JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #66
August 26, 2021
I was writing a first-person story recently, and halfway through a scene I realized that I’d become confused about which point-of-view I was writing in. I hesitated in referring to the main character: What should I use? The name? The pronoun "me"? At that moment I knew something had gone very wrong with the scene and I would need to rework it.
Obviously, I’d forgotten the character, forgotten the purpose of the scene. I was so focused on getting down on the page exactly what was happening around the character, contours of the action, that I was neglecting why any of it mattered. Even though the point-of-view character was only witnessing the actions of the other characters on the page, rather than participating directly, my POV character’s feelings and reflections about what was happening should have been the primary motivation of the narrative arc in that moment. The solution to the problem was that I needed to go back and be sure I was telling the scene from inside the character’s head, not from some dislocated point in space nearby.
This issue reminds me of the advice I sometimes remember to give: our writing will be more powerful if we try to accomplish more than one thing with every sentence we write. It’s not enough to get down on the page merely what happens, but we should try to imbue that happening with emotion, try to give the reader a suggestion of why it matters for the character not only in the moment but in the greater scheme of the story. Layering the telling of the story with various levels of information and implication gives it depth and power. It might come from the emotional charge of a particular choice of word or phrase. Or it might be in the voice with which some detail is conveyed. Or the order in which things are revealed, how description of the scene interplays with character reaction.
We don’t need to think about all of it all at once as we’re writing. Trying to keep all of the fictional elements in mind all the time is very difficult. Sometimes it takes several passes through, each time with the focus of punching up a different element. This is often a feature of revision that is forgotten: we don’t necessarily need to tidy up what’s there, but to layer in what’s missing. All of the elements of fiction can be in play with every sentence, and as many of them as we can engage with at a time will strengthen the prose. Writing advice often tries to distinguish between telling and showing, but most of the time both of them are happening at the same time. What we choose to tell gives rise to what we’re choosing to show.
Next: On Ascending the Heights