Pondering the Passage of Time

My novel takes place over generations, with storylines spaced thirty years apart. If you've been following my revision adventures for a while, you'll know that I wrote the first two drafts in the order the chapters appear, with the stories interlocked, but for the last big rewrite, I took it one storyline at a time. For various reasons, I worked on the chronologically last story first, then moved backwards through the generations.

Now that I'm making another pass through the manuscript, I'm considering the stories in the more logical direction of earliest to latest. One of the most important things I'm doing is fixing up places where the text of later storylines is inconsistent with what now occurs in the characters' past. There aren't a huge number of these issues because I did have so much planned out in advance and made a million notes to handle the complex structure, but some errors did get introduced. For the most part, these problems are simple to fix with minor edits.

Something I did not anticipate, though, was that I was going to make some pretty major personality changes, even beyond what I planned, to the earliest narrator and his wife. These are great changes and strengthen that storyline (and therefore the whole novel) in a big way. But now I'm looking at the second storyline, which I wrote with a very clear idea of those characters as the sixty-something parents of the middle narrator, and it doesn't quite match up.

It's subtle, though. I'm not finding it unbelievable that these are the same people thirty years on. For one thing, their portrayals are colored by the perspective of their adult son, who has strong feelings about his mother and father and the way he was raised. And their roles in the middle storyline are limited to their interactions with the narrator, which are very different from the interactions they have with each other in the earliest story. So it makes sense that they don't come off quite the same way, and I'm trying to keep that in mind as I tweak the things they do and say for more consistency with their earlier selves.

But the question I keep running into, which is becoming more of a philosophical issue than a writing problem, is just how much the passage of thirty years of adulthood changes a person. I'm sure the answer is that it varies by individual and circumstance, and also that some aspects of anyone's personality are more fixed than other parts. My experience of people (both observing and being one) is that we mostly don't think of ourselves as changing very much past a certain age, though the people we know may not always agree with that self-assessment.

To bring this back to my revision: As I go along, I'm getting more confident about reconciling the different-age versions of my characters, but this has been a tricky thing to deal with. Fortunately, some of the age transitions are from babies or young children to adults, and with these I have less concern about keeping the personalities consistent. In fact, with the kids it's almost the opposite: I worry that some of the childhood behavior lines up too neatly with the adult lives and may be corny.

Add this all to the long list of reasons this is a ridiculously complicated novel to be writing. I can only hope that in thirty years I'm going to look back and laugh about it.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Kathy Crowley of Beyond the Margins shares what she learned in a writing class about Secrets and Lies: "For each piece of the secret, a different version of things can be imagined. And having these pieces spread among characters allows them to figure out different things at different times, making it easier for the writer to maintain tension throughout."

Writers, Show Us Your Scenes!

I keep encountering books in which a crucial emotional scene happens off the page and is only presented to the reader in the form of one character describing the events to another. It seems like a fairly obvious writing guideline that it's always more exciting to show a scene and let the characters react in real time rather than to have someone tell a scene, so I've been puzzled by the author's choice in some of these examples, though in other situations I can understand why it had to be done that way.

The problem with writing a novel that sticks to one character's viewpoint, whether in first or third person, is that the reader can only be shown scenes that the viewpoint character has some business being present for. Sometimes the logic of the plot requires an important event to take place without that character. When this happens, the author has to decide whether to switch to another point of view for a specific scene (as J.K. Rowling does several times in the Harry Potter series, usually at the beginning of a book), entirely rethink the POV choice, or let the viewpoint character and the reader learn about the scene from someone else after the fact.

The last option isn't necessarily a bad one, but it bugs me when the author basically writes the scene the way they would have with the character present, and then encloses the whole thing in quotation marks. A person talking about an event is not going to make the same descriptive choices that the author would in writing a scene, so this comes off to me as phony.

In one example I encountered, a character -- not a particularly poetic individual -- was telling the main character about his visit to a building where he was to receive some potentially horrible news. He described the exterior of the building, including the flowers. Who would relate those details in that situation, even if they'd notice at the time, as a character experiencing a scene might? I had to assume that the author had originally written the scene from the main character's point of view, but later decided it stretched credibility for her to be there, so converted the scene into the other character's account. I sympathized with the difficulty of how to present the scene to the reader, but I wasn't impressed with the solution.

I was even less impressed with a different novel when I came across the same problem of a character describing an event exactly as the author would write the scene, but the character was the book's first-person narrator. And the scene she recounted wasn't some long-ago event that might have been awkward in flashback, but instead an incident that occurred in the gap between the current chapter and the previous one. I'm still baffled as to why this scene, which was exciting and action-packed, couldn't appear in the novel as an actual scene, rather than a clumsy conversion to dialogue.

Writers, please: Let your readers experience the important events in your novel along with the characters. And when that isn't possible, please, please attempt to make your characters believable storytellers.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Vintage & Anchor Books presents The 10 Oldest Books Known to Man: "Typically of Egyptian, Sumerian, or Akkadian origin, the world's first works of literature provide an integral glimpse into how the peoples who initially recorded their histories, stories, and religious beliefs lived out their daily lives." (Thanks, Conversational Reading!)

→ Alicia Rasley at Edittorrent offers great advice on describing settings and character actions: "Filtering through the character ... means presenting [description] as an observation by this person. What would she notice? How would he describe it? This gives the description the secondary purpose of developing the character."

Differentiating Narrative Voices

One reason that I'm revising my novel one narrator at a time is to help differentiate the voices. I don't think my three narrators sounded exactly alike before, but I was concerned that they were a little too similar.

When I started in on this second storyline, I thought I might have a lot of trouble switching out of the voice of the narrator I'd been writing for months and months. I worried that I'd given the first character too many of the traits that are important in the second character and that I hadn't left enough room for differences. The two characters are father and son, so a certain amount of similarity is to be expected, but even in my own head, they were merging together, so I didn't know what was going to come out in the text.

To my pleasant surprise, I only had to write a few pages before I started settling into the new voice. And while I don't have the distance to be certain, I'm pretty sure that this narrator doesn't sound like the other narrator at all. He has his own personality and his own perspective on the world, and I think the voice reflects that.

I find that it helps for me to keep in mind a few basic characteristics of the narrator I'm writing. These are big blunt generalities like "he is methodical" and "he has high expectations." I hope the text doesn't scream these messages, because the character's full personality is (supposed to be) more complex, but these bullet points help remind me how the character might react in a situation.

I've also been giving some thought to the specific vocabulary the narrator uses and slipping in some language related to his profession. Again, this is something that could be much too clunky and obvious, so I want to be sure not to go overboard. I'm even considering sentence structure and trying to create some subtle differences between narrators there.

If I can get all this right, I won't have to worry that my readers will ever get confused about who's talking.

Never Let Me Go

I read Kazuo Ishiguro's NEVER LET ME GO for the first time in 2007. It had been recommended by a friend or two, but I don't recall what was said that made me want to pick it up. Possibly just, "You must read this." I recently read it again.

The description on the back of the edition I have explains wonderfully little. That first time, I learned that the story is about three friends who attended an English boarding school together, and now one of them is reflecting on their time there. It didn't sound that interesting, to be honest, but I trusted the recommendations and nearly started reading without knowing anything more, which I think is the best way to approach this book. Unfortunately, as is my habit, I looked at the Library of Congress subject headings on the copyright page, which contains a big spoiler. If you haven't read the book, don't look there. (You're not looking, are you?)

Since I advocate reading this book without learning anything about it, I'm reluctant to post about it, but I do want to talk about how much I love the narrative voice. I'm going to focus on the beginning of the book, and I won't give away any of the big secrets, but if you'd prefer to remain entirely unspoiled, feel free to move on.

The book starts with the notation "England, late 1990s," a time already in the past when the book was published in 2005. The narrator opens by introducing herself:

My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years.

By the end of the first paragraph, she has shared her pride in how well she does her job:

My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as "agitated," even before fourth donation.

Kathy goes on for a couple of pages about "carers" and "donors" without ever explaining what she's talking about. By the time she moves on to reminiscing about her idyllic childhood at a place called Hailsham, the reader has a suspicion that something is going on in Kathy's world that didn't exist in the 1990s England that we're aware of. We'd like to know what that's about, but Kathy is busy describing a taunting incident that occurred among her classmates when she was twelve. She's quite concerned with getting the details of the memory right and pinpointing what she remembers and what she isn't certain of.

The moment I adore appears ten pages into the book: "I don't know how it was where you were," Kathy writes. Now we start to understand why Kathy doesn't explain carers and donors: she's addressing an audience of her peers, who are already familiar with what she's talking about. From time to time, Kathy makes more such references to our supposed shared history. The effect continues to thrill me.

Kathy has set out to record an accurate account of her time at Hailsham. She's rarely concerned with the significance of caring and donation, because that's not the purpose of her memoirs, and it's not what the readers she imagines want to learn about. As the real readers of Ishiguro's novel, we're most interested in the aspects of Kathy's story that she's most offhand about. While she explores the complicated dynamics of her two closest friendships, we gradually assemble the clues that reveal how Kathy's world differs from our own.

If -- and only if! -- you've read the book, check out this discussion by Vito Excalibur. She must have been one of the people who originally recommended the book to me, and this insight has stayed with me.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Book Lady Rebecca Schinsky is reading WAR AND PEACE: "I'm hoping that by recording my reading of this most intimidating of classics (with the possible exception of Ulysses), I'll be able to demystify the process for others who, like me, have trembled at the thought of cracking its spine."

Meet The Weird Sisters

I guess I've been too busy reading books to find time to post about them. I have a few recommendations to catch up on this week.

I finished Eleanor Brown's THE WEIRD SISTERS a month ago, but procrastinating this long on writing about it means that I get to tell you about a bunch of cool things that have happened to Eleanor and to the book. THE WEIRD SISTERS made it onto the New York Times Best Sellers and several other lists, Eleanor was interviewed on NPR and elsewhere, and she's visiting several states to promote her book. I'm so pleased to be able to say that I knew her when, even if "when" is only since last year and "knew" is so far only online.

I'm even more pleased to be able to say good things about THE WEIRD SISTERS. It's a book about siblings and secrets -- two of my favorite subjects -- with an unusual narrative style, which is another element I like in a book. Since all these combine into a compelling and beautifully written story, THE WEIRD SISTERS gets a glowing recommendation from me.

The book is about three grown sisters who return home when their mother gets breast cancer, without revealing that they're each also fleeing from a different life problem. The family home is in a small college town where the father teaches Shakespeare and communicates as much as possible in lines from the Bard. Aside from sharing this upbringing and their Shakespearean names, the sisters don't have much in common and don't particularly like each other. Things regress from there.

While the character I liked best was the youngest sister (and I notice that Eleanor is herself the youngest of three sisters), as an older sister, I identified completely with the oldest of the three. Bossy control freak, unappreciated for her ability to keep everyone else's life in order? That would be me.

The story is told in a rarely used point of view, first-person plural. The three sisters narrate collectively as "we" and use names or the third-person "she" to talk about a single sister. It's a little strange to read at first, but it works. Here's a sample from the first chapter:

We see stories in magazines or newspapers sometimes, or read novels, about the deep and loving relationships between sisters. Sisters are supposed to be tight and connected, sharing family history and lore, laughing over misadventures. But we are not that way. We never have been, really, because even our partnering was more for spite than for love. Who are these sisters who act like this, who treat each other as their best friends? We have never met them. We know plenty of sisters who get along well, certainly, but wherefore the myth?

We don't think Cordy minds, really, because she tends to take things as they come. Rose minds, certainly, because she likes things to align with her mental image. And Bean? Well, it comes and goes with Bean, as does everything with her. To forge such an unnatural friendship would just require so much effort.

Cool, huh? If this glimpse of the narration and the characters appeals to you, read THE WEIRD SISTERS or, um, get thee to a nunnery!

The Art of Racing in the Rain

After my last book post, it may seem that I should write about THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN from the perspective of a dog. But dogs can't read, silly.

Even Enzo, the dog who narrates Garth Stein's novel, hasn't managed literacy, though he understands speech and tries to lead as human a life as possible. It's Enzo's fascination with and near-complete comprehension of the human world that makes him work as the narrator of this story, which is mostly about the humans Enzo lives with. And it's the canine point of view that made this book a bestseller. The family story has strong characters and a compelling plot that brought me to tears several times, but if it had been published without a dog narrating, I doubt it would have been deemed anything special.

I'm all for writers choosing unusual points of view, but this has to be done with careful thought in order to be effective. If Stein had let the family dog narrate his story simply so that his manuscript would stand out, it would have felt gratuitous. But he gave Enzo a deep and unexpected personality, and he made purposeful decisions about what Enzo does and doesn't witness and understand, so the point of view becomes integral to the story. This would be a very different book with another narrator.

Stein discusses his choice in a FAQ for the book (contains spoilers):

Using a dog as a narrator has limitations and it has advantages. The limitations are that a dog cannot speak. A dog has no thumbs. A dog can't communicate his thoughts except with gestures. Dogs are not allowed certain places. The advantages are that a dog has special access: people will say things in front of dogs because it is assumed that a dog doesn't understand. Dogs are allowed to witness certain things because they aren't people and have no judgment.

Though I love dogs, I avoided THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN when it first came out, partly because I was suspicious of the hype, and partly because race car driving is a big part of the story, and I'm not interested in race cars. I forgot something I've probably forgotten before: I'm always fascinated when a novel incorporates descriptions of the expert knowledge required to do something, as long as the explanations are well-written and passionate. After reading this book, I have a much greater appreciation of the art of racing (in the rain or otherwise), and I'm glad Enzo took me along for the ride.

Bright Lights, Big City and You

You've been meaning to read Jay McInerney's BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY for years, ever since hearing that it's written in the second person. You were intrigued, understandably. Point of view in fiction has always been an area of interest, and you might be described as a sucker for narrative gimmicks.

While preparing for a trip to Manhattan, you entertained romantic fantasies of reading a novel set in New York during your stay. You forgot, as you always do, that you never manage to read while traveling, and that at best, you might get through a few chapters on the plane before falling asleep. You brought an optimistic two novels and didn't even open them, so it wasn't until after your return that you finally started BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY.

The second-person narration was strange at first. You kept stopping to stare at that word and analyze how it made you feel to be cast in the role of a coke-fueled, miserable young guy in early '80s New York. But these days you always focus too much on the words at the beginning of a book. When the writing is good -- and in this case it is -- you get pulled into the story soon enough.

Still, even as you were enjoying the breakneck ride through nightclub debauchery and the contrasting sobriety of a respected magazine's Department of Factual Verification, you did keep thinking about the effect. Were you drawn closer to the narrator and his muddled thoughts because the novel said that he was you? Or were you kept at a greater distance by a character in denial who refused to call himself "I"? You feel it's both at once somehow, and that it works for the story, and that you're glad you aren't a real book reviewer so you don't have to think about it harder than that.

You could never be a real book reviewer.