. There’s the voice giving the orders, the series of imperative sentences, and there’s the italicized voice questioning the orders. So even though we’re not given a discrete scene or bodies moving and interacting in space and time, we still have two characters: a mother, presumably, and her daughter. The mother is teaching the daughter the “rules” of womanhood, which are contradictory and overwhelming.

In lacking a narrative, this piece allows us to separate it from our understanding of writing grounded in time and space. In essence, it’s the opposite of last week’s prompt. It also questions our understanding of sentences in English requiring subjects, because all imperative sentences have an implied subject: you. This prompt is an experiment in how voice and style develops narration.

Next, I want you to write a piece in the imperative style of “Girl.” Here are some ways you can approach it:

If you want to write fiction, write a piece about the rules your character lives by. Consider how they feel about those rules—do they follow them or defy them? Consider also who is giving the rules and why. Is there someone who has power over them? Or perhaps they’re rules they tell themselves, that they’ve developed over time.

If you want to write nonfiction, write your own version of “Girl” using the rules you’ve been taught regarding some aspect of your life. Like “Girl,” you could focus on the rules of gender and culture, or perhaps you could take a more literal spin on it—the expectations of a job or a sport.

If you want to write something experimental (even though this is already experimental), write a version of “Girl” from the italicized voice’s perspective, perhaps a series of questions rather than commands. 

A second voice within the piece is optional. And because this prompt is already lyrical, I don’t think I need to list a separate approach for poetry. 

Bonus prompt

If you’ve filled any of the prompts these past four weeks, I would love to know what your biggest takeaways have been. What new insights have you gained about your own writing? Have any of your perspectives or goals changed as a writer? Feel free to sit on this one for a while; I know that it takes a long time for me to reflect on the things I’ve learned. So I welcome you to send me an ask or tag me in a post at any point in the future. My favorite thing is when writers update me on their progress and growth.

In parting, I want to share my lowkey writing-related newsletter, in which I write about craft and process as well as offer a roundup of all the writing advice asks I answer on my Tumblr. I also provide updates on the Fanauthor Workshop (currently accepting applications!) and OFIC Magazine. If you’re pleased with any of your prompt fills from our workshop, you’re welcome to submit them (or any other original work) to OFIC. Submissions for Issue #8 open September 1st. 

Lastly, if you’re interested in one-on-one guidance and feedback on your writing, I’m a full-time writing coach. I help writers at all levels reach their goals, whether that’s completing a novel, querying agents, or applying to creative writing graduate programs. Here are some testimonials from current clients. 

A huge thanks to @books for hosting these workshops! I hope they’ve been as fun for you as they have for me. I’ve had a great time reading your prompt fills, and I wish you the best of luck in your writing journey.

Questions? Ask ‘em here before EOD Tuesday so @bettsfic can answer them on Wednesday. And remember to tag your work #tumblr writing workshop with betts if you want her to read your work and possibly feature it on Friday!

And, for those just joining us: @bettsfic has been running a writing workshop on @books this month. These prompts will stay up for you to fill at your leisure. Want to know more? Start here.

[romanceyourdemons]

dune (1984) is, of course, monumental in its undertaking. with the depth of worldbuilding its source material tasks it with portraying, it is no surprise that the film falls back on clunky infodumping techniques such as narratorial voiceovers, found footage-style documents, and good old fashioned bad dialogue. the narrative itself is poorly paced—an effect of its adaptation—and, presumably continued from the original material, relies on orientalism for its setting, plot, and most of its character archetypes. the story as presented by david lynch is transparently a metaphor for european colonial powers’ scramble for dominance over middle eastern territories and resources, with paul atreides filling the role of very literal white savior. his power to understand, organize, and revitalize the passive and mysterious arrakis is derived from his biological and genetic superiority, which itself is only truly revealed when he penetrates into the heart of arrakis’s mystery while still maintaining his identity as the scion of house atreides—a foreigner with full confidential access to the unknowable desert, who returns with that knowledge to truly manifest his own nature. this metaphor of east and west is extended and sharpened through the costumes and sets of the film. these sets and costumes, for all the film’s poorly paced narrative and bigoted plot, make the film magnificent in the realm of visual mastery. aside from some special effects that have aged poorly, the costumes and sets, the makeup and practical effects, the ship design and the creature construction are all truly gorgeous, combining sci-fi sleekness with rococo and art deco intricacy. one gets the sense that the whole film was simply a front for the construction of elaborate visuals and extended dream sequences of the sort david lynch so relished in eraserhead (1977). although dune (1984) is by no means a good film, it is a film with many, many things going on, and i found it incredibly fascinating from beginning to end

[brasideios]

Snippet Sunday/Morsal Monday

(Depending on where you are in the world)

So... I've been tinkering around with my Roman stories again, in a tentative fashion, mainly correcting grammatical errors and such; so today I present to you a little scene by way of introduction to Plautius Rufus.

I've spent the last couple working days pulling apart the 125K draft of In Saturnus' Shadow, which I completed in 2019, with plans of making it into two shorter novels.

What I have so far isn't well written - there's a weird distance between narratorial voice and character which I think came from reading a lot of academic papers leading up to writing this and the Hand of Fortuna, but wherever it came from, the result is very dry. I was also writing in 'hopping from character to character' mode which I've since come to loathe. On the bright side, it emphasizes to me what I've gained with the years of practice at characterization between then and now.

Anyway. This story.

Set in the year 7CE, my boy Rufus is in Egypt, working for his cousin Aulus Plautius back in Rome (the father of the Aulus Plautius who conquered Brittania in 42CE). Rufus is attempting to start a business in animal trading for Aulus. He's been wining and dining an ex-pat Roman, Gurges, who controls that trade in the city, and he's been invited to his riverside villa to see a new batch of crocodiles being prepared for transportation. Gurges is horrible, though in this snippet he just seems generous.

So. The snippet:

~~~

Their boat had been tied to the dock, and the pair stepped ashore, and following Gurges, Rufus advanced up a wide set of stairs which ran straight up the middle of the frontage [of Gurges' villa], allowing access to each level. They went only as far as the first storey, into a spacious triclinium which was decorated in a very fine red and black scheme, with lounges replete with gold fittings, and plump, duck-down cushions. Golden stands with elaborate lamps stood in the four corners of the room. The floor was pure white marble, buffed to such a sheen that Rufus could see his reflection in it. Golden tables stood ready, and as they entered the room, several very beautiful maidservants entered with golden trays of finger food – fruit, small cakes and other sweet meats. Wine was served in the most elaborate glasses Rufus had ever seen; they were a reddish pink, held within a green cage-like construction, also of glass, showing scenes of Hercules and his struggle with the Nemean Lion. ‘These are exquisite,’ Rufus said, almost afraid to hold the glass, but needing the wine to get through the sheer excess on show in the room. He was no prude, but he was truly shocked by how luxurious the room was.  ‘Where on earth did you get them?’  Gurges grinned at Rufus’ reaction, and said, ‘Many years ago, I heard from a friend of mine of a man who was, he said, considered the penultimate master of glassblowing. When I went to see him, he showed me a specimen just like this one. I simply had to have a set. I won’t tell you how much they cost; it shocks even me when I think about it,’ He laughed quietly in evident self-satisfaction. Rufus forced a short laugh from himself. ‘Well, I'd better not drink too much of the wine – I surely couldn't afford to pay for a replacement if I broke it.’ ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Gurges said with a magnanimous wave of the hand. The two fell to eating – or rather, while Gurges ate swiftly, and Rufus picked at a few items before excusing himself and walking out onto the terrace, carefully carrying the glass with him. From this perspective he could see that, while the villa looked like a straight facade from the river, it was in fact two wings running at an angle to each other which matched the curve of the hill. On his left, to the north, the lower terrace met the riverbank; while on his right, there was a much greater distance between the villa and the river. Between the two, there were a cluster of small buildings built right up to the river’s edge. Beside one of these, two barges were docked, and many people were milling about, no doubt preparing to cage the crocodiles. Gurges had finished eating, and came to join Rufus on the terrace. He noticed where he was looking, and said, ‘I expect they’ll be ready to cage the animals now. I told them to wait until we joined them so that you could see how it's done. Shall we go down?’ Rufus nodded, and turned to go back into the triclinium, holding out his glass towards the nearest maidservant, but Gurges stopped him. ‘Take it with you,’ he said with a smile. ‘A gift from one friend to another.’ Rufus was horrified. ‘No! It's too much. I shall never be able to repay you with a gift that could even come close to the value of this!’ He waved Rufus’ objections aside, and gestured to a slave who stepped forward, holding a wooden box lined with richly embroidered fabric, and into this he placed Rufus’ glass beside it’s fellow, the vessel Gurges had drunk from. He closed the lid and handed the box to Rufus, who took it reluctantly. ‘Now come,’ Gurges said, enthusiastic and pleased with himself. ‘Let’s go down to see the crocodiles.’

[snailmailmp3]

Oh I never thought of correlating voyeurism with the epilogues in any way (probably cause I only read them once when they came out while half awake and don't remember) but I am intrigued would you say is it like a running theme on it or does it fall into being voyeuristic in a way that harms other things it's going for :0

i mean obviously ymmv on if the execution actually works for you or not but it is definitely a very intentional theme. it's most obvious in meat because the people who are Looking (dirk and alt!callie) are clearly delineated by the text and even formally distinguished via text color. this is most obvious in the scene where dave and karkat get together after karkat loses the presidential election. dirk is watching this really private moment and the tone of his narration feels. gross. not quite like he's getting off on it bc it doesn't read as sexual (at least to me) but he's enjoying that his narratorial omniscience gives him access to this space he otherwise wouldn't a little too much. and he tries to influence the scene he's observing too! he really really wants davekat to kiss and manipulates his narration to facilitate that. and he's so heavy handed about this that iirc dave notices and tells him to knock it off.

anyway. all this is to say that ult!dirk is like if the guy from rear window was simultaneously alfred hitchcock.

candy is less clear about who's narrating which makes it harder to talk about in terms of voyeurism but i'm sure there's something there to read into that i'm not remembering

tl;dr yes voyeurism is very much a running theme in the epilogues

[gothhabiba]

i read a comment that says elizabeth does sound as if she's deprecating other woman when she tells darcy its a wonder he's met even one accomplished woman. i always took that scene as showing how annoying darcy is. but i never looked closely at elizabeth. do you think that comment is a bit right?

no, Elizabeth’s comment (/ the scene imo) is deprecating the long and extremely exacting list that Caroline produces of the requirements for a woman to be “accomplished.” the motif of accomplishment runs throughout the novel, w this scene & with Lady Catherine de Bourgh chiding Elizabeth’s family for not employing a governess, making the plainly absurd comment that she would have been proficient on the pianoforte ‘if she had ever learnt,’ &c. it’s likely, as the daughter of a very wealthy tradesman with intentions to break into the gentry, that Caroline would have gone to the sort of lady’s seminary that Austen (in what looks like a rare narratorial outburst) mocks in Emma as ‘[screwing]’ women ‘out of health and into vanity’ for extraordinary fees. a lot of women writers at the time (Hannah More is another) were highly critical of the state of women’s education & what was taught at these sorts of schools.

I’ve seen critics point out that repeatedly throughout Austen, her heroines are self-educated or largely self-educated—they may show marks of wide and passionate but perhaps not systematic reading (e.g. Elizabeth’s reference to Gilpin; her response to Lady Catherine that the girls growing up never lacked resources to learn if they wished to but that those who wished might certainly be idle; Knightley’s saying that Emma has never pursued a dedicated course of reading; at one point Fanny is the butt of some gentle irony for an ill-timed poetic outburst)—and if they play the pianoforte it’s not too terribly well (see also Emma, who, like Elizabeth, has not dedicated long hours to practice).

the whole thing with women’s “accomplishments” (which ones were considered necessary or popular, by the way, changed with the fashion of the decades) is that they were supposed to demonstrate, through the focus, dedication, and a attention to detail they required, that the woman holding them would be a good marriage partner. this is an assumption that isn’t really upheld in any Austen novel that I can think of—the things that mark the heroines as good marriage partners (the men, of course, have to prove themselves too) are deeper issues of morality or of understanding (as revealed through their actions and conversation), of intelligence or vivacity—it’s never netting a purse.

the issue of accomplishment also has implications for class, as we can kind of see above with everything about governesses and employing different ‘masters’ for each subject and going to a lady’s seminary, not to mention the leisure from household duties necessary to spend all of your time learning ‘drawing and the modern languages.’ we can only assume that Elizabeth doesn’t have access to some of these things (though we do learn that she and her sisters had ‘whatever masters were necessary,’ & the lack of a governess may be due more to her father’s negligence than to a want of money--Lady de Bourgh points out that their income is not terribly small). Caroline’s (& Darcy’s, to the extent that he accedes to her proposition) list may be a dig at that, or at least be heavily influenced by her (Caroline’s) wealth. and of course the fact that she immediately contradicts herself (going from saying that only ‘half a dozen’ women of her acquaintance are accomplished to, after Elizabeth’s comment, protesting that there are ‘many’) is another indication that the irony of the passage is turned against her.

even just logically, the only way to say that Elizabeth is deprecating women in this scene by saying that most of them don’t live up to Caroline’s (& Darcy’s I guess) list is to accede that that list is any kind of standard of womanhood—or at least that the novel argues that it is. but it doesn’t.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Herodotus and Presocratic Philosophy-III (Truth)

“2.5 Conclusion 

The philosophical projects of Xenophanes and Parmenides both highlighted the importance of inquiry beyond truth, a feature of philosophy that aligns closely with Herodotus’ preoccupation with ‘what is said’ and ‘what seems’. On the other hand, Parmenides and the succeeding philosophical tradition never advocated for a robust skepticism, and the importance of truth to their projects was paramount, if difficult of access. These epistemological advances in philosophy have been ignored in the context of Herodotus’ establishment of his ‘peculiar’ narratorial persona. In the Histories, the rarity of Herodotus’ affirmations on truth might lead one to interpret the text as unconcerned with the ‘true reality’ lying behind uncertain perception. However, given the intense debate on the status of truth claims among Presocratic intellectuals, Herodotus’ epistemocritical narrator can be intellectually situated: the extremely high premium on truth and its rarity in his historiē underwrites his competence in handling the material constituting the Histories, rather than weakening it. This does not lead the historian to a demotion of phenomenological truths, in contrast to some of his contemporaries – the text does include an account of truth derived by the senses as well as reasoning faculties. In domesticating the language of ‘veridical’ εἰµί, Herodotus goes further, by creatively coopting the vocabulary of philosophy that was explicitly formulated in opposition to phenomenal truth and using it for his own purposes. The importance of Herodotus’ innovation here can scarcely be exaggerated: historiography stakes out a distinct epistemic space among the set of possible positions in the field of philosophy. Herodotus emerges not as a Homeric warrior, grappling with truth, but as a Presocratic sophos aware of the limits of human wisdom. Like Xenophanes, the Histories are intent upon attaining a ‘better’ record of historical action, rather than a simply ‘true’ one.”  

Kinglsey, Katie Scarlett  “ The New Science: Herodotus' Historical Inquiry and Presocratic Philosophy”, doctoral dissertation, Princeton 2016, pp 58-59 (the dissertation is available on    https://dataspace.princeton.edu/bitstream/88435/dsp01qn59q647s/1/Kingsley_princeton_0181D_11926.pdf )

[hell-yeahfilm]

ZADIE AND THE STRIPEY SOCK

She packs her bag with her most important possessions, including a snorkel, binoculars, and a piece of toast. Just when she is ready to leave, though, she realizes that she’s missing something: one rainbow stripey sock. Zadie sets off to find it, confronting the family members who made her angry. Jack—who appears to be her brother—hasn’t seen the sock. Maggie—who might be Zadie’s sister—tells Zadie she doesn’t have the sock because “Stripes are not cool.” At one point, she thinks she finds her dog chewing the sock, but when she realizes that the animal is ruining her brother’s shirt and not her sock, she walks away. Dad is too busy working in the garden to help, and Mom is too busy making a phone call. Zadie’s anger builds and builds, and she is more and more sure that running away is the right decision. That is, until she finally finds her younger sibling playing with her sock—and remembers why family isn’t all bad. Although Zadie’s anger is both accessible and refreshing, she does not seem to reflect on how her interactions with family members border on selfish and rude. The third-person narratorial voice deftly balances sincerity and humor. Illustrations depict brown-skinned Zadie’s family as interracial, with a brown-skinned mom and White-presenting dad.

from Kirkus Reviews https://ift.tt/3lyFKqe

[listoriented]

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

True Grift

When/Where/Why: I bought Call of Juarez: Gunslinger at the end of 2013 in a little 2 for 1 with Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon for a tenner – both games Ubisoft-published smaller-scale standalone thingms attached to bigger series, and both having come out earlier that year. I’m not sure what the draw was, here, exactly, whether Gunslinger was the point or Blood Dragon was the point or the offering of both of them, cheap, was the point. I do remember that Roy had recommended Gunslinger as a fun and short shooty-game with an interesting and funny use of narratorial framing, an opinion he reiterated last week. But in any case I hadn’t started either game in the nearly six years since purchase, making this yet another reminder about the gap experienced between the momentary dreamed value of a thing and its subsequent practical immediacy, or there lack of.

Who/What: Gunslinger is final instalment of the Call of Juarez series of frontier-western first person shooters, though so far as I can discern it has little to do with the other Call of Juarez games in terms of story etc. It came out in 2013. It was developed by Techland [official site], a Polish company who are more recently known for zombie-survival game Dying Light.

Dime Novel: Gunslinger is a four-hour shooting game with one good gimmick, making it better than most shooting games, and a handy one for the revolving door purposes of The List.

You/we play as a Bounty Hunter on a revenge mission, with each episode seeing us searching for a particular canonical western outlaw (Billy the Kid! Jesse James! Butch Cassidy! etc), popping off forty or fifty of their henchmen/gang/family en route. These are framed around a retelling to a few attendant listeners in a saloon, narrating each mission as we go, sometimes retracting details or changing the environment in front of our eyes to amend the story as bullshit gets called or different things are remembered. This is interesting! This is an interesting thing for a shooting game to do.

(Also the second unreliable narrator we’ve had in a row, what a blessed period of list to be in.)

I like the thinking behind this, the implicit acknowledgement that shooting games are fundamentally ridiculous in many ways, not least in terms of body count logistics, and that a narrative of one-upmanship, bragging, ludicrous exaggeration and false recollection actually fits the mould remarkably well. How else do you begin to make sense of a world where one person single-handedly takes on entire armies as though it is normal? It is pretty entertaining entertaining and a little bit clever, a strong enough gimmick propping up an otherwise pretty conventional thing. My favourite part is when the narrator leaves the room to piss and we listen to one of the guys at the bar spit his disbelief.

This writing and framing is buoyed by a more general sense of competence across the board. The graphics are clean and shiny without being extravagant. The gunplay is loud and good, easy and relatively accessible. There’s a small variety of sluggish weapons, and it’s mostly refreshingly free of rapid-fire nonsense. Blood gratifyingly explodes from heads and bodies. You can, if you like, hold two pistols at once. I don’t know if this is better or worse than other games where you can hold two pistols at once. Are we doing a review now? There’s a modest skills/upgrade XP track (of course) which serves its purpose of piling on the background goals, keeping the numbers ticking over, extra credit for headshots and long range kills or shooting people through the wood, multipliers for consecutives and so on. There’s an option to hit a key for some slow-motion “concentration”, another to dodge bullets. Occasional quicktime events don’t overstay their welcome. Each episode ends in a twitchy duel, the mechanics of which are nothing to write home about, but enough to see you through the handful of times you’ll have to do it.

Like every Western ever, it has an uneasy relationship with the stark colonial violence of the setting. Here, the forty-odd Apache you murder in one particular mission are hardly differentiated from all the other cowboys in terms of form and function - they’re just re-skinned props, so far as the game is concerned. That is, until the almost inevitable noble-mystic trope that follows this particular mission, because of course. Does this grating pastiche being filtered through our unreliable narrator make it okay? It’s only a small part of the game, but it feels odd and uncomfortable, as much as the script tries to smooth over and normalise the weirdness of this play-acting with matter-of-factness and vague gestures to sympathy. It has us viscerally yet cartoonishly perpetrate horrific colonial violence as though it were a shrugged obligation of genre. Which I suppose, to a certain degree, it is.

The story sort of rolls downhill into darkness towards the end, taking the memories of our hero mass-murderer in what I suppose is their logical spiralling direction. This descent into seriousness is perhaps the weakest part of the story, and it feels like an unfortunate if predictable choice of direction from the few that seemed available. It caps things off with perhaps the least surprising twist imaginable to wrap-up events and reorient the whole thing, before seeming to douse itself in congratulatory varnish. Or at least, this is how it went down in the ending I chose, one of two possible. And then it is done.

And so are we, I suppose, for this week. Some final clichés to wrap things up for you: I liked Gunslinger more than I thought I would. I’m glad to have played it. I’m glad to have ticked it off. I’m glad it was short. Westerns are frequently problematic. Shooting games are ridiculous. More unreliable narrators please. I doubt I’ll play it again. 5ive 5tars.

up next is Capsized

Non Obligatory Caffeine Appreciation Fund

[brujahinaskirt]

Stylized Fandoms - or, when It’s All The Same, but also It Isn’t.

NECESSARY STUFF: The OP above gave full permission to use their post as a launchpad for this commentary, so please don’t mistake this as either endorsement or criticism, and please do not mistake it as a group invitation to attack. I’ve written about this phenomenon in the Rowling fandom before and this gives me another excuse. Plus, as someone who tried to join a fandom via this writing strategy and failed, I think I can contribute some thought fodder on the issue of content sameness.

I’m bout to drop an essay, hobbits. This essay isn’t, however, a critique. This is a non-evaluative observation and a writing theory. And, finally, an open question to fellow fic writers.

BASE OBSERVATION: The dominant writing styles in book-based fandoms mirror and pay homage to the style of the original author.

In Summary: The Hobbit fandom (and the Harry Potter fandom, which I originally theorized about) experiences a high degree of stylistic sameness as a whole because a lot of stories attempt to recreate Bilbo’s voice as it appeared in Tolkien’s first-person-via-third-person POV technique. They achieve this, naturally, by following the original text. This trend may be especially pronounced for The Hobbit as opposed to the Lord of the Rings or Silmarillion works because Tolkien’s narratorial voice is more exaggerated – if not better-written – in The Hobbit.

Now, to break that down a little more.

Tolkien’s Hobbit style contains a few highly recognizable elements that stick out to a contemporary prose reader: sentence structure that mimics speech, brisk dialogue, use of mundane exchanges to instill realism, avoidance of emotional description, exclamation use, childlike diction, minimalistic characterization, parentheticals, verse, sweeping summarization as an alternative to scene, laboriously expanded setting descriptions that prioritize listing physical details over atmospheric metaphor, reliance on simple/well-known similes, frank delivery of fantastical elements and world mythology, limited access to character feelings, and huge time skips. When an author chooses to maintain most of these at once without selective deletion or without constantly highlighting their own personal stylistic flourishes, we get something that sounds  – ‘course – super Tolkienesque.

There’s a really dominant style in Snicket’s fandom, too. And Butler, Bradbury, Rowling, Gaiman, etc. Which is important to note, because…

Generally speaking, stylized writing tends to be more popular, more memorable, and more marketable than contemporary “high literary” minimalism. And it’s more likely to have intensely stylized fandoms. Which makes sense; book-readers generally come to fanfic because they want more of published content that is already familiar to them in some way. It follows that one of the reasons those style-adherent/style-preserving Hobbit fics are so successful is because they gain a lot of traction with people who are specifically looking for recreations of Tolkien’s writing style. (Since stylized writing isn’t really prominent on those abovementioned literary main markets anymore, I think this is a large part of his lasting appeal.)

Let’s take a quick look at the opening chapters of a few of the most popular, widely-read fics in this fandom to pinpoint what I’m getting at. I’ve only sampled first chapters here – mainly because I don’t want to spoil ‘em for anyone.

First, from the illustrious Sansûkh:

"You have come to a place of rest, Thorin son of Thráin," said the voice, and Thorin blinked furiously, trying to make out the voice's owner in the gloom. His excellent Dwarven dark- vision did not seem to be working, and he began to push himself up onto his elbows. He was unclad, and his skin shivered and prickled in the icy darkness.

"Explain," he snarled. "And show yourself!"

"Patience," the voice chided. It did not sound angry at Thorin's disrespect. Rather, it sounded fond, even fatherly. "Do calm yourself. Your sight will return."

In my opinion, this style is the pinnacle of faithfulness to Tolkien’s Hobbit voice. Taking a minute to identify Tolkien elements, we observe a skilled and almost intimidatingly close use of: Tolkien dialogue, Tolkien exclamation patterns, Tolkien diction, Tolkien avoidance of emotional description, Tolkien character access, Tolkien rhythm and tempo, and much more as we continue to later chapters.

From A Shot in the Dark:

Shaking, he scrambled out beneath the mountain of blankets and quilts and stumbled over to the mirror. Grasping the edge of it, he stared at the face of the young Hobbit before him with freckled skin and thick brown curls, and felt something in him crack.

"I'm young again," he said aloud, watching the face in front of him repeat his words. "I'm young again, and in my old house in Bag End before I went to Erebor—"

Understanding dawned on him and brought him to his knees. He recalled now, a story from long ago, of a Hobbit lass that had watched her beloved die in an accident. When she awoke the day after his funeral, she found herself reliving the days before the accident over and over again, and was able to save her beloved from his cruel fate.

Obviously, this fic – and every fic – displays subtle voice differences from Tolkien (and, by extention, other fic writers). And thank goodness for that, or how would an author develop a fanbase at all? That said, we can see a lot of Tolkienesque, highly attentive and skillful patterning in the prose itself, the vantage point, the syntax, and the overall voice.

Just a few more clear examples of this homage-style at its best and brightest:

An Expected Journey:

An ancient hobbit lay in a soft bed below them. His eyes were closed. There was a breeze coming in through the open window that made his thin white curls stir slightly. The sheets lifted with each shallow breath and Bilbo realized that he was looking down at himself and that he was dying. There was a pale cast to his features that showed that he was not much longer for this world. Outside, Frodo sat in the garden the elves had gifted them, a book in one hand and a half-eaten apple in the other.  A smile made his face light up as he turned the page and there was an inner peace about him that helped to settle Bilbo’s fretful heart a little. His nephew would be happy here and maybe with time the pain of his wounds, the ones on his heart especially, would diminish. No doubt he would miss his uncle, but that was such a small thing that it hardly seemed to matter now.

“Change is a fickle thing. Remember this in your journey, Bilbo Baggins, and perhaps you will be able to alter history after all.”

The hobbit in the bed took its last breath and was still. Frodo closed his book.

Comes Around Again:

“Come on, slug-a-bed,” his mother called. “Time to rise.”

Gimli blinked at the ceiling. Was he in the Halls of Mahal? He didn’t expect them to look quite so much like his room in Ered Luin. He pushed himself up to look.

The room was exactly as he remembered: dark, lit by lamps shining blue-green with the glowing plants that lived in the deep, dark places, and with grime caked in corners that he could never scrub clean. There was the crack in his wall, more an eyesore than a danger. The tapestry he had hung to hide it, his first and last attempt at loom-work, had fallen again. The stone face was too brittle. His chest of drawers, also a product of his hands, stood straight and even, if modestly decorated. His mirror, tinted green with age and spotted black, had been a relic found when they had come to these mountains when he was a lad. Between his drawers and his trunk lay his things: his training axe, his ‘prentice tools, a pile of clothing that would quickly become far too small for his growing frame.

[Purely an aside: You may notice a striking similarity of introductory schemas, too! Most of these fics begin with the classic “protagonist wakes up” scene popularly found in all storytelling mediums – but given the tragic nature of the source material, it’s become a “wake up from death” scene. This, though, is not a precedent set by Tolkien; it’s a marker the Hobbit fandom gravitated to all on its own. How? I dunno, exactly; seems like it just kind of happened that way. Cool question, if you’re a writer/literary critic/English major type.]

Please note here that I am completely uninterested in debating how good these fics are (or any fics, for that matter). Frankly, my dear, I do not give a damn whether or not you love Sansûkh, A Shot in the Dark, An Expected Journey, or Comes Around Again. What’s indisputable and relevant is that all of these fics are extremely successful. For the sake of this piece, we’re going to put artistic innovation on the back-burner and define successful by two measures: 1. sustained popularity, and 2. accurate replication of their source text. Do they achieve the dominant fandom (original author) style, and does this style reap the harvest of massive audience feedback? It’s hard to argue no, regardless of how these fics measure up to your personal tastes.

To put it another way: If you misread this essay as a rallying cry, then go and yell at individual authors for making successful creative choices, I DON’T KNOW YOU, and what’s your fuckin’ problem? That’s like yelling at one person for painting their room green because you feel there’s too much green in the world. These writers are fandom tone-setters. They know their room is green; they picked it because they like green, not because they aren’t skilled interior designers. Targeting a writer for a style trend is not helpful; it’s bratty, it’s misguided, and it’s futile.

So why would anyone worry about this? If overwhelming majorities are deliberately seeking works that recreate the experience of reading Tolkien’s prose, and writers are having great success with that style, are there any drawbacks?

IMO, there’s one big one. In fandoms like this one, I think authors can come to feel beholden to Tolkien’s style – like if they don’t recreate it, their fic will flounder  – and that danger zone, not homage, is where creativity and variety come to die.

This can put a fic writer in the uncomfortable position of making a choice between three imperfect options:

Faithfully reconstruct and largely adhere to Tolkien’s style. (This is the choice most Big Fic writers in any book-based fandom make. On the downside, this limitation can feel creatively constricting. It should, however, be mentioned that some writers find this strategy ultimately increases their creativity – the stylistic constraints demand they make more daring creative choices in other realms, such as plot or characterization.)

Ignore the original materials. (The downside here is obvious: In a book-based fandom, this choice is likely to significantly decrease traffic on Page One and therefore decrease responses to your fic. As the overwhelming majority of fic writers will attest to, nothing kills a fic faster than a writer who feels like no one is interested.)

Take the middle-road. Borrow a few secondary elements from Tolkien; consistently prioritize core elements of your natural style while deliberately limiting his. (Runs the same risks as the above example. This can also be incredibly difficult, especially for newer writers who haven’t quite settled on their natural style yet, or for authors whose natural styles conflict with Tolkien’s. It’s more complex than saying “get gud scrub.” Many new writers use fandom to begin the process of creative self-discovery. This process takes years of constant writing and is arguably never finished. Long story short: We can’t simply foist this strategy upon everyone and sustain a thriving book fandom.)

To more fully illustrate the pitfalls of Option Three, let me turn the criticism on myself and my own floundered fic – one of the nameless masses out there that never got airborne.

I tried out the middle-road mentality: taking a few major elements of Tolkien’s style and weaving it with personal storytelling priorities. But since some of my priorities are in direct contrast with Tolkien’s style – the style I tried to lean on! – and since his style is so dominant, I think I ultimately left readers feeling duped. 

For the sake of this theory, maybe we can take my common experience and apply it to why stylized fandom functions as it does. My primary failure was that those Tolkien elements I wrote in effectively set up a story contract I had no intention of fulfilling. To explain: You’d not be out-of-the-norm in this fandom to spot those telltale Tolkien signs and expect to get the whole Tolkien suite, and you’d not be out-of-the-norm to feel disappointed when you end up somewhere you specifically didn’t want to go… namely, stuff that isn’t like Tolkien.

In my story’s case, the Tolkien seduction might be his parentheticals, and the disappointment might be winding up at action scene, lots of emotional description, and snotty diction – all antitheses to Tolkien. People don’t usually come to Tolkien for those elements, so it stands to reason they don’t often come to Tolkien fanfic for them. And it stands to reason they’d feel confused or even cheated when the contract they expected carefully set itself up only to run off to the Keys with some nobody from accounting.

Option Three can feel, to those readers, like a carefully constructed scam.

In fact, I wonder if contract-thinking is one of the major reasons why the readers who feel dissatisfied with the dominant Hobbit style find themselves flummoxed by all this. Tolkien’s Hobbit voice is obviously married to and designed for Bilbo. If you’re not paying pedantic attention to the writerly mechanics (maybe even if you are), hearing Tolkien’s Bilbo-voice transposed over another character’s POV can be a disorienting experience – if you’re in this particular reader’s shoes, something sounds off, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is.

SUPPORTING NOTE: I see this sameness happening at some level with characterizations, too. For The Hobbit, this strikes me as especially true with characterizations of the dwarven people as a whole – their culture in fandom tends to appear as traditionally male-prioritizing, Western nuclear family-based, and (strangely, given the Jewish inspiration roots of the dwarves) Christian-toned. They are also often considered by fandom to be among the more progressive Tolkien civilizations, but that by itself isn’t saying too much. (I expect this is because patriarchal habits are so prevalent in Tolkien’s canonical civilizations, even in the ones that aren’t supposed to be.)

OPPOSING NOTE: The biggest characterization element I can’t reconcile with this theory, annoyingly enough, is my personal pet peeve: the romantic feminization of Bilbo. It’s often found in fandom and often grounded in sexist stereotypes, but is not a feature of Tolkien’s original works. That’s another essay, though, and I’ve already rambled long enough.

On to the open question!

It’s probably too late to dismantle a dominant style in a fandom as longstanding as this one – and anyway, the cost-benefits of dismantling any style trend are sketchy at best. In general, though, I wonder what can be done to neutralize the more damaging byproducts. Specifically, how can we stop that “contract” dead in its tracks, and prevent fic writers from feeling obligated to an original author’s style?

Any ideas, folks? I’m scratching my head.

(Also, if you read all this, I love you.)

Special thanks to determamfidd, MarieJacquelyn, scarletjedi, and Silver_pup -- whose works were cited in this analysis without solicitation -- for writing, and for providing hours upon hours of joy to your thankful, hungry fans.

EDIT: Edited to clearly explain how fic “success” is defined here, as well as to further prune any impressions of my personal fic preferences. Success, in this essay, is quantified partly by number of kudos/comments a piece receives and partly by the closeness of its style mechanics to Tolkien’s. These quantifiers are used here solely to explore the relationship between popularity and stylization. In the broader world, popularity on its own is a poor measure of quality or artistic merit. (And it would kind of break my heart if you left this essay feeling down about your own work. Writers out there, please know that’s not at all the implication.)

In simpler terms: Just because it ain’t famous, honey, doesn’t mean you ain’t damn good at what you do.

[bettsfic]

Have you read the murderbot series by martha wells? Security robot learns to hack its own programming to become ungovernable, spends all its time watching of soap operas. I read what you wrote, recently, on narratorial consciousness and access and there was this great line, "The superstructure above me was triangular, angled back in a way to make it faster or something, I don’t know, I’m a murderbot, I don’t give a crap about boats."

ohhhh i haven't even heard of this but it sounds so cool! and that's a banger of a line. def putting on the list. thank you for the rec!

[bettsfic]

75k words into my magnum opus (the fic I asked for advice about many months ago); got it changed to first person and have not regretted it for a second (she's an unreliable narrator haunted by an extra-dimensional entity only she can see: first person is the only way that makes sense). Anyway, hoping to pick your brain about the second half of the fic. (Full disclosure: i know i need to just think on it more but i'm so impatient! I think about that meme all the time: "turns out to read my fic I have to write it first. Shocked and upset!" Lol.) I want to do a 'mystery', in that the main character has a terrible secret she's holding on to at all costs, she doesn't even *think* about it, but the pieces of the truth are revealed slowly through the second half until the secret comes out in the emotional climax. I want that reveal to be a huge emotional punch, quietly devastating. Like a twist, in that it recontextualizes the prior pieces of information.

But I'm really struggling. This feels like a Big Challenge and I'm daunted (full disclosure: I very much suffer from 'my first draft has to be perfect!' syndrome. It's getting better, but slowly). Any advice on writing mysteries, emotional gut-punches, or anything that occurred to you as I was trying to describe the challenge? Thanks for your time! Also, good luck with the residency! Please keep telling us about it! I'm very intrigued :)

first of all, congrats on 75k and making the change to first person! i really love how complex first person can get from a narratological perspective. a lot of people overlook the fact that first person is a facsimile of consciousness and in its flawed rendition of cognition there's a lot of formal/structural risks you can take with it. in your case, the big risk is implying unfettered access to your character's mind but the reveal isn't just the secret itself, it's that the secret has been denied to the audience, which renders the reliability of the rest of the story suspect (and which will add to the fun of rereading! figuring out what's true and what's not).

[for anyone interested, i wrote a bit about the limitations of the portrayal of reality in fiction. a lot of what i'm going to say relies on what i've already said there.]

what you're talking about, what this all comes down to, is the concept of narratorial access. in every story ever written, the writer has had to, consciously or not, decide how much or how little access we have both to the mind of the narrator and the true events of the story. no access at all would be omniscience; the story is being told from a narrator who cannot see at all into the perspective of the characters and therefore we can imply that the proposed events of the story are entirely true. (example: kent haruf's plainsong)

the opposite, however, is impossible. we can't ever recreate the absolutely true experience of consciousness in writing, because in the mind our thoughts aren't necessarily bound in any specific way. but in writing, we're bound to the necessity of letters presented on a page in sequence. we're bound by language itself. you can think two thoughts at once, but you can never write two thoughts at once. they must go one after the other, and they must be read one after the other. honestly it's one of the great tragedies of reality, that we have this beautiful tool of language that allows us to understand the minds of others, but it's still so profoundly limited.

which is to say, in that impossibility of the portrayal of consciousness, there's still a decision to be made of how close can you get. the more narratorial access we have, the less certainty we have in the true events of the story outside their perspective (this is where the concept of an unreliable narrator comes from. an unreliable narrator is simply a narrator whose perspectives we have a lot of access to).

this example of extreme access is actually very relevant to you: pale fire by vladimir nabokov, in which we have absolutely no fucking clue about the true events of the story and the narrator is keeping a big, big secret from us. he's even keeping the chronology of the story from us. he denies us the very thing nearly all stories offer us: a sequence of events. but that's what nabokov does, right? his portrayal of cognition is so detailed that the work of the reader is figuring out what the story even is.

so, speaking of the work of the reader...

re: emotional climaxes: on a sentence level, a general rule of thumb is that anything you deny the reader, the reader must supply themselves. if you don't describe a setting, the reader must create the setting on their own. if you don't describe a character, the reader must create that character.

this is not to say you should describe everything so your reader doesn't have to do any work. what i'm saying is, pick the work you want your reader to do.

i once had a professor whose feedback was often "i had to put a lot of this information on the page myself, and i don't think that's something you want me to be doing because i've probably gotten it wrong." this is the crux of "show don't tell" and why it's often misunderstood. "show don't tell" is a shitty way of saying the reader likes doing certain work. the reader enjoys drawing conclusions from a character's thoughts or behaviors. the reader doesn't want everything explained to them. but! there are many, many instances where the reader does need things explained to them, which is why "show don't tell" sucks. one of the greatest challenges in writing is figuring out where that balance lies. what do you put on the page? what do you keep off the page? what do you explain outright? what do you leave to interpretation? there's no right or wrong, better or worse. there's only what's appropriate for the story you're trying to tell.

debra gwartney explains it a lot better than me in "when the action is hot, write cool." personally i think this craft essay is a little too prescriptive (there are many genres where this advice just isn't true), but it's an interesting craft technique to keep in mind when approaching your own culminating moments.

the best example i can think of "cool" writing in an emotional climax is jo ann beard's "the fourth state of matter." (major content warning for a school shooting.) you may notice the style right away offers us a LOT of narratorial access. we can assume by reading that the narrator isn't really holding anything back from us, emotionally speaking. we can also assume, since this is nonfiction, the events of the story are true but simply colored by the perspective of a woman going through a messy divorce who has a squirrel trapped in her bedroom. but even though this is a nonfiction essay, we're denied access to reflection; the events of the piece are unfolding to our narrator as they did, presumably, in reality.

(when you have a narrator reflecting from a specific present of the narrative [that's called the point of telling, which is like point of view, but for time instead of character], there's always a decision you have to make in terms of what information to unveil when, considering your narrator already knows the whole story. this is different than if you have an implied ongoing present of the story where the narrator themselves has no access to future events until they happen.)

as you go along reading "the fourth state of matter" a moment happens near the end where the style abruptly changes. the narrator abruptly changes. we shift into a space of impossibility, of pure speculation. we go from highly textured complex sentences to fragmented sentences. we pull far, far back from any emotional connection to the story.

and in doing so, it hurts the reader way, way worse.

beard has denied the acknowledgement of emotion in the sentences themselves, and so the reader must supply it. and in supplying it, they feel it.

i hope this made sense. best of luck in the second half of your story! and if you have any questions about what i said here i can do my best to expand on it.