Narrative Voice
by Crawford
Kilian
Someone in your story has to tell us that Jeff pulled out his gun,
that Samantha smiled at the tall stranger, that daylight was breaking
over the valley. That someone is the narrator or ``author's
persona.''
The author's persona of a fictional narrative can help or hinder the
success of the story. Which persona you adopt depends on what kind of
story you are trying to tell, and what kind of emotional atmosphere
works best for the story.
The persona develops from the personality and attitude of the
narrator, which are expressed by the narrator's choice of words and
incidents. These in turn depend on the point of view of the story.
First-person point of view is usually subjective: we learn the
narrator's thoughts, feelings, and reactions to events. In
first-person objective, however, the narrator tells us only what
people said and did, without comment.
Other first-person modes include:
- the observer-narrator, outside the main story (examples: Mr. Lockwood in
Wuthering Heights, Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby)
- detached autobiography (narrator looking back on long-past events)
- multiple narrators (first-person accounts by several characters)
- interior monologue (narrator recounts the story as a memory; stream of
consciousness is an extreme form of this narrative)
- dramatic monologue (narrator tells story out loud without major
interruption)
- letters or diary (narrator writes down events as they happen)
If the point of view is first-person, questions about the persona are
simple: the character narrating the story has a particular personality
and attitude, which is plausibly expressed by the way he or she
describes events.
The second-person mode is rare: You knocked on the door. You went
inside. Very few writers feel the need for it, and still fewer use it
effectively.
If the point of view is third-person limited, persona again depends on
the single character through whose eyes we witness the story. You may
go inside the character's mind and tell us how that character thinks
and feels, or you may describe outside events in terms the character
would use. Readers like this point of view because they know whom to
``invest'' in or identify with.
In third-person objective, we have no entry to anyone's thoughts or
feelings. The author simply describes, without emotion or
editorializing, what the characters say and do. The author's persona
here is almost non-existent. Readers may be unsure whose fate they
should care about, but it can be very powerful precisely because it
invites the reader to supply the emotion that the persona does not.
This is the persona of Icelandic sagas, which inspired not only Ernest
Hemingway but a whole generation of ``hard-boiled'' writers.
If the point of view is third-person omniscient, however, the author's
persona can develop in any of several directions.
- ``Episodically limited.'' Whoever is the point of view for a particular
scene determines the persona. An archbishop sees and describes events
from his particular point of view, while a pickpocket does so quite
differently. So the narrator, in a scene from the archbishop's point
of view, has a persona quite different from that of the pickpocket: a
different vocabulary, a different set of values, a different set of
priorities. (As a general rule, point of view should not change during
a scene. So if an archbishop is the point of view in a scene involving
him and a pickpocket, we shouldn't suddenly switch to the pickpocket's
point of view until we've resolved the scene and moved on to another
scene.)
- ``Occasional interruptor.'' The author intervenes from time to time to
supply necessary information, but otherwise stays in the background.
The dialogue, thoughts and behavior of the characters supply all other
information the reader needs.
- ``Editorial commentator.'' The author's persona has a distinct attitude
toward the story's characters and events, and frequently comments on
them. The editorial commentator may be a character in the story,
often with a name, but is usually at some distance from the main
events; in some cases, we may even have an editorial commentator
reporting the narrative of someone else about events involving still
other people. The editorial commentator is not always reliable; he or
she may lie to us, or misunderstand the true significance of events.
Third-person omniscient gives you the most freedom to develop the
story, and it works especially well in stories with complex plots or
large settings where we must use multiple viewpoints to tell the
story. It can, however, cause the reader to feel uncertain about whom
to identify with in the story. If you are going to skip from one
point of view to another, start doing so early in the story, before
the reader has fully identified with the original point of view.
The author's persona can influence the reader's reaction by helping
the reader to feel close to or distant from the characters. Three
major hazards arise from careless use of the persona:
- Sentimentality. The author's editorial rhetoric tries to
evoke an emotional response that the story's events cannot evoke by
themselves--something like a cheerleader trying to win applause for
a team that doesn't deserve it. A particular problem for the
``editorial commentator.''
- Mannerism. The author's persona seems more important than
the story itself, and the author keeps reminding us of his or her
presence through stylistic flamboyance, quirks of diction, or outright
editorializing about the characters and events of the story. Also a
problem for the editorial commentator. However, if the point of view
is first person, and the narrator is a person given to stylistic
flamboyance, quirks of diction, and so on, then the problem
disappears; the persona is simply that of a rather egotistical
individual who likes to show off.
- Frigidity. The persona's excessive objectivity trivializes
the events of the story, suggesting that the characters' problems need
not be taken seriously: a particular hazard for ``hardboiled'' fiction
in the objective mode, whether first person or third person.
Verb tense can also affect the narrative style of the story. Most
stories use the past tense:
I knocked on the door. She pulled out
her gun. This is usually quite adequate although flashbacks can cause
awkwardness:
I had knocked on the door. She had pulled out her
gun. A little of that goes a long way.
Be careful to stay consistently in one verb tense unless your narrator
is a person who might switch tenses: So I went to see my
probation officer, and she tells me I can't hang out with my old
buddies no more.
Some writers achieve a kind of immediacy through use of the present
tense: I knock on the door. She pulls out her gun. We don't feel
anyone knows the outcome of events because they are occurring as we
read, in ``real time.'' Some writers also enjoy the present tense
because it seems ``arty'' or experimental. But most readers of genre
fiction don't enjoy the present tense, so editors are often reluctant
to let their authors use it. I learned that the hard way by using
present tense in my first novel, The Empire of Time; it was enough to
keep the manuscript in editorial limbo for months, and the final offer
to publish was contingent on changing to past tense. Guess how long I
agonized over that artistic decision!
Except from "Advice on Novel Writing by Crawford Kilian."
About the Author
Crawford
Kilian was born in New York City in 1941. He moved to Canada in 1967
and now resides in Vancouver B.C. Crawford has had twelve science
fiction and fantasy novels published. He has been nominated for an
Aurora Award 3 times for his novels Eyas, Lifter and Rogue Emperor- A
Novel of the Chronoplane Wars. His latest contribution to SF is a
non-fiction book for would-be SF writers called Writing Science Fiction
and Fantasy. Crawford has two more novels in the works.
To learn more about him at Wikipedia.
Crawford Kilian Books at Amazon
