Of Nuance and Narrative

Prompt of the Day #12

Pick a fairytale that you connect with and retell it as if you are a narrator at a dinner or function. Imagine the setting you are in, think about the story and what it may mean or symbolise, now consider the audience you are recreating the scene for. Reinvent the story in your own words. 

Depending on what critic you're reading, the house of fiction has a million windows or a punitive number of doors. This is the metaphor applied to narrative perspective - we can read a piece of fiction in a variety of ways, we can approach it from many angles, but when you're writing it you can only write from a perspective. This is the narrative voice. Whether that voice is your own, a fictional first person, the third person limited, third person unlimited etc. You could probably write in the first person plural, though perhaps it would feel like a royal 'we', and I can think of a few children's books and 'adventure quest books' that are written in the second person but there's a leading voice in that case, which makes me hesitate to cast judgement on how well it's ever used. 

My point is that the way you present your story, your narrative style, is the foundation of everything you write. Most of the critics I'm thinking of apply this view to stories and novels, although I'd hasten to add that it is just as vital in poetry. If you wield your narration well you can write just about anything without recourse. 

"But what on earth does that mean?" You may very well be asking. I will try to reply.

Narrative is a story. It's the form of narration, which is how you tell the story. And no matter how hard you try, it will always have a 'narrator' lurking in some corner of the subconscious text. Even if the touch of the 'author' is as fleeting as a love on the dancefloor, that voice is still coming through. Narrative is how you stitch it all together, how you weave your words into a pattern which turns into a tapestry of tales. You can do this like Balzac who saw himself as a 'historian' depicting the actualities of contemporary French society and frequently breaking into unexpected, decidedly 18th Century style commentary; you can do this like the Father of Modern Narrative: Flaubert who was concerned about 'writing a book about nothing' and whose presence in his works is hardly detectable. You could write like Nabokov with complex unreliable narrators such as those from 'Despair' and 'Lolita', or like George Eliot with her reliable, third-person omniscient narration. Or you could be writing the next modern epic, puzzling many of these aspects together as Joyce does to some extent in Ulysses. 

Which ever you decide, narrative style is a crucial aspect that you need to develop. You don't have to maintain a single style though all of your work, nor even continue it through a single poem, story or novel. 

Lemony Snicket - Will You Ever See His Face?

Lemony Snicket uses a Dickensian style of narrative through his authorial persona, he has developed a narrative voice and has crafted his own space within his fictional world to great amusement and success. His style also allows for a sense of authorial reliability, albeit with a tinge of reluctance, whilst also conveying the author as far from omniscience. Journalistic, investigative language creates this effect. But if you read the Odyssey there's a sense that we cannot always be certain what is truth and what is rumour when it's not Odysseus' voice narrating his tale. Throughout the epic, examples of how other 'bards' have told the tales of Greek heroes returning home, including the eponymous hero, have distorted reality - thus we see examples of both reliable and unreliable narration.

It doesn't really matter whether you want to be 'part' of your narrative or not - nor does it matter if you want to fashion yourself after a favoured writer or if you want to create a style that's uniquely yours. What's important is to develop the write style for your poem or prose. Using the first person might mean that you limit the amount of action your character can follow and therefore require a lot of explanation. Using the third person omniscient might seem too antiquated for a tale set in the modern world. If your work is meant to be 'light reading' or 'pleasure reading' maybe you don't want to create an unreliable narrator, or you might benefit from exactly that if you want an active readership, as you might if you were engaging them in a mystery or something similar. 

The nuances of language and storytelling are captured when a reader engages with the narrative. It's the little things that become striking when it's well done. So turn your work into something literary and exciting. Develop your own narrative style. 

Of History and Hair

Prompt of the Day #7

Write about a world before or after today. This can be the distant past, the faraway future or last year or next month or even just tomorrow. How is it different? How is it the same? Has something dramatically altered the shape of society? Do people communicate as we do? What are they wearing? Is anything consistent? 

Sorry this is late everyone, the UNC vs Duke game was on and since the whole school cannot help but give our soul to the Tar Heels, the last few hours have been spent asking 'is this real life?' and 'did that really happen?'. This was one of the tightest games of basketball I've seen, with a Dookie shooting literally on the second mark and the ball going through the net after it hit 00:00. The bar we were in fell silent, everyone stilled in their seats where moments ago they'd been wriggling with anticipation of rushing Franklin Street. Then a girl pipes up, "Did that seriously happen?" 

It had. UNC had lost by one point after a three pointer from the Blue Devils and no one knew what to do. It was then that the 'what ifs' began. What if Zeller hadn't batted at the previous Duke throw? What if he'd scored the second free-throw? What if Duke had been fouled in those last seconds? Why didn't x do y and a try b? 

Time is a funny thing, we imagine the possibilities and extrapolate scenarios based on the historical past. We're fascinated by the past, spending hours relating our days to our friends, our life stories to new acquaintances. We're proud or dismayed by our family legacies. All to often, we find ourselves engrossed in discussions such as: what you want to call your kids, or whether or not you'll let them read Harry Potter all in one go. Furthermore, we watch shows about history or set in history, make up stories of the future, aims and achievements that society should strive for. We're a very funny race. 

With a story, little things can help you to develop a sense of 'when'. Does the woman have her hair pulled back to reveal her 'shapely neck' and does the man admire it? Does she wear it in a beehive and match it with coral coloured earrings or a yellow polkadot dress? Does he look dapper in a suit or swagger through the streets with that particularly modern suave? Maybe it's a post-apocalyptic scenario - are they split into groups where some are selectively allowed to thrive and others bear the brunt of social decay? Simply describing someone's hair can convey an era. This is what we see with the descriptions of women figures in Hedda Gabler - there is a sense of how a woman who embraces her femininity will wear her hair loose but Hedda will no. Or if we look at the novels of Austen or Welsh or Joyce, you see a fascination with the way particular character bind or loosen their hair, as if one transforms from Virgin to Whore (Freudian terms I assure you) through the way ones hair is done. 

The thing that really marks how this evokes a sense of time is how these are appreciated by on lookers and how we interpret them. Something such as hair and the reactions towards it, show the limitations or unfreedoms imposed upon a figure. It doesn't have to be just the woman effected - it's society as a whole. This is particularly poignant for us as modern writers because of our concepts of fashion and anti-fashion. We want to combine our ideas of what is acceptable, our ingrained sense of fashion, with our knowledge of history.

In poetry, you can use tense to slip and slide through the past, present and future. In 'For the Union Dead', Lowell spends the majority of the poem in the past yet only 17 of 60 lines are in the past tense. This adds to the sense of how the world is being transformed, the structure and sense of the poetry being confused by the 'shaking' of the earth by 'civic machines'. As with 'hair', small details can hint at the time that you're setting your poem in. Even if this is usually the 'present', clues can be found in the use of colloquialisms or current figures. If you're writing about the past or future, this can often help to evoke a deeper level of understanding. Just think about political or satirical poetry, even if you're not trying to talk about these things directly or appeal to my favourite British genre, by including or hinting at contemporary images or figures, you're asking people to engage in the world which inspired your writing. 

When it comes down to it, history is about freedom. Something as small as hair can convey the ways that society changes and the way that freedoms shift and alter civic relationships. This is why I'm going to leave you with my favourite quote from Ulysses:

"History is the Nightmare that I am trying to escape," said Stephan

.... What if that nightmare gave you a kick?"

Je serai poète et toi poésie,

SCRIBBLER