Writing

First published on Storybildr January 22, 2021

Now that we’ve established what a point-of-view (POV) and a Narrative Voice are, let’s talk about Unreliable Narrators. These are narrators who, either because of the way they interpret the world, omissions in their story, or outright falsehoods and manipulation, lie to the reader.

In the first part of this series, I talked about the narrator as the driver of a story, the perspective through which each moment and emotion is filtered and distilled. It is from this cup of filtered experience that the reader drinks in your story. Most of the time, the experience that the reader consumes can be assumed to be a genuine and honest reporting of what happened, and how the narrator actually feels, thinks, or behaves.

However, there can be value in choosing a character who either does not, or cannot, filter those experiences accurately to present your story. In this case, the reader cannot trust the narrator to be reliable.

To explain what I mean, I want to talk about my favourite Unreliable Narrator of all time: Anne Shirley from L.M. Montgomery’s classic Anne of Green Gables.

“What?” I can hear you shouting. “The precocious, imaginative, sunny-eyed, spunky Canadian Orphan of our childhoods? No!”

Yes.

See, here’s the thing that a lot of people miss when they’re reading the books: Anne is deeply, deeply effed up when she arrives at Green Gables. Everything she reports—and we as readers, swallow whole-heartedly—as charming quirks of her own personality, are actually indicators of d coping mechanisms as a result of childhood trauma. For example:

• She spends hours imagining her life a Princess Cordelia? Disassociation.
• She reads everything she can get her hands on? Could be indicative of OCD or depression, or a desperate desire to escape reality and a defence against a harmful living situation.
• Her best friend is the personified version of her own reflection? Lack of socialization.
• Her temper? Lashing out and anger management/emotional regulation issues.
• The way she clings to Diana right away? Attachment issues.

But since Anne is the narrator of her own tales, obviously she doesn’t want to dwell on the dark parts of why she does what she does. So she doesn’t talk about those things. As readers, if we accept what she’s telling us at the surface and don’t read critically, we see her only as a sunny, quirky, big-hearted kid and do her the disservice of missing the incredible character arc of Anne overcoming the traumas of her life before Green Gables. Like with Cinderella, it is hard to have a hard life and still grow up loving and kind. So reading Anne as an Unreliable Narrator makes her so much more powerful, and makes ending so much more satisfying.

Take into account that author Montgomery was a mental health advocate and died by suicide when her own mental health issues became too unbearable, and we can guess that while Anne was always meant to be embraced as the kind and loving character she is (for the moral of all of the Anne books are that everyone deserves love and respect, no matter their background), it is also becomes a powerful story about what state-sponsored abuse can do to children, whether Montgomery intended it or not.

When you consider Anne unreliable, the book is, in my opinion, better.

So now that you have handle on how powerful using an Unreliable Narrator can be, let’s move onto making one of your own

Originally Published on Storybildr January 15, 2021

Once you’ve chosen your narrator, your next job is to figure out how they speak. Have a good long think about how their upbringing, social class, race, gender, sexuality, education, job, family home life, nation, etc. interconnect and serve to shape their morals, choices, preferences, and understanding of the world.

And once you’ve got that down, think about how all of those defining elements can be reflected in their word choices, speech patterns, jokes, idioms, cuss words, metaphors, sentence construction, verbal shortcuts, dropped syllables, implied meanings, etc.

People use local slang, idioms, shortcut words and so forth, even in their own heads. Being particular and meticulous about this will give your narrator a solid and unique voice, one that will (ironically, for all that you’re engineering it so closely) feel more authentic and natural to your readers.

Think of ways to convey all of that information relating to the narrator’s background and backstory through their word choices and sentence construction. You don’t have to say “this character grew up by the sea” if all of their metaphors and slang words are maritime.

Creating Distinct Voices

If you decide to tell the story from the POV of more than one narrator, having a distinct voice for each narrator will not only help the reader keep track of whose head they’re in, it will also help you as a writer remember who knows what.

For example, in my Accidental Turn series, there are two narrators. Forsyth Turn, a prissy and extremely proper, well-educated nobleman, and Bevel Dom, the rough-and-tumble son of a blacksmith in a raggedy town, raised with no formal education but the folk wisdom of his mother.

Forsyth rarely uses a one-syllable world when a three-syllable word is available, calls things by their precise and proper nouns, is extremely polite, and never ends a phrase with a dangling participle, even in his own head. Bevel narrates in half-sentences, crude language, uses metaphors that align with his agrarian and smithy background, and non-verbal hand signals that are easy to read across a forge or a field.

While they are both characters involved in telling the story of the series, neither would describe the exact same situation the same way, with the same words, and with the same emotional or physical reaction to the action based on who they are, and who they were raised to be, as people.

As an example –

Forsyth: The serving woman hoisted the whole platter of still-steaming pork over her head, which put her womanly assists, ah, rather prominently on display, to my discomfort. I certainly hoped she wasn’t expecting to have to handle any further servicing to our table.

Bevel: The wench hefted the roast pig up and waded through the crowd, tits jiggling beautifully as she came toward our table. Aw, yes, this was going to be a great meal. And betchya my best hammer the pork would be juicy, too.

When creating distinct narrators, figure out how to make their voices as unique as they are.

In summary

Not every person in the world speaks exactly the same way. Their speech patterns, imagery, and word choices reflect the intersection of their cultural upbringing and their community of peers. You can use this as a clever, subtle tool to convey information about your protagonist and their world to the reader without having to info-dump.

Originally posted on Storybildr January 8, 2021

Depending on how your plot is structured and the way your scenes are woven together, both your narrative and your readers may benefit from being able to experience your story through multiple different narrators.

The Easy Stuff

This storytelling choice allows the readers to experience different moments and episodes within the plot, perhaps when one narrator is present but the other is not. It can also allow the readers to experience two or more characters’ versions of a single moment, conveying the idea that one character’s perception might not be the absolute truth of the moment, though this effect is best used sparingly.

Usually these types of stories work by alternating narrators every few, or every other chapter. If you’d like to switch who is in the driver’s seat within a chapter itself, it is best practice to put in a scene separator between the sections of story. Three asterisks or a pound-sign are the most commonly used separators.

The Hard Stuff

However, multi-narrator stories are also easy to get wrong. One of the most common mistakes with writing in multiple First Person Limited or Third Person Limited POVs is a phenomenon known as Head Hopping. This is when, suddenly, in the middle of a scene with no prior warning, the “driver” narrator changes. We’re in Character A’s head, experiencing the story through them, and then the writer swaps out the driver, and we’re riding along with Character B and in their head instead. This can be confusing for the reader.

To avoid this issue, ensure you’re always writing from the contained perspective of one single person if you’re writing in Limited. Continue to remind yourself: What do they know? What do they not know? What can’t they possibly know?

For example, let’s say that in a scene, Character A can’t know for certain that Character B has a secret. However, they can put together the contextual clues that suggest that Character B is being secretive: their body language, the volume and tone of their speech, nervous or tell-tale gestures, stories that aren’t adding up. Unless you’re writing in Third Person Omniscient, you would not write:

“I love you,” Character B lied.

If Character A is your first person narrator, they can’t know for certain that Character B is lying. A better approach would be:

“I love you,” Character B said. Character A could tell by the way his gaze darted away that he was lying.

You can still convey to the reader the information that Character B is lying (and you can later confirm or deny it if you switch POV), but you can’t say for certain that it’s true because your narrator, Character A, can only guess or suspect.

In summary

Just like with a story told through a single narrator, a multiple-narrator tale allows the reader to experience the moments of the story through the filtered perspective and experience of one narrator at a time. This can help create depth of understanding, and can even be used to establish how different characters think and feel about the same single episode.

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Have a question about the craft of business of being a writer? Ask it here, and I’ll answer in a new Words for Writers article!

Originally Published on Storybildr on December 25, 2020

Welcome to the first of five articles about creating a narrative voice.

Deciding who your narrator is going to be is not only vital for you as a creator —because without someone to tell the story on your behalf, you can’t tell it at all—but it will also effect how and why your story is exists at all. This makes narrative voice the most important decision you can make before plunging into the actual writing itself.

Every book has a Point of View, or POV, and the person you chose to be the narrator of your tale is the one through whose eyes (and heart, mind, feelings, and opinions) your readers will experience the story. Generally stories are told from one of three POVs:

• First Person Limited a.k.a. the “I” narrator—like Katniss in The Hunger Games.
  • “I reached out and knocked over the salt shaker, which upset me.”
• Third Person Limited a.k.a. the “he/she/they” narrator—like Jonas in The Giver.
  • “He reached out, and knocked over the salt shaker, which upset him.”
• Third Person Omniscient a.k.a. the “little did he know” narrator—like in Good Omens (whose POV is literally God.)
  • “Aziraphale reached out, and knocked over the salt shaker, which upset him. Crowley thought it was hilarious, and accordingly, laughed until he too fell over.”

You can tell stories from the Second Person POV, a.k.a. the “you” narrator, but it tends to be a very difficult trick to pull off. The Choose Your Own Adventures books are a good example of this POV: “You reach out and knock over the salt shaker, which upsets the volcano monster. Turn to page 34 if you right the shaker. Turn to page 189 if you throw spilled salt at the monster.”

Who is telling the story

When it comes time to choose your narrator—or narrators, if you’re electing to have multiple POVS (more on that later)—you’re basically deciding who is going to be driving the understanding of your story for the readers. Readers will feel, think, and emote along with whomever you choose to be this driver.

So ask yourself: Whose eyes do I want to experience this story through?

The King’s? The slave’s? The servant’s? The dog’s? Whose perspective will not only give you and your readers the best access to most vital moments of the plot, but whose understanding and hegemonic context will give the readers the most interesting and satisfying reading experience? Whose POV might be unusual and refreshing for your genre?

In summary

Every interaction and observation, every moment and reaction, every feeling and physical sensation, everything is filtered through your Narrator character. They take in what is happening, and put it into words for your reader to consume and understand.

You may be the writer, but your narrator is the living, breathing, feeling person that experiences and tells your tale. And it is through that fictional person that the reader lives, breathes, and feels everything that happens in your story.

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Narrative Voice: Who is Telling Your Story? is the first post in a nine part series.