Narrators

[girlyswot]

I've been thinking about this subject for a little while and then last week I started reading Ian McEwan's Enduring Love which crystallised some of the thoughts I've been having.

It seems to me that a lot of advice to writers at the moment focusses on the 'point of view character' rather than the 'narrator'. The point of view character is usually (always?) part of the action and indeed the advice is often to choose the character who is most affected by the action, to give the greatest dramatic impact to the writing. Stories written in this way are often very good at drawing the reader in, so that we feel as if we are living the events of the story ourselves. This can be extremely effective indeed. The 'book' disappears and the 'world' is created instead.

What has irritated me is the implication that this is somehow the only way to write a story, or the 'best' way to write a story. Yet, when I look back at the books I most love, I find that very few of them indeed were written this way. I like books that give me different perspectives. In fact, I really like books written by that most-maligned of characters, the omniscient narrator. I like stories that offer a reflection on the events they relate. I like knowing more than the characters sometimes. I like being reminded that I am a reader. I like to be told a story, without being expected to live through it.

In Enduring Love, there is a first person narrator who is at the centre of events. But there is a very clear sense that he is relating this story with the perspective of hindsight, offering us his later reflection on the events. So he says things like:

What idiocy, to be racing into this story and its labyrinths, sprinting away from our happiness...

Knowing what I know now...

What I describe is shaped by what Clarissa saw too, by what we told each other in the time of obsessive re-examination that followed...

He's telling us his story, not as he experienced it in the moment, but as he thinks of it now, at some later date, after he's talked it through with others and thought about it. He can draw us in with his hints of things to come. He can give us different perspectives - not only what he saw, but what Clarissa later told him she saw. He can be conscious about the process of editing and shaping a story out of the events of his life. He's not completely omniscient, but omniscient enough (I haven't got very far through it yet; this may change and he may prove to be an unreliable narrator).

In Francine Prose's 'Reading Like A Writer' she talks about the problem of knowing the implied reader. I think this is a thing McEwan does well. There is a very strong sense in his books of these stories being told in specific situations to a specific audience. We know (by the end, at least) who Briony in Atonement is writing her story for and that shapes the story throughout.

So here's a little challenge. Who are your favourite literary narrators (named or unnamed)?

Comments

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

The narrator of Tom Jones (which is a novel that does a lot of playing with the concepts of the Writer and the Readers).

Billie Morgan, in Joolz Denby's novel of the same name - that's another example of a character relating events in the past.

Lots of others who aren't coming to mind at the moment - I'm a real sucker for a distinctive narrative voice.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes to Tom Jones! I don't know the other book.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

It was an Orange Prize finalist a few years back. Probably not everyone's cup of tea (and goes in for Foreshadowings of Doom a bit), but the narrator reminded me really strongly of someone I used to know, as well as having a very engaging Bradfordian voice.

[dogstar101.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Interesting.

First person - Holden Caulfied, Stevens from Remains of the Day.
Omniscient narrators in Antonia Forest, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Arthur Ransome, E M Forster

I'd say these are a few I particularly like rather than my favourites as such, I tend to resist defining things in that way!

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

That's okay, you can play this game any way you choose.

I'm interested that you have so many omniscient narrators on your list, especially since I think you tend not to write that way yourself, do you?

[dogstar101.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's only because I don't have enough writing experience yet. I don't like sticking with one point of view though, and I had bits in my first story where I slipped in and out of 3rd person and omniscient deliberately. I got slammed for it by a few people who thought I'd slipped up. Stupidly, I took their criticisms on board to an extent. I won't be making that mistake again - if my handling is pov is crap, at least it'll be on my own head!

I'd definitely like to learn more about writing an omniscient narrator. I think it would be an interesting challenge.

I'd be surprised if I ever write in the first person myself. So hard to do anything interesting with it, so easy to do badly. Mostly, they drive me nuts, which is why when a good one comes along, it's exciting.

Sorry for the ramble. Haven't had a chance to drivel on about my writing for a while.

[dogstar101.livejournal.com]

handling of pov, I meant. *headdesk*

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

No, the ramble is interesting.

I tried writing a story last year which I had almost forgotten about until this moment that had an omniscient narrator. She was a goddess, so properly omniscient. The plan was for her to suddenly intervene in the lives of the people in the last few moments of the story, so that it would turn from appearing to be a 3rd person narrative to a 1st person one. I found it incredibly difficult to get her voice right and that was the main reason I gave up on the story.

So, yes, a challenge. But I agree with you, one I'd like to learn more about and get better at.

I think a lot of crits come from people who are only just learning the craft too. So they hear things like 'POV shifts are bad' and apply them without thinking. It takes a while to learn to weigh feedback and discard that which comes from unreliable sources.

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

Off-topic, but your mention of Arthur Ransome prompted me. I've just read "Blood Red, Snow White" by Marcus Sedgewick. It was a very interesting read. He was very clear that he was writing a fictionalised account of Ransome's time in Russia during and after WW1 and the revolution but also included what was known for sure and what was suspected by various people.

[aella_irene]

Scout, from To Kill a Mockingbird. Hilary Tamar, in Sarah Cauldwell's series. Amelia Peabody and Vicky Bliss, in their respective series, by Elizabeth Peters. Gull, in Jo Graham's Black Ships.

There are a few more, I'll have to have a think.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yes, I'm reading Amelia Peabody at the moment and she is so much fun, especially when she gets it wrong. And Scout is a fabulous example too.

[aella_irene]

They've both got real character, you can read an extract, and think, "Oh, yes, I know who this is" without looking at author and title.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[alkari.livejournal.com]

Have only just discovered the Amelia Peabody series, and adore her. Much fun - and a good example of a 'reflective' first person POV.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

What an interesting post. I also like the omniscient narrator; it's hard to imagine Mansfield Park, say, being written by Henry Crawford. (One of your friends will probably now tackle this :-))I'm not so keen on the 'let the reader decide' attitude.
One of my favourite narrators is the unnamed 'I' in E Nesbit's The Story of the Treasure Seekers because it's a joke. I also love David Copperfield.

[dogstar101.livejournal.com]

OMG the Teasure seekers! Seconded. May be my all-time favourite actually. There you go, Ros. I committed.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Well done!

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

I have no memory of the narrator in The Treasure Seekers at all. Must re-read.

MP written by Henry Crawford would be a very different book indeed.

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

Unlike you, I've never thought about it particularly! Maybe that's the advice because it's just easier. Not necessarily easier for the writer but easier for the reader. It gives a straight forward plot where we don't get too much conflicting information and only one thing happens at once. If the story isn't too difficult to read, there is potentially a larger market, I suppose. Nothing like underestimating the audience.

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

I forgot to add who my favourite narrators are and I can't really think of any. I suppose Stevens in "The Remains of the Day" would be one. I heard Tim Winton (an Australian writer) read from his latest novel and then talk about it on the radio yesterday (we have a series of "Summer Literary Lunches" at the moment, which are recordings of various talks by authors - very interesting) and his latest novel sounds to have a very interesting use of narrator.

[alkari.livejournal.com]

Hmmm - interesting issue. I certainly don't have "a" favourite narrator or style of narration, because so much depends on the actual story. I love Tolkien as the omniscient narrator in LOTR: because of the whole sweep of that story, and the fact that we follow a number of different characters, it probably couldn't have been told from merely one POV. Raymond Feist also does omniscient very well, in his epic 'Magician' series.

I second the mentions of Arthur Ransome and Jane Austen.

One of my favourite historical novels is Rosemary Hawley Jarman's "We Speak No Treason", an interesting example of multiple first person POVs. It's about Richard III, and is in four parts, narrated by three different people who each knew him in different ways and at different times. It's very well done. And the very first 'real' book I can ever remember being given at age four is a first person narrator - 'Black Beauty'. Still a favourite, and I still have that prized illustrated version!

[alkari.livejournal.com]

The point of view character is usually (always?) part of the action and indeed the advice is often to choose the character who is most affected by the action, to give the greatest dramatic impact to the writing.
True, in many cases, yet witness the style of the Sherlock Holmes stories, where Conan Doyle uses Dr Watson as the narrator. Watson of course was generally involved in the cases he narrates, but he was never really the person 'most affected' by the action. It's an interesting technique: told in the first person by a narrator who is a witness to the events, and sometimes a participant. And of course, he sometimes offers reflections on the events.

Narrators?

[(Anonymous)]

My favorite narrator is Patrick Bateman in "American Psycho" and Bret Easton Ellis in "Lunar Park."

Both unreliable.

[rhetoretician.livejournal.com]

The problem of voicing and choosing a narrator is one of the key tasks in fiction writing. The question isn't, "What's a good narrator?", but "What's a good narrator for this story?" And that depends on what it is you want the story to do.

I think that new writers are advised to stick to single POV characters to learn the ways in which POV matters. Too many newbies don't understand that POV is like a camera angle or a backdrop, and to switch it back and forth is to make the reader dizzy. Once you master that principle, though, you can have a lot of fun playing with POV. Writing the same scene from two different PsOV is instructive, for example.

The main question is, what's the narrator's attitude towards the action? Amused, regretful, angry, dismissive, ironic? And is this in order to inspire the same attitude in the reader, or to give the reader something to argue with? In a piece that is mainly about one character's feelings, it may help to tell the story from that character's POV.

The omniscient narrator certainly provides distance and perspective from the action -- which is a good thing sometimes, and a bad thing sometimes.

Right now I'm still reeling from the narrative voice in Atonement, which seems to be an omniscient narrator but is, in fact, Briony looking back on past events at the end of her life. That was a master stroke.

The narrators that stick in my mind most are Melville's untrustworthy narrators -- especially in Bartelby and Billy Budd.

I also love the way John Irving uses narrative voices. I particularly remember The Water Method Man, in which the narative alternates between the MC's 1st-person voice (describing his present) and a third-person narrator (describing his past). In Garp he uses a third person omniscient, but that story is about the sorrows of the whole world -- whereas Hotel New Hampshire is about it's like to grow up in one particular family, so the first person narrator works best.

I liked how John Varley, in Millennium, alternated between the "testimony" of the two MC's, who experienced the same events in a completely different sequence.

It's also nice to contrast Mary Renault's Fire From Heaven with The Persian Boy. In FFH she uses 3rd person omniscient, but particularly for the purpose of giving multple points-of-view. She wants us to see Alexander from many different angles. (It also makes for some beautiful moments, as the single sentence in which we experience the slave-groom's grief at not being bought by the king.) But TPB is is a love story, and the 1st person makes it more intimate.

[phaedon.livejournal.com]

Wonderful post. Thank you very much. It makes it all clear now.

[rhetoretician.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. From your profile, I gather that the "it" you're referring to is the voicing in the Renault novels?

[phaedon.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, everything in your post. Especially this:

"What's a good narrator for this story?"

“The main question is, what's the narrator's attitude towards the action? Amused, regretful, angry, dismissive, ironic? And is this in order to inspire the same attitude in the reader, or to give the reader something to argue with?”

Before that I was so lost and confused about the perceptions of my MC by my insightful readers, who only recently uncovered the meaning of “omniscience” to me in terms of hindsight. So I started wondering what exactly would work better for “this” story.

So by stressing the “attitude”, you practically spelled out what I was looking for but couldn’t form it in my mind.

Thank you again, and thank you, girlyswot, for a very useful article.