Comments on A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing: Subtle Narration in the Graveyard Book

Silas waved a long fingered hand in front of the m...

2009-11-18T19:44:24.290-05:00

Silas waved a long fingered hand in front of the man Jack's face. "This isn't the toddler you're looking for."
"This isn't the toddler I'm looking for," said Jack.
"It was a fox," said Silas.
"A fox," agreed Jack.
"Move along."

(typo in previous comment) I have to say, when I ...

2009-11-18T19:41:52.418-05:00

(typo in previous comment)

I have to say, when I read that part in the book I thought immediately of Star Wars (goes to show how much less sophisticated my thought processes are compared to your other blog readers :) ). I wondered whether mind control ideas in Star Wars (& millions of other sci-fi-ish shows since) made it that much easier for me to understand what was going on in this scene without a lot of extra explanations.

Wait...come to think of it, didn't Bram Stoker's Dracula have a mind-control element? (spoiler alert) Thus, this could be another subtle clue that Silas could be a vampire. Woah.

Jordan -- I like that phrase -- "trusting the read...

2009-11-17T17:31:32.186-05:00

Jordan -- I like that phrase -- "trusting the reader." And it's made even more challenging by the fact that not all readers are the same -- so you're not dealing with a binary will get it/will not get it, but rather that writing something a certain way will cause 50% of the audience to get it rather than 75%. I find it interesting that Gaiman has this kind of writing style, but this is a children's book. I can definitely see some things sneaking past some kids. It's kind of like Pixar movies -- where they have something for the younger viewers as well as the older.

I did love the narration in The Graveyard Book, es...

2009-11-17T17:20:20.738-05:00

I did love the narration in The Graveyard Book, especially surrounding Silas.

But I disagree that making it more explicit is always telling. The only part of Livia's example that's truly telling is when she uses the word "confused." The rest is just showing more explicitly than Gaiman did.

I've heard this expressed as "trusting the reader." It's a very delicate balance—and I'll bet that Gaiman took a lot of drafts and outside advice in achieving that balance.

And I've been told in Victorian times, when everyone was so concerned about societal standards, the omniscient narrator was so important to stories, so we could get society's POV (check out http://www.sff.net/people/alicia/arthist.htm ).

Freud's big contribution was the idea of the subco...

2009-11-17T13:22:06.157-05:00

Freud's big contribution was the idea of the subconscious and how that affects our conscious thoughts and behaviors. By necessity, limited POV still mostly deals with conscious thoughts, but it does take us closer to to the subconscious than omniscient 3rd person would. It's an interesting possibility. I wonder if the rise in limited POV also has to do with a rise in individualism and individual identity. It'd be interesting to see whether collectivist cultures have a more omniscient narrator than individualist cultures.

Oh, just reminded me of another passage that doesn...

2009-11-17T12:42:36.971-05:00

Oh, just reminded me of another passage that doesn't directly explain things -- the ending of "To Kill a Mockingbird", where they decided that the guy (what's his name?) "fell on his knife." I liked how that was done.

Livia, I think the modernist novelists were the on...

2009-11-17T12:42:30.125-05:00

Livia, I think the modernist novelists were the ones that poked clean through the 3rd person omniscient. Joyce, Conrad, et. al. were certainly not tell-all writers.

Does it have something to do with Freud's influence and the rise of psycholanalysis/psychology? You'd be in a better position to answer that one, I think.

Simon -- I originally thought of subtletly in narr...

2009-11-17T12:39:26.549-05:00

Simon -- I originally thought of subtletly in narration as a more recent phonomenon that came about as the omnicient narrator became less popular, but the examples you gave are from the early 1900s. Hmm, I wonder when the omnicient narrator started declining...

Subtle. Definitely subtle. I don't like to say eve...

2009-11-17T12:33:26.257-05:00

Subtle. Definitely subtle. I don't like to say everything, and prefer to let the reader come to their conclusions via inference.

I like the great stories where things were never fully explained, yet you know what happened nonetheless. Faulkner's "Red Leaves" comes to mind. As does Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises," in which we're never explicitly told what the narrator's injury is, but don't have any trouble figuring it out.

Oh, I definitely prefer the telling-less style. A...

2009-11-17T00:26:55.353-05:00

Oh, I definitely prefer the telling-less style.

After all, the fun of reading, the whole reason why reading novels or any fiction is an enjoyable pursuit, is exactly in that act of sorting out what's true but NOT written on the page.

"Reading between the lines," they called in gradeschool (although no teacher I ever had could really explain what that meant) is the fun part.

It's the writer's job to SHOW what happens, as objectively as possible, while giving subtle clues so the reader can interpret what it means.

Your impulse, to leave more on the page and less between the lines, is TELLING the reader, not SHOWING.

And it's no wonder people tend not to like that style as much: If you tell the reader what everything means, if you leave nothing between the lines, you are quite literally taking all the fun out of the story.

Comments on *A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing*: Subtle Narration in the Graveyard Book