Novel Ways to Pull the Reader In: Critical Reading

Novel Ways to Pull the Reader In

In This Page

 Who's telling the story? 

What dialogue really tells the reader

Using style, tone, and tense to shift meaning and mood

Using new characters to recycle old themes

The basic structure of plot

What does an author do to make his or her work memorable? Part of it is the story itself, but even more important is the way the story is told. Why does the author choose a character in the novel to tell the story versus telling it himself, for example? What about dialogue, plot, and tone? Do these things simply fall into place, or are each of them carefully constructed by the writer?

To read a novel, it's important to understand how it is put together. In this chapter, you learn why the author makes certain choices about the way he or she will tell the story, and how being able to identify those choices will make the story clearer for you.

Find the Point of View

When you tell someone a story, it's always told from your point of view. You were there; you witnessed or were directly involved in the action—the only way to tell the story is the way you remember it happening. You can try telling a story from someone else's point of view, but you can only say what you think and feel and not what the other person is thinking and feeling. One of the first things a fiction writer must do, after figuring out the plot and characters, is to figure out who will tell the story. The narrator is the heart of the story, without which the text would not hold together and the tale would not hold authority.

The author has a few choices with regard to who will tell the story. Will it be a character within the story? Will it be an objective observer to the action? Or will it be an active participant in the action? Sometimes the story is told by someone who is not involved in the story at all, but who seems to know about everyone and everything happening in the book. (This is called the omniscient narrator.) When you read a novel, the narrator will either be so obvious that he screams off the page at you or will be so subtle that you barely notice who is telling the story. None of this is an accident. Writers make very conscious decisions about how they want their stories to be told, and a great deal of consideration is always given to narrative voice and point of view.

There are a number of different narrative voices an author can use, and the final choice will be for both stylistic and artistic purposes, which we discuss further after you have a handle on some specific terminology. Narrative voices are referred to as first, second, and third person.

Here's a summary of some commonly used narrative techniques in fiction:

First person narrator. The narrator is a character in the story and tells the story from his or her point of view. He or she is an observer of events with a subjective point of view. Writing in the first person limits the narrator's ability to be objective and therefore limits his or her reliability in the telling of the story.

First person observer (or first person reporter). Again, the story is told from the narrator's point of view, most likely by a character in the story, but as more of an observer than a participant in the action.

Second person: Second person is most commonly found in letter format and when a narrator switches gears to address the reader. Second person allows the narrator to address the reader by using "you." Authors do not usually feel the need to write in the second person. It is actually a difficult voice to use and is not always executed effectively.

Third person. The third person narrator is not necessarily a character in the piece of writing. Writing in the third person allows the author to have an objective party telling the story.

Third person reporter. Writing with this voice allows the narrator to be close to one character, telling the story through that person's eyes. The third person reporter has a limited point of view, but allows the reader to identify with one character throughout the story.

• Third person omniscient. This might be the favorite voice of any fiction writer. It allows the narrator to be anywhere at any time. The author can use the omniscient narrator to tell you what anyone is thinking. It gives the author godlike powers to tell the story from any character's point of view.

Although it's the fiction writer's job to establish the narrator and to be consistent with the narrative voice in the telling of the story, it's your job as the reader to try to understand what the writer intends to say to you through the use of a particular narrator. Often the best way to figure this out is to identify the point of view and to consider the reliability of the narrator.

Exceptions to the Rules

There are very rare exceptions when a first person narrator can be omniscient, but one good example is in a recently published novel called The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold. It is about a young girl who is murdered and watches her family lead their lives from her bird's-eye view in heaven. Because she is in heaven, she has the ability to be omniscient—so she is able to see, hear, and know things that she normally wouldn't be able to if she were alive on Earth.

Young Suzie Salmon, in that case, can be considered Sebold's first person omniscient narrator: Hours before I died, my mother hung on the refrigerator a picture that Buckley had drawn. In the drawing a thick blue line separated air and ground. In the days that followed I watched my family walk back and forth past the drawing and I became convinced that that thick blue line was a real place—an

In between, where heaven's horizon met Earth's, (pg. 34)

Another good example of this type of first person omniscience was used in the recent Jeffrey Eugenides novel called Middlesex. The narrator tells the story of the lives of his parents and grandparents as he awaits his own birth, so his narrator is able to see, hear, and know all:

Meanwhile, in the greenroom to the world, I waited. Not even a gleam in my father's eye yet (he was staring gloomily at the thermometer case in his lap). Now my mother gets up from the so-called love seat. She heads for the stairway, holding a hand to her forehead, and the likelihood of my ever coming to be seems more and more remote, (pg. 11) This was a clever technique for the author to use because it allowed him to tell the story from the main character's point of view in first person while giving the narrator reliability by putting him in a position of omniscience. In other words, the back story can be told with credibility by the main character in the story.

Point of View and Dialogue

Another way an author can sneak in more information about characters when the book is written in third person is through the use of dialogue. This proves especially helpful when writing in third person limited, where the narrator is particularly close to one character. If the narrator has a limited scope in ability to tell the story from different character perspectives, dialogue is a good way to alert the reader about what is going on in a character's mind, allowing you to get a more complete story.

The following exchange comes from Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River (which uses a third person limited narrator) and takes place between the protagonist, Trudi Montag, and her antagonist, Max:

"Look at me," he said. "I haven't seen her in years."

"You're divorced then?"

"Not legally. But I will be, if we ever agree enough to sign papers."

Her body felt stiff as if her heart had stopped beating.

"Come here." He opened his arms to her. "Please, Trudi?"

She shook her head. One of his hairs lay on her arm, dark and curled. She couldn't bear to touch it and blew it away.

"Ask whatever you need to know."

"You wouldn't have told me ..."

"I promise you the truth."

"You would never have told me ..."

"I don't think of her, Trudi. I don't think of myself as married."

"But you are."

"People don't always tell each other everything right away."

Her face felt hot. "What do you mean?"

"Wouldn't you agree that it's better to wait to reveal some things until you know the other person's ready to hear them?"

"I-I'm not sure."

"Well, you wanted to know if I had faults."

"And you do."

"You said I was too perfect."

"I would have settled for something less dramatic than a wife." (pg. 394—395)

Through the dialogue, with very few narrator interjections, we see the struggle between the two characters. The narrator doesn't tell us this directly; the characters do, as though they have taken on the role of the narrator. By not interceding, the narrator allows us to draw our own conclusions about who these characters are.

For example, from this dialogue we know that Trudi is hurt as her lover, Max, explains his situation to her. Although he is loving and honest, it doesn't stop Trudi from feeling betrayed and angry. That's a lot of information to receive based on the words of two characters. What the author is doing here is showing us, rather than telling us, what is going on between these two people.

Is the Narrator a Character?

If the narrator is a character in the novel, the author will have a good sense of the tone and mood of the character, and that makes it a little easier to determine how the author wants the character to convey the story to you.

But what happens when the narrator is not a character in the story? Where is this mysterious voice coming from? The logical answer to that is that it is the author telling the story, but this is not always the

case. Sometimes the author and the narrator are one in the same, but most often authors choose a different voice from their own because they have a plan in mind for the way they want the story to be told.

When the story is told in the third person, and not by a character within the story, the narrator is invisible but will still have a mood and a tone and a particular way of telling the story.

Narrator Reliability

The reader doesn't have to agree with the narrator, but the reader needs to believe that the narrator is telling the real story from whatever perspective the story is being told. If the author is not consistent with the mood and tone of the narrator, the narrator will not be convincing and the reader may not stay with the book.

Sometimes, however, the author wants to use an unreliable narrator. For example, if the character is a child, you will hear the story from the child's point of view. Although children are certainly as able as anyone else in telling stories, you may not be getting as close to the truth as possible because you will have a more innocent and inexperienced voice telling you what is going on.

Choosing an unreliable narrator, such as a child, is a deliberate author technique. The writer wants the reader to have to dig a little further to find the truth, and yet the writer still wants us to hear the story from the perspective of this particular observer. But because we have to read so much more into the narrator's story, we are dealing with what is called an "unreliable narrator" and have to be sure we don't

take the story at face value or we will completely miss the author's intention.

One of Amy's favorite unreliable narrators is Daisy Fay Harper from Fannie Flagg's book Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man. Daisy Fay is 11 years old and has some interesting perspectives on life as she sees it—or on the stories she's been told: When I was being born, I kicked Momma so hard that now she can't have any

more children. I don't remember kicking her at all. It wasn't my fault I was so fat and if Daddy hadn't choked the doctor and made him nervous, I would have been born better, (pg. 14) Although the readers will never know where Daisy got this story from unless she tells us, it is likely she heard it from one of her parents and has put her own spin on it. So not only are we hearing the story from a child narrator, we are hearing her own retold version of it, which makes it even more unreliable.

So why did the author do this? Well, Daisy is a very creative and amusing child. What we learn from this short paragraph is that Daisy is confident and strong-minded in her ability not to blame herself for her mother's hard delivery; we also learn that her mother can't have any more children. It is unlikely that that is because Daisy kicked her, even though that's what Daisy is presenting to us as fact. We may never know

the truth, but we are getting information from her, and she does tell us the story with humor, which makes the reading experience a lot of fan.

Another type of unreliable narrator would be someone who is not mentally stable, as in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. The story is about a grownup man's obsession with an adolescent girl told from his point of view. Humbert Humbert is clearly delusional and portrays the girl, Delores (or Lolita), as a temptress.

If we were to take the story at face value solely based on what Humbert tells us, we would believe that Lolita is largely to blame for her plight. But as logical and objective readers, we know that we are reading the story from the point of view of a pedophile and Lolita is probably not the seductress Humbert would like us to believe she is. This is where it is the reader's responsibility to read between the lines.

Keep in mind that at the very beginning of Lolita, Humbert, as the narrator, tells the reader that he is not a normal man. He gives you definitions of his obsession and even compares himself to "normal" men. It is important not to lose sight of this as he moves into the actual story or you run the risk of taking his story as the truth instead of just his point of view.

Know Your Narrator

To read more deeply means making some kind of acquaintance with who the narrator is. You may have to get a few pages into the story before you understand what kind of narrator you are dealing with. From page one, you will know what point of view the story is being told from: first, second, or third. It may take a little more reading to know whether this is third person limited or third person omniscient, but after you've figured it out, you should keep it in mind as you read. Just remember: It may take you even more time to figure out whether the narrator is reliable—sometimes it isn't apparent until the end of the book.

Autobiographical Narration

In some cases, especially in the case of the autobiographical novel, it's helpful to compare

the author with his or her narrator. The more you know about the author, the easier it will be to understand the narrative voice.

The story of Edna Pontellier as told by Kate Chopin in The Awakening was based on Kate Chopin's true-life story. When we say "based on," we don't mean that the story is word for word the life of the author, but Chopin takes her own thoughts and feelings and uses them to bring her character to life. Chopin lived her life in pursuit of independence with the desire to validate her identity apart from being a mother and apart from the men who admired her. Chopin took these characteristics and made them a part of Edna's psyche in order to tell her story.

Chopin takes some daring and innovative risks in her writing. For example, she switches the narrative voice between third person limited and omniscient. She uses third person limited when she wants us to understand what is going on inside of Edna's mind. It's as though we are privy to the inner workings of the protagonist, almost as though the story were written in first person. When Chopin wants you to see Edna's external world she dips back into the omniscient narrative. This allows the reader to take a peek at what the action outside of Edna's mind is all about. This is important because if we stayed inside Edna's mind too long, we wouldn't be able to get a complete picture of her circumstances. Viewing the action through the omniscient voice allows the plot to move along while enabling the reader to stay with the story.

What we know of Edna Pontellier is that she is an independent woman, much like the author herself. Although Chopin invented Edna, she is really telling you her own story—thus making the novel autobiographical in nature but not necessarily true to life with respect to the details of Chopin's life.

When Chopin switches to an omniscient narrator, she relies upon an observer to tell you the story of Edna Pontellier. You know now that the story is autobiographical, so in choosing to tell us part of the story in third person omniscient, Chopin allows herself some distance from her own reality to tell us her self-inspired story in a fictionalized form. If the story is her own, or close to her own, why wouldn't she tell it in first person? Well, that was a personal choice for Chopin; if you think about it, however, it makes sense to tell it through the eyes of an observer.

To tell the story in first person would make it seem as though she were writing a memoir and she may not have been able to communicate the story to the reader quite so powerfully. By telling the story in third person, she gives it a more universal appeal. If she told the story in first person, the reader might see the story as only applying to the author and might not relate to it or understand it in the same way.

By taking her story outside of herself, she can observe it in a similar way as the reader—with some element of distance and objectivity.

Consider the Tense and Tone

An author can use many techniques to affect your reading experience. Sometimes these choices will surprise you, as when a writer fiddles around with narrator, tense, and tone. For example, in The Awakening, when Chopin relies on the omniscient narrator, and she uses the past tense and changes it only when she is emphasizing details.

Here is an example, in which she speaks about her husband:

Mr. Pontellier had prepared for bed, but he slipped on an extra garment. He opened a bottle of wine, of which he kept a small and select supply in a buffet of his own. He drank a glass of the wine and went out on the gallery and offered a glass to his wife. She did not wish any. He drew up the rocker, hoisted his slippered feet on the rail, and proceeded to smoke a cigar. He smoked two cigars; then went inside and drank another glass of wine. Mrs. Pontellier again declined to accept a glass when it was offered to her. Mr. Pontellier once more seated himself with elevated feet, and after a reasonable interval of time smoked some more cigars.

The omniscient narrator has set a scene almost in the same way a camera might pan the details of this man's moments in a film. And then, the narrator shifts the tone to a much more personal one in telling us about Edna: Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul.

The physical need for sleep began to overtake her; the exuberance which had sustained and exalted her spirit left her helpless and yielding to the conditions which crowded her in.

First of all, notice that Edna is no longer referred to as Mrs. Pontellier in this second paragraph. By switching tenses and tone, the narrator seems to have drawn herself into Edna's mind, bringing us closer to her and further away from the world outside of herself. By using her first name and changing the tense, it's as though the narrator is standing side by side with Edna, allowing the reader to feel the closeness and giving you a sense that this story really is about Edna's inner world. The narrator has entered into Edna's mind and body and describes her feelings intimately and personally.

Do you notice how the change to the present tense gives us an immediate experience in connection to Edna's feelings and her state of mind?

This change of tense from the detached, distant, cameralike view to the intimate, deeply personal is done throughout the book and has a powerful dramatic effect on the story and therefore upon the reader. It might not be something you would have caught if you were unfamiliar with author techniques. Now that you know what to look for, it might be easier to spot and will allow you a more complete and fulfilling read of the book.

Choosing the Characters

Like the plot (which we discuss later in this chapter) and the selection of the narrator, the characters the author chooses to use in the story relation to the story have a place and meaning in. Each character is carefully selected and has a specific role in the story to make the plot reliable and complete.

Sometimes the character's place is easy to identify, whereas at other times you have to ask why the author feels such a character is necessary. It's not enough, for example, to throw in a character who is funny just to make the reader laugh. The character has some greater purpose. Ask yourself why the author feels you need this comic relief. Never take any character for granted. They're all there for a reason.

Old Themes, New Characters

In Chopin's The Awakening, the story follows an unconventional married woman who finds herself stifled in her conventional marriage and takes a lover. But it really isn't as simple as that tired old theme suggests. This book is about growing and changing through the experiences life offers. It's about wanting a sense of fulfillment in life. This has been a common literary theme concerning stories about men and women alike, and similar examples can be found in novels about class and race, as well.

So why do writers bother with tired old plots? Well, because they aren't yet worn out; otherwise authors would stop using them. These plots and characters are based on what human beings are still struggling with and will probably always struggle with. We can relate to them.

The art of repeating themes lies primarily in the characters used to depict the story and the plot that drives them in their actions. In other words, it doesn't matter whether the same theme is stated over and over again in book after book. It bears repeating as long as people continue to evolve and change and try to find solutions to age-old problems. What makes old themes recyclable are the characters we read about, who point to the larger society and culture that bred them, and to ourselves personally

Character and the Common Bond

Although it is true that characters in their various plots and settings can carry a common bond, what makes them unique is the way they tell the story. For example, Becky Sharp from William Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Scarlet O'Hara from Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind are similar characters living in completely different places and times.

Becky Sharp uses her femininity and conniving abilities to keep herself afloat amid the upper class. What use is it to be beautiful and poor? She wants attention and money, which for her means the good life and, ultimately, survival. She'll stop at nothing to get what she wants. Scarlet O'Hara is the same type of character with different motivations. Scarlet doesn't dream so much of wealth and the upper classes—she was born and bred in that world. Scarlet most wants love, a home, and attention. To her, these things define survival.

So what do these two character types tell us about their respective stories? What are the authors trying to say to us by using these characters? Well, that selfish manipulation doesn't always have the same outcome. Although Becky Sharp and Scarlet O'Hara are often compared as character types due to their abilities to get what they want through using femininity and manipulation tactics, their personalities and their needs are not the same, and the outcomes of their stories are completely different.

Scarlet winds up virtually unchanged and trying to figure out to weasel her way back to Rhett Butler. Becky, on the other hand, winds up with the desire to be a respected woman.

Characters following a common (and well-used) theme may not arrive at the same place at the end of their respective stories. As long as there are clever authors out there who are able to put new and unusual twists on a character "type," the reader will want to keep on reading.

Scarlet's story ends with the realization that the love she had sought was hers all along, but instead of winding up happy, she winds up losing the man she realizes she loves too late.

Building a House: Plot Structure

Every good piece of fiction will be comprised of a specific plot structure. This is a basic truth for novels, short stories, film, plays, television programs, and sometimes even in poetry (depending on the style of the poem). Although it might sound like a dull concept for every piece of fiction to have the same basic foundation, it is the very structure of the work that makes it understandable.

A common teaching method to help readers and writers understand the structure of fiction is to picture a piece of fiction as a house. That's right—four walls, a roof, rooms, closets—everything that makes a house a complete structure, although plans for that interior may vary greatly from book to book just as they do in real homes.

How does the concept of architecture apply to fiction writing? The house represents the entire structure—the whole story. Inside the house there are rooms, and each room is a plot point, meaning a particular action that takes place within the story.

The action of the story is the movement that takes place within the house, and, of course, the people moving within the house are the characters. Without these elements a house could never be a home—it would just be a skeleton with no life.

Between the Walls

In addition to having an overall structure, the story must follow a certain movement, which you can remember by thinking about the alphabet. Well, part of the alphabet anyway:

A - Action

B - Background

C - Conflict, crisis, climax (in that order)

D - Dénouement (resolution)

E - End (conclusion)

Action

Every story needs action to move the plot forward and lead the characters toward growth and transition. If there is no action, the story cannot go anywhere and we probably wouldn't be interested in reading it anyway.

Background

To fully understand the story and the motivations of the characters, we need to know do the things they do and feel the way they feel? It's no different than understanding your own life or the lives of other people. We really get to know the people in our lives when we know where they come from, what makes them tick, and what drives them.

From Conflict to Climax

The purpose of a piece of fiction is to show how the protagonist changes. This is best done when there is a conflict. How the conflict builds comes from the action in the story. A conflict leads to a crisis where the protagonist is usually faced with choices.

How that character deals with the crisis helps us understand the protagonist's psychological, moral, social, or even physical transformation. The climax of the story is the pinnacle of the crisis and the point at which the character transition occurs.

Dénouement or Resolution

As readers (and as people) we need resolution to a given conflict. In fiction, we need to know what the character makes of this transition. Is the character aware that there has been a change inside himself or herself? If so, what are these internal changes? Is the character at peace? Does he or she have any better understanding of himself or herself within the situation? Or does he or she have more work to do and have simply passed through the initial stages of change?

Conclusion

Although an author can easily end a book with the resolution, sometimes he or she will take it a step further with a conclusion. It really depends on what the author is trying to say. If the most important development in the story is the resolution of the conflict, the author may choose not to tell you what happens to the character next. By ending the story at the some background. Who are these characters, where do they come from, why do they at the point of resolution, the author is telling you that:

You don't need to know where the character goes from there; the important thing is how he or she got there.

Think of this in terms of the fairy tale that ends in "happily ever after." What does that mean, exactly?

The story is really about how the hero or heroine got to the "happily ever after" and not what the "happily ever after" actually refers to—which we assume to be comfort and family. All of these elements, if constructed well, should lead the reader to a sense of both satisfaction and loss—satisfaction with the resolution and loss that it is over. That's what makes fiction reading worthwhile.

Putting the Pieces Together

If you take the narrative voice, tone, mood, setting, plot, theme, point of view, and characterizations and put them together, they complete an intricate puzzle of meaning. If the craftsmanship is there, you will be in for a wonderful reading experience.

It's an art form and a skill for a writer to put all the bits and pieces together and have them make sense to a total stranger. You have no idea what the author was thinking when he or she set out to write the book, but by the time you close the book, if the author has done his or her job well and you are knowledgeable enough to see it, you will have completed a journey you may never forget. But now, not only will you be able to feel excited about it, you'll also be able to say why.

The Least You Need to Know

• Narrative voice is a deliberate storytelling device.

• The tense the author chooses to use (past or present) pulls us into the story or .backs us away from it.

• Dialogue is used to reveal character detail.

• Following a basic plot pattern is essential for fiction.