I have a question.
When you read a story that is written in the first person, do you get suspicious?
Maybe it is just me, but I always take first person reports with a grain of salt, both in fiction and in RL.
If a friend has just done a major presentation and says to me:
I came out of the bathroom just as they were beginning to introduce me. Some of the audience started to laugh as I went up the aisle, because there was a piece of toilet paper on my shoe. Well, I did get flustered and made a few mistake at first, but I got over it.
Then I would wonder if someone else might be saying:
She started running up the aisle and there was a roll of TP trailing from her foot all the into the bathroom. Half the audience was rolling on the floor and the rest were in tears of laughter. But she went on with it and after about ten minutes of mumbling and stuttering made it though the whole speech.
Do you do that? or do you accept the report at face value?
And of course that report says something about the person too. Another person might have said:
It was mortifying and awful and I'll never show my face again!! Yes, I finished but it was all too late!! No one in the world will ever respect me again.
And whether you do it in real life or not, do you do it with first person stories, do you think that everything the narrator says is true? Or do you also look for what the way the narrator talks, what she says and does not say, tells you about the character?
What about when you write, do you show the protagonist's character that way?
Just wondering and musing in the absence of a muse.
Joy;Jan
That is a very interesting
That is a very interesting point, and something that is an important tool that can be exploited. I would say that most writers don't even give it any thought, though, they might subconsciously do it
Points of View
Any of those techniques can be effective. First person is always from the character's point of view. There are some stories that are in first person, but there are different speakers, each having a chapter telling part of the story.
Then, there are different third person narrators. Some are impartial, some are using a particular slant to tell the story to make a specific point. The narrator can actually act as an additional character.
Any of these techniques may be used to advantage in telling a story. The only restriction is not to mix things up. Using too many points of view can confuse the reader and muddle an otherwise good story.
My thoughts for what they are worth...
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil Blonde Proofreaders
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
They can be
It's a type of first person perspective called the unreliable narrator. The trick is the author must provide some way for the reader to know, or at least suspect, that the narrator is unreliable. One way to do this is have the narrator lie to one or more characters in the story and get caught. If he/she lied to them, they could well be lying to us. Another way is to use multiple narrators, with one revealing the lie of another ... or are they covering for their own lie? The trickiest method is probably to insert inconsistencies in the narrative, little clues here and there that taken together make the reader question the narrator's honesty.
So yes, first person narrators can be liars, but the author has the responsibility of communicating this to the reader in some way.
Scott
-- Moliere
Bree
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
-- Tom Clancy
http://genomorph.tglibrary.com/ (Currently broken)
http://bree-ramsey314.livejournal.com/
Twitter: @genomorph
Aren't they all really unreliable?
I am thinking beyond the Verbal Kints ("The Usual Suspects") type. Yes in that case we need to know that the narrator is a liar, unless that is the point of the tale (as it was in that movie.)
But all people have a perspective, as well as a point of view. If we have a character that an omniscient narrator would introduce as "a nineteen year old wannabe who believed himself to be God's gift to women, a great athlete and a future millionaire, but was overbearing, over weight and overdrawn." Then, if we wrote the story in the first person, he would introduce himself by saying, "Hi. I'm on may way to get my nightly supply of booty down at the club. I just carried the company football team to a near win. My buds aren't here tonight, but I need to lose them, they are just trying to ride my coattails to fame and fortune." Is the reader going to believe that bravado?
If that character says, "I think I'm going to find a girl, but I never do. ANd I think I carried my team but all I did was hog the ball. And I'm broke, but pretend I'm rich." The this isn't writing in first person; it is a limited p.o.v. using first person pronouns, right?
There isn't really anything wrong with it, and it is done a lot. But it is a cheat, it is just that the game of writing allows cheats, so it is OK. But when we don't have these self confessions, don't have the character leaving character to tell us things they hide from their mothers, their gods and, even their selves, then we should always try to see what else is there, just as we do when even our dear friends talk to us.
First person perspective
When reading a piece of prose, we readers are giving a lot to the writer in the way of trust.
I think we will all try and tell the truth, but may well embellish, it depends upon our perception.
I think a first person account of a given situation can be good, but sometimes it's difficult to get that second viewpoint that can often open up a story. Having just finished one and posted it, I think it worked. You lot seemed to like it anyway
There are some who feel that a first person account cannot work in "real" literature and yet Dean Koontz wrote Odd Thomas that way and got a best-seller out of it, so don't write them off.
Often the character narrating can give us an insight into themselves that can be skewed, but interesting. The way they react to given situations can be an eye opener and is something that cannot often be fully realised in third person prose.
I think it depends upon the story, the confidence and ability of the writer and the audience's willingness to believe.
However, when writing fiction, whether in first person or third, we are all lying are we not? There may well be elements drawn from reality, but in the main, it's all made up isn't it?
NB
I don't just look it, I really AM that bad...
Readers' Reactions
Authors should be cautioned that readers react badly to an unreliable narrator.
Readers have placed a high amount of trust, as pointed out previously in this thread. When that trust is violated, by leading the reader on a wild goose chase, they might throw the book across the room -- or simply stop scrolling and leave the story.
That doesn't mean the author should never use the unreliable narrator, as a perfectly reliable narrator might be just as bad -- as that would be simply unbelievable.
I've written several stories that revolve around perspective. It is a solid ground for conflict, which always adds to the readers' enjoyment.
Many stories on this site are flawed in that they go from point A to point B without acknowledging the complexity of the human spirit. Everyone in the story shares the same world view and expresses similar opinions. Stories become much more interesting when we see several takes on the same event and can say "Aha -- I can see now how each character arrived at his or her conclusion."
I've used John Grisham's work before to examplify how "bad" writing is secondary to an excellent story. Yesterday I picked up "The Client" although I've read it twice before and watched the movie. The book is filled with improper paragraph structure and typos. Such things as character's names spelled two different names (Mole / Moel) shouldn't find their way into a major novel, but do. At times it's hard to follow the dialogue, because the author refuses to separate different character's actions, thoughts, and words into individual paragraphs. Grisham changes character viewpoint without any signal to the reader, making it hard to form attachment to the narrator. Yet, the story is so compelling that we hardly can rip our eyes away from the page. He accomplishes this by constantly raising the stakes, by introducing ever increasing conflict, and by using a wide band of believable characters. He gives just enough setting to put you into each scene without describing sunsets or walks on lonely beaches.
My point is --- tell a great story. Tell a great story. Everything else is secondary.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Narrators
I accept that a first-person story is being told from one perspective, and that perspective may not agree with mine. In that case, I would hope that the author has the skill to make the character understandable, but deliberate deception, telling falsehoods to the reader (me)? Big no-no.
An ending that doesn't make sense, gaping plot holes and unrealistic characters, all of which can ruin a story, may be forgiven, sort of, as the limits of the author, but lying to the reader, presumably to create artificial tension -- well, consider reality: a boss tells a story, a lie to make everyone work harder to accomplish an objective. It works, but when the employees rejoice that they have achieved their goal after working a couple of weekends, the truth comes out. A few might feel residual pleasure, but most would feel cheated.
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
an unreliable narrator
I would say that some of my narrators might not be totally honest.
In Part One of HUMOR ME, straight-arrow Billy Xenakis says:
My initial panic at wearing this dresslike outfit seems a bit childish now. A knee-jerk reaction about violating some social taboo- one of that whole interconnected slew of taboos that I have never been too obsessed with, compared to so many of the guys I've known. That pure visceral loathing and rage they feel toward queers and transsexuals seems really excessive, and somehow unbalanced. I mean, how the hell is it hurting them if that's what someone needs to do to be happy? Beating up on some total stranger seems far sicker and more immoral than any harmless fetish or gender disconnect.
But I'm not being entirely honest. The fact is that while some other man's unmanly proclivities may not set off any klaxon horns of panic within me, the idea of wearing a dress MYSELF does make me quite uncomfortable. And all my reasoned insistance that it should not bother me can only push it down so far...
I mean, while I'll admit that I loved how aggressive and even downright controlling Shelly could be in bed, the one time she teased me about her actually being the "man" in our relationship, and threatened to dress me up in a wig and corset, a pair of perilously high heels, and this dick-squasher thing she called a graph, I freaked out so bad that she never did it again!
And as far as that little phase I went through when I was eleven and twelve, that's all it was, a phase. I was confused. I would never dream of doing such a thing...
Well okay I dream about it, but everybody knows that dreams are just random firings of neurons that don't mean anything. I mean who doesn't have that dream where you're walking downtown in a cute little skirt and blouse and your hair and makeup are perfect and the sun is shining down and everbody is smiling and you feel so alive and free and the guy opens the door for you as you go in to the big important office building for the important businesswoman stuff you're engaged in, and then by coincidence you're both in the same elevator and the guy is smiling at you and ............. well you know that dream. But like I say I'm not into all that weird stuff!
It must come as quite a shock to readers when I later reveal that this narrator is in fact transgendered...
~~~hugs, Laika
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
That's it!
That was really what I was really asking? [and I'm posting a reply quickly so you can't edit this; now don't get it deleted, please!]
Don't we (readers) expect a first person narrator to say the things that the character would say? In a sense that is lying, it may not be what the character really feels, but it may be all the character admits to feeling. People lie to themselves, I think that is more common than lies to others (not counting the polite fibs), shouldn't characters also?
Is that breaking a trust with the reader? I don't really think so. Having a narration that shows things the character would not say, and using first person is at least as great a break of that trust, because it robs the character of depth and development.
Of course it means that the reader must look else where sometimes to find the whole story. That is why there is space between the lines, so that that space can be read too.
I think of two great and unreliable narrators; Huck Finn and Nick in The Great Gatspy. One is limited by his youth, if Huck could report all the motives and emotions he witness totally, he would not be the same character at all. Nick is tainted by his hero worship and by his own desires to be different from what he is. The reader must find the seriousness of the flaws in Gatsby in the effort it takes Nick to overlook them; and we must discover that Nick is shy and anxious most times because of how little he says in when around others.
Is doing this "Lying" at all?
Yes the writer must show us in some way what is really happening, but doesn't have to write, "I'd never admit this to anyone but I enjoyed it [was scared; whatever]" I think that is a kind of dishonesty too.
Joy; Jan
another unreliable narrator
Today as I was working on PLAY NICE, PART 5, I wrote a scene with Rosa Farranino and her
two body-swapped adult grandkids in the kitchen:
.
Vaguely spherical with a removeable top section, "Bruno" wore a cute little argyle vest and a cute little misshapen hat, and a pitiless stare that proclaimed he would just as soon kill you as look at you. I used to have nightmares about the thing as a child, and it still creeped me out .......... It might be tempting to read something about the German character into this cookie jar, but I'd seen a lot of Dresden china figurines that didn't look like the White Rabbit crossed with The Terminator.
"He's kind of greasy. I'll clean him too, in a bit," Joey said as he set Bruno carefully down on the drainboard. He grabbed a spray bottle of Orange Kleenzit and pulled the trigger until he had saturated the top of the refrigerator, then mopped it all up with an immense wad of paper towels, turning and refolding it whenever it turned nasty, then lobbed it in a high arc into the wastebasket, pumping his fist when it went in.
He had missed where all the drips of brown gunk had run down the side. Grandma saw this too and shot me a glance. I nodded. One of the other of us girls would get it later. She smiled at him, "Thank you, nipote."
Joey was beaming with the same air of profound self-congratulation that Dad displayed whenever he did the smallest amount of housework. As I nibbled on my yummy rice cake I thought, God, he's such a guy! Maybe he actually is transgendered...
.
I thought this was hilarious, the pot calling the kettle black, but I realized it didn't work at all. Teddi, writing from a perspective of a hard lesson learned, is (and was even as the events occured) a lot more self-honest than the narrator of HUMOR ME. It just doesn't work in this story. A slight rewrite is in order, toned way down (since the character is not in fact t.g. at heart), and where she catches herself in the process of thinking this. Without this blog, all these articulate comments, I might not have noticed this, and might've sacrificed credibility for cheap yocks...
~~~hugs again, Laika
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
first person narratives
Ah, but that's the fun a writer has with first person narrative, or should have. The questions raised are part of the plan if you do it right in first person. It keeps the reader guessing and makes things a lot more fun for everyone, the writer included. Having done more than one first person narrative, I have to tell you that what comes up is sometimes surprising, even to the author. Characters you give that kind of autonomy to tend to surprise you all the time. Heaven and Hell, in my case, comes to mind. I'm never quite sure what Lorilei is going to do next.
I use both first and third person narratives.
I find it easier to get a sort of visceral feel of emotion when describing it in the first person than the more detached form of the third person narrative. My characters often surprise me and stories sometimes go off in directions I hadn't consciously planned, so the reaction of the character is sometimes what mine would be faced with the situation.
Angharad
Angharad
Telling the Truth
An observation along those lines, involving a story that's currently on this site, though I'd read it (and commented) elsewhere previously.
The story provides a twist on the premise of a fairly standard TG situation, one that takes place at a school dance. The author has provided some clues that things aren't all as they seem. But our clearly intelligent male protagonist doesn't seem to catch on; he describes his emotions and concerns as events take place, and they're the ones you'd expect from someone who doesn't know the twist.
Great -- it's a fine skill for a writer (as in a murder mystery) to give us the clues to figure everything out before the participating narrator does (as long as the answer isn't so obvious that we decide the detective's an idiot for not catching on, and that's not the case here). The trouble in this particular story is that our hero then tells his dance partner that he's known the key twist ever since he picked her up to bring her to the dance.
That's a problem. Either he's lying to his dance partner now (which would make him a less attractive character, which doesn't seem to be the author's intent here), or he's been lying to us about his feelings in his narration ever since he got to the dance venue -- a real breach of trust, IMO, since we've been given no hint that he'd have any reason to do that. (The author, of course, had her reasons -- it intensified the suspense, and it would have telegraphed the ending if the narrator had behaved as he should have, knowing what he did. But the character didn't.)
I hope that helps you. First-person narrators don't have to inspire full confidence in their narrative. But (IMO) they should have a good reason if they don't -- not just because it's a better story that way.
Eric
Honestly
"It's a better story that way" is the best reason I can imagine for an author doing anything.
Scott
-- Moliere
Bree
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
-- Tom Clancy
http://genomorph.tglibrary.com/ (Currently broken)
http://bree-ramsey314.livejournal.com/
Twitter: @genomorph
Touché...
I should have expressed that better.
Obviously a better story is something to strive for. But (IMO as a reader) creating an inconsistency in the plot or the characterization just to maintain the suspense or to mislead the reader spoils the overall effect. Depending on the severity, it can leave the same sour taste in a reader's mouth that telling us it was all a dream or throwing all the good and bad guys off a cliff normally does.
Inconsistent narration, in the sense that I'm using that term here, isn't necessarily fatal; my comment on the story that I'm describing here was generally positive, since the twist was effective and clever. But I felt that it detracted from my overall appreciation of the story, and that I needed to mention that.
(It also left the narrator's claim that he caught on when he picked up his date open to question. It's possible that he picked up the clues from the very beginning (a week or two before the dance) but didn't want to tell his date that the original misdirection didn't work. An author email in response to my comment said that wasn't intended; her narrator was telling the truth in that conversation.)
Eric
There are no reliable narrators...
...whether first person, third person, or omniscient god. Two characters whose memories and viewpoints agree are most likely, in real life, to be collaborative liars, as almost any police procedural will tell you.
We are not "ghosts" in little "machines" walking around, but wads of meat, chemicals, and electricity *constructing* an internal representation of reality based on ambiguous clues and selective memory that is, in the main, utter confabulation.
The song lyric, "Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey / A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe," derives its entire meaning from misheard and reconstructed words. Most of us do little better, reconstructing a faux reality from slim evidence, all of us biased toward familiar patterns and expectations over novelty.
Vaguely,
Puddin'
----------------
Neurosis is the inability to
tolerate ambiguity.
--- Sigmund Freud
The blues is an art of ambiguity,
an assertion of the irrepressibly
human over all circumstances,
whether created by others or by
one's own human failing.
--- Ralph Ellison
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
lying narators
in my view, in fiction the author has a story to tell so she will choose a narrator that can tell it the best. Most likely, if its first person the author will be reliable because the author doesnt want to choose a narrator that wont tell the story right. IF there is a deceptive character that tells lies and the author chooses him or her to narrate it will be up to the aothor to have another narrator to reveal the characters lies.
Well, When I Posted My Contest Story
I told it from Kelly's view. That was my first attempt at a first person story. Now, I am an honest person and so is Kelly. Why should I lie in the story?
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Perception
The telling or retelling of a story may very well vary from person to person--think Chinese whispers.
Some people will choose to embellish or exaggerate certain points in order to either make it funnier, more poignant, worse for a protagonist or whatever other reason there may be. Very few people see--as Puddintane said, the actual events, but only certain parts. Whilst their account may not be a falsehood exactly, it doesn't necessarily amount to the whole story or the truth of the situation.
The author may very well choose to tell the story from a liars perspective--like Walter Mitty.
Once again I urge you to think about whether the narrator is a liar or the author is just not fully equipped with the means or skill to tell the story in a manner which doesn't leave the reader feeling unfulfilled and cheated at the end--like the whodunnit that cites the villain as someone hitherto not introduced, or the story that tells the main character as one thing then expects the reader to believe that he or she is now doing something out of character without explanation as to why.
It's a very fine line that is trodden by an author and an equally fine one that is trodden by the reader. The former must make the story believable for the latter.
But then as I said earlier, fiction is a lie anyway. It is by definition, prose that is made up by the author regardless of whether it contains elements drawn from reality or not.
NB
I don't just look it, I really AM that bad...
OK. Time for my cent and a half
On both of the stories I have posted here, (As Holly H hart), I chose to tell the stories first person, but, from several different character's viewpoints. In the few places where two different viewpoints overlap, I added a couple of tiny discrepancies, because no two people see everything quite the same. Even at the instant when something is happening, a person's viewpoint affects how they remember the event even seconds later. Two different people may put the emphasis on different aspects.
As an editor, I’ve had 2 authors who merged sections of two first person stories. They did not just write one common section to be used in both first person stories, but kept the two stories separate, but sharing the same scenes and action from the two different first person viewpoints. Not only were the viewpoints different, but I suggested that even the dialog of the same scene should be slightly different.
People are much more likely to be able to witness an event or speech by roughly what was said or seen, than as if they were a sound camera, which would record it verbatim. For that matter, even a camera angle can sometimes affect what was actually being recorded. Think of a person making a speech, with a person standing behind them with a hidden gun aimed at them. Their words may take on a different meaning, if on can see the gunman.
So yes, a narrator, including a first person narrator, may also apply varying amounts of distortion or outright lies, especially if they have, or the author has, an unstated, ( at least for the moment ), agenda.
One of the most difficult things to give away is kindness.
It usually comes back to you.
Holly
One of the most difficult things to give away is kindness.
It usually comes back to you.
Holly
Narrators are not the authors
I agree with all most all of this. AND writers have lots of points of view to choose from. One of the nice things about the first person is the way in which we get to see the character change, not just in what appears on the outside, but what they think too.
Writers should not lie to readers ever.
But if a protagonist says, "I DO NOT like to dress as girl!" to another character, but has shown expertise in removing makeup, or knowledge on women's sizes, et c., then that isn't lying to the reader, is it?
For me, to have to have the character/narrator turn around and say to the audience, "Of course, you know I really do," is a lie, because she abandons the character. Especially when that character is still in denial about it to him/her self. And yet it seems to be done and expected way too often.
There are other ways to tell the story, but the fun of 1st person, (and sometimes 3rd person limited) is to be limited in what we know. That is how we grow to know our friends (and one of the reasons I like to read is that I can never know enough people (at least not so well)).
I really don't know, I'm not an expert, but when I said "lies", I wasn't defending bad or stupid narrators, the ones that ignore what everyone else sees or can't add two and two for supposed dramatic effect. But doesn't an honest character have to lie in the narration? Because that is the way we see the real character. Like Kristina Chase, she (he?) didn't know, kept moving from feeling one way to feeling another. She/he lied. And if the narration tells things that are beyond the character, isn't that the real lie? A lie for 'simplicity'?
Every story is a lie...
...and all author's liars in that the stories that authors tell, that everyone tells really, are more-or-less plausible departures from "truth" that can be used to make a point. Few of us natter on without a point, and fewer authors, but we all know people who do and avoid them, as a general rule, or endure them if we must.
No author, or at least no competent author, relates a detailed account of any moment (or string of moments) in a character's life, but rather judiciously selects the juiciest bits, the "good parts" version, both in the interest of telling a good story and of not boring the reader to tears.
So one doesn't, as an author, typically visit the necessary with a character, unless to make a specific point, since the fact that the character is human and excretes waste from time to time very rarely drives a story forward. This is not to say that it's impossible, since I can recall a few stories* in which the ruling classes plucked energy from the air, as it were, and required neither food nor drink. In that world, only animals and slaves performed these degrading actions, so bathrooms were filthy stys meant deliberately to enforce a sense of powerlessness and inferiority upon the lower classes.
The difference between a bad (or mediocre) story and good story quite often depends as much upon what one leaves out as it does upon what's included.
We don't need, for example, to digress, "this is the funny story about Joe, who fell off the Eiffel Tower. Now Joe was my third cousin twice removed on my mother's side, who once had a very interesting adventure with a cow, my mother, that is, not Joe, although Joe did have an altercation with a goat once..."
A story is *crafted*, not related, and every tiny bit is subject to manipulation and improvement. So characters rarely dither, although all of us do in real life, injecting "ums" and "erms" about four times as often as we think we do, unless very accomplished indeed at public speaking. So every story is made up of hundreds of little lies, *crafted* into a story more plausible and more interesting than mere truth, and perhaps even deeply insightful into the human condition in ways in which truth usually fails. Truth is far too complex and ambiguous to really satisfy, as a rule. We prefer the genial lie, the happy ending, the heroic journey, and a nice little "THE END" at a pleasant conclusion which rarely arrives in real life...
Puddin'
-----------------------------
* Tanith Lee's The Birthgrave (1977), by way of example.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Every story is NOT a lie...
... and all authors are NOT liars. By definition a lie is a deliberate attempt to mislead:
A piece of fiction is not presented as being true, even if it starts off with something like, "As hard as it will be for you to believe, the fantastic tale I am about to relate to you is entirely true." It's a story being told for the entertainment of others, not for the purpose of misleading them.
Scott
-- Moliere
Bree
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
-- Tom Clancy
http://genomorph.tglibrary.com/ (Currently broken)
http://bree-ramsey314.livejournal.com/
Twitter: @genomorph