HOW TO WRITE FICTION - Lesson 8: More Elements of Fiction

In the last lesson, we learned how to set a plot in motion by creating a protagonist who has a strong desire and plenty of conflict. Many other elements of craft go into the making of a good story, all of which revolve around the characters, in one way or another. (Remember, characters are the source.) Let’s take a brief look at just a few of these elements.

Setting

A setting is the place and time in which a story occurs. It's helpful to let the readers know where and when the characters are. The Great Gatsby takes place in Long Island and New York City in the 1920s. But setting zooms in even closer than that. Notice how Fitzgerald evokes the magic of Gatsby's mansion:

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

And here Fitzgerald evokes a much less glamorous setting:

This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

In both instances, we are given a very tangible sense of place. The first example also indicates time, and a little later in the second example, we are told that it's "afternoon." Not only do these settings tell us where and when we are, but they also enhance the emotional landscape of the book, which deals with the effects of money.

Some stories contain numerous settings, others only a few. Generally, longer stories utilize more settings than shorter ones. "Cathedral," for example, all takes place in the narrator's house on a single night. Regardless of how many settings you use, you want to give the readers the sense that they are there. And this can be achieved most effectively through description.

Description

Description happens when the writer discusses something in detail rather than just naming it. Instead of merely writing "Gatsby had music and guests at night," Fitzgerald goes quite a bit further, by summoning the powers of description. Done well, description makes the story spring vividly to life in the minds of the readers.

Look at this description from "Cathedral":

At first glance, his eyes looked like anyone else's eyes. But if you looked close, there was something different about them. Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it. Creepy. As I stared at his face, I saw the left pupil turn in toward his nose while the other made an effort to keep in one place.

One of the keys to effective description is being specific. Notice how specific Carver gets with the motion (or lack of it) in the blind man's eyes. Carver tends to be very sparing with his descriptions but when he needs it, he knows exactly how to bring something to life.

Another key to good description is to appeal to the senses. All of the examples given above employ the sense of sight. But the other senses count, too. In the description of Gatsby's mansion, we can hear for ourselves the "music" and "whisperings" among the night. In Fitzgerald's description of the valley of ashes, we can almost feel, smell, and even taste the ashes and smoke. You desire a shower after reading this passage in the book. It's almost as if we're driving through this desolate area ourselves, which in a sense we are because we're getting the story through Nick's point of view.

Point of View

Point of view, at its most fundamental level, refers to who is narrating the story and what this person knows. Most fictional works are told from either the First Person or the Third Person p.o.v. (p.o.v. is a commonly used abbreviation for point of view.)

In the First Person p.o.v., the story is being told by a character in the story, using the "I" voice. This is true of both The Great Gatsby and "Cathedral."

A First Person narrator is limited to telling about what he or she has thought or observed, just as people are in real life. Here's Nick narrating an encounter with Gatsby:

He looked at me sideways - and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying. He hurried the phrase "educated at Oxford," or swallowed it or choked on it as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces and I wondered if there wasn't something a little sinister about him after all.

Here, we're seeing Gatsby through Nick's eyes. Nick often has trouble knowing if Gatsby is being honest or not because he doesn't have direct access to Gatsby's mind. Since Gatsby is the protagonist of the story, this set-up presents numerous challenges to Fitzgerald. He must find artful ways to sneak in certain information about Gatsby, as when Jordan relates to Nick the story of Gatsby and Daisy's courtship. (It should be noted, though, that the first person narrator usually is the protagonist. Gatsby is unusual in this respect.)

In the Third Person p.o.v., the story is narrated directly by the writer, who is not a character in the story. Never using the "I" voice, the writer refers to the characters as "he" or "she." Such is the case with Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, which opens like so:

He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass.

In this passage, the narrator is seeing through the eyes of the protagonist, Robert Jordan. But in the Third Person p.o.v., the writer has some latitude regarding what knowledge the narrator can and can not have. In some stories, the Third Person narrator will stay confined to the thoughts and observations of a single character, as in the First Person. In other stories, the Third Person narrator will have access to the thoughts and observations of numerous characters, as in For Whom the Bells Toll.

The vast majority of the time, writers will make a choice regarding how they handle p.o.v. and stick with it throughout the story, be it First Person or some variation of Third Person.

How do you know which method will work best for your story? Well, it's not an easy decision. Often, it's a good idea to experiment with p.o.v. and see which method feels most comfortable or enlightening for your story. In "Cathedral," for example, the reader gains much insight by experiencing the story directly through the narrator's curmudgeonly eyes. But this p.o.v. wouldn't work as well in For Whom the Bells Toll because Hemingway needs to move fluidly among the minds of several different characters.

Point of view is a tricky thing to understand, but it's important because it will affect nearly every aspect of your story.

Other Elements

We’ve already spoken a bit about dialogue. Stories without dialogue tend to be flat, boring, and too quiet. Dialogue is a great way to liven up your story and it’s also an effective tool for characterization. At its best, dialogue sounds realistic but is also crafted in such a way that it reveals insight into each of the characters who speak.

Then there is voice. Surely you’ve noticed how the writers we’ve read in these lessons handle their use of language in very different ways. You probably wouldn’t confuse a Raymond Carver sentence with one by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is because these writers have a different voice, meaning there is a different sound to their storytelling. You should strive to develop your own unique voice, which is often best done by just writing in the way that comes to you most naturally. Of course, in the First Person p.o.v., the voice also needs to fit with the character who is narrating.

And, there are still more elements that go into the crafting of a good fictional story. In fact, writing fiction is a bit like cooking a stew. You toss in numerous ingredients then simmer and stir until the story is as good as you can possibly make it. Now it’s just a matter of going to the kitchen and cooking up some wonderful stories.

Discussion

After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the following:

1.   Were you previously aware of point of view?

2.   Does a story need a setting?

3.   Do you prefer description that is lush or spare?

Now that you’re aware of some of the elements that go into a good work of fiction, do you feel better equipped to handle writing your own story? Or are you more intimidated?

HOW TO WRITE FICTION - Lesson 7: A Story is a Quest

Characters are crucial in fiction. Actually, they are the most crucial element. We know that by now. However, fiction does not live by characters alone. Many other elements go into the creation of a story and one of those is a plot. If characters are what make us love a story, plot is what keeps us turning pages.

Plot is an intricate topic, and we could easily devote numerous lessons to it. For now, let's explore how characters may lead us into a good plot. We'll focus on The Great Gatsby in this lecture, while this week's reading assignment offers a detailed breakdown of the plot of "Cathedral."

The Protagonist

Usually a story has a single main character, or protagonist. A single protagonist because it's often most satisfying for readers to identify with one character – to see the world through, and go on a journey with, that one person. Yes, there are exceptions to this single protagonist rule. But it exists in the two stories we've been studying. The unnamed narrator is the protagonist of "Cathedral," and Jay Gatsby is the protagonist of The Great Gatsby (even though Nick is the story's narrator).

The protagonist of a story should be a round character, the rounder the better. Like the best characters, and like real people, the protagonist should be neither all good nor all bad. He or she should be sympathetic; we should be able to relate to the protagonist as a fellow human being. But a protagonist should not be a perfect person, a sure recipe for boredom.

Jay Gatsby and the "Cathedral" narrator both fit this bill nicely. Thought Gatsby is a courteous and decent man, he's full of flaws. He's obsessed with a married woman, Daisy, who really isn't worthy of all the hope and desire he expends on her behalf. He also lies to elevate his social position, and his business dealings do not seem to fall on the right side of the law. The "Cathedral" narrator is even more flawed. He's close-minded, unambitious, slightly mean, and his only hobbies seem to be TV, drink, and drugs. And yet, he's not entirely unsympathetic, as we gradually come to see his hidden desire to climb out of his rut.

Desire

Desire is what drives a protagonist. It’s customary in a story for the protagonist to have one major desire – need, want, whatever you want to call it. In fact, that’s where the plot comes from. Throughout the story the protagonist is trying to get the one thing he or she wants and by the end of the story the person will either get it or not get it. Call it a quest, much like the quests embarked upon by all those heroes and heroines in the ancient myths.

Jay Gatsby has a very clear desire. He wants Daisy Buchanan. He devotes his entire life to this quest and it never wavers throughout the book. He gains money to impress Daisy, he builds a mansion within viewing distance of Daisy's house, so he can keep an eye on her and so she can see his wealth. He befriends Nick, Daisy's cousin, so Nick can arrange a rendezvous for him with Daisy. And so on. Gatsby's desire for Daisy gives the story a clear focus, which, as we learned in the first lesson, is an important aspect of storytelling.

This focus can also make a story easier to write. Once you know your protagonist and his desire, you have a definite road map to follow.

Often, however, there is more to a character's desire than meets the eye. One suspects that Gatsby wants Daisy because she represents "class" and "success." Deep in his heart, Gatsby really wants to be accepted and admired by the elite of the world. Perhaps he wants this more than he actually loves Daisy. In a sense, she is a means to an end. So, often in fiction there is a desire beneath the desire.

Doesn't this make things more complicated than they need to be? Well, no, it can actually make things simpler to write. It's difficult to construct a plot around someone pursuing an abstract desire like "class" or "success." How do you obtain "class" or "success?" These aren't things you can grab in your hand or definitively capture or write scenes about. It's actually easier to make the immediate desire specific and concrete. Plot-wise, Daisy Buchanan works beautifully as an object of desire. She gives Gatsby's deepest desire a human face.

It's a simple formula and one that you can follow yourself. Pick a protagonist, then give him or her one specific, concrete desire. If layers of meaning lie beneath that desire, all the better, but keep the protagonist focused on that one tangible goal. Make sure he or she wants it badly. Then, make it hard as hell for them to get it.

Conflict

Suppose when Gatsby meets up with Daisy at Nick's house for tea, Daisy tells Gatsby that she has never stopped loving him and that she will immediately leave her husband. And suppose that she followed through on the promise, moving in with Gatsby the very next day. This would be glorious news for Jay Gatsby, but it wouldn't make for much of a story. Something big would be missing, and that something is conflict. Without conflict, a story is destined to be either very short or very dull, and probably both. No two ways about it, conflict is essential.

The Great Gatsby contains plenty of conflict. Yes, Daisy does seem to have some affection for Gatsby and she does briefly take up with him. But, she also has a mean and vindictive husband blocking her path. Also, Daisy is elitist enough to recognize that her husband, however uncouth, is "old money" while Gatsby falls into the much less socially desirable class of "new money." Worst of all, Daisy lacks the courage and conviction to break away from her marriage. No matter how far Gatsby goes to win Daisy – and he goes to incredible lengths – he is fighting a difficult battle. This difficulty, this conflict, is part of what makes the story so compelling. We don't know if Gatsby will succeed at his quest or not. We have to keep reading to find out. Furthermore, nothing illuminates a character better than a good struggle.

Though a protagonist should stay focused on a single desire, there is no limit to how much conflict may be interfering with that desire. The more the merrier (at least for the reader). The eternal struggle between desire and conflict is part of what makes a story dramatic and worth reading, no matter if the story is tragic, comical or anything in between.

Finally, just as conflict must occur, that conflict needs to be eventually resolved. In other words, at the end of your story, your protagonist must have achieved the concrete goal, or not. You can’t write a conclusion to your story that leaves your readers scratching their heads, wondering just what happened. After all, when readers begin a story, they do so with the understanding that the writer will finish the tale being told. And that means resolution, for better or worse.

A Test Drive

Though it’s by no means simple to construct the plot of a story, it’s considerably easier, once you learn how to put the protagonist/desire/conflict scheme into motion.

Suppose you wanted to use Maria Rialto as the protagonist of your story. A good way to start figuring out the plot of your story would be to figure out her big desire. Let’s go back to our theory that she wants to make friends and she carries a new book every day hoping someone will start up a conversation with her about the book she is currently reading. Good. She wants to make a friend. That’s an excellent desire. See, this one doesn’t even have layers of meaning beneath it and it’s still excellent.

Now, what is the conflict? First off, she is terribly shy. Her shyness would definitely count as a conflict. It’s a direct, and very strong, obstacle to her goal of making a friend. In fact, very often the strongest conflicts are internal, in that they come from within a character, as opposed to external conflicts, which are obstacles outside of the person, like a car breaking down.

Suppose early in the story Maria does meet someone and they take the first few steps toward a friendship. But this person turns out to be deranged and dangerous and, unfortunately, Maria is so desperate for friendship that she is blind to this person’s flaws. Now you’ve got some external conflict (the deranged and dangerous person) and some more internal conflict (the blindness). None of this is good for Maria, but it’s all good for the story. A compelling plot is beginning to take shape.

From here, the plot could veer in any number of directions. You may have an idea of the development and resolution before you start writing or you may just hit the road and see where things lead. Either way, you’re bound to go somewhere interesting because you’ve created a memorable character then given her the desire and conflict necessary to carry her all the way through a first-rate story.

Don’t you hope things work out for Maria, by the way? It’s entirely possible that you’ve come to care about her!

Discussion

After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the following:

1.   Think of one of your favorite fictional protagonists and tell us what you think this character’s desire is.

2.   Desire is what fuels fictional characters. Is this true of people in real life?

3.   Do you think a story can be interesting without strong conflict?

HOW TO WRITE FICTION - Lesson 6: How to Reveal Through Showing

Last time we discussed telling about characters. As effective a method as telling can be, showing is even better. Showing means presenting the reader with the characters first-hand, up close. It lets the reader "see" (and hear, and sometimes touch and even smell) the characters.

Most showing can be shared with the reader via scenes: word-pictures written in more-or-less "real time." Think of a stage play, on Broadway or at your local high school. The curtain goes up, and presto! Immediately, we begin finding out about the characters portrayed by the actors in the play. Nobody ever describes or explains them to us. We simply look, listen, and learn.

There are four basic methods for showing characters:

·        Action

·        Speech

·        Appearance

·        Thought

A work of fiction should mix and match these methods.

Action

Actions are often the strongest way to reveal characters. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, "We are our deeds."

Actions can be small things, such as the way a character treats a slow-moving cashier in a grocery store. Some people are patient in such a situation, while others become openly hostile. Others will complain, but under their breath. Everyone reacts differently to the ordinary demands made on us by daily life.

In "Cathedral," we learn about Robert’s lust for life by all the things he does that confound the narrator’s expectations regarding blind people. Robert drinks Scotch and fills an ashtray with cigarette butts. He eats "like there was no tomorrow." Robert gets high, then "watches" TV – he’s got not one but two sets at home. In spite of his physical disability, Robert devours the world around him with gusto

Actions can also be big things, such as how characters react in moments of crisis. There's a reason why the Outward Bound program initiates its participants by assigning them a difficult group task, like scaling a high wall without a ladder or even a rope. Such a challenge is actually an artificial crisis, and it illustrates immediately just who is who in the group – who is the Leader, who's the Complainer, who's the Nurse, etc.

The major characters in a story will most likely be tested by difficult situations. That’s where we really learn who they are – by what they do in these times.

The narrator in "Cathedral" seems defensive, even hostile, at the start of the story. It’s unclear whether he has the capacity for generosity, not to mention the inclination. But he goes through what, for him, is a stressful situation – spending an evening with a blind man in the house. By story’s end, the stressful situation has brought about a change in his behavior. When we observe him closing his eyes and moving the blind man’s hand across the paper, we know that he has great reserves of warmth and kindness.

We learn most about characters by watching them act (and interact and react). What do they do, and how do they do it? What don’t they do? Showing action provides the closest thing to objective information about characters. As a result, telling us about these characters is often unnecessary.

Speech

Speech refers to what the characters say, their dialogue. Here is an example of showing through speech from "Cathedral":

"Did you have a good train ride?" I said. "Which side of the train did you sit on, by the way?"

"What a question, which side!" my wife said. "What’s it matter which side?" she said.

"I just asked," I said.

"Right side," the blind man said. "I hadn’t been on a train in nearly forty years. Not since I was a kid. That’s been a long time. I’d nearly forgotten the sensation. I have winter in my beard now," he said. "So I’ve been told, anyway. Do I look distinguished, my dear?" the blind man said to my wife.

"You look distinguished, Robert," she said. "Robert," she said. "Robert, it’s just so good to see you."

We are shown a great deal through this dialogue. The passage shows us that, although the narrator and his wife are extremely nervous about the blind man’s visit to their house, Robert himself is quite relaxed. Also, in the first two lines we glimpse tension between husband and wife. Finally, there’s a touch of poetry in "winter in my beard." The narrator’s wife and Robert are poetic, while the narrator himself isn’t.

Now, Carver could have simply told us this information. But it’s more dynamic if we can find this out for ourselves, in this case via dialogue.

Finally, pay attention to the subtext – the hidden meaning – beneath the dialogue. Again, the line "What a question, which side!" speaks volumes about the tension between husband and wife in "Cathedral" when Robert comes to visit.

Appearance

Appearance relates to any and all physical aspects of the characters. Appearance is often "told" by the narrator and so can fall into the telling category. But appearance also falls into the showing character because appearance literally shows us what a character looks like.

As an example, let's return to the physical description of Robert in "Cathedral":

This blind man was late forties, a heavy-set, balding man with stooped shoulders, as if he carried a great weight there. He wore brown slacks, brown shoes, a light-brown shirt, a tie, a sports coat. Spiffy. He also had this full beard.

Physicality can also extend to gestures and physical actions. For example, Robert is a very friendly guy, and we glimpse this just in the way he shakes hands:

The blind man let go of his suitcase and up came his hand.

I took it. He squeezed hard, held my hand, and then he let go.

However, writers should be careful not to over-rely on physical description. The physical often just gives a surface glimpse of a person, just as a cover only gives a surface glimpse of a book. In "Cathedral," interestingly, we get a very full sense of the narrator and his wife and yet we are given virtually no physical description of either of them.

Thought

In fiction, we are often allowed access to the minds of certain characters. Obviously, one of the best ways to see what someone is like is to catch a glimpse of their innermost thoughts.

The narrator in "Cathedral" is not one to reveal too much of his personal thoughts, but he does reveal bits and pieces of them throughout the story. For example, this man is not self-aware enough to know that he's close-minded. But we, the reader, glean this when we catch him thinking such things as:

A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.

Later, we learn that the narrator isn't completely at peace when we glimpse this thought:

When I did go to sleep, I had these dreams. Sometimes I'd wake up from one of them my heart going crazy.

In thought, characters often reveal things that they would never openly reveal to other characters, and this gives thought a special depth among the categories of showing.

Showing You How To Show

Is this sounding too difficult? Is it a technique that’s fine for a master like Carver but a little over your head? Nonsense! Let’s see how achievable it can be.

Back to our character, Maria Rialto. If you put her at the bus stop, reading a new book every day, you would already be showing Maria through her actions. She waits at the bus stop, she reads books, every day it’s a different book. Those are actions. Actually, each of those actions reveal quite a bit about Maria.

But you can show Maria even more clearly. You can paint a physical picture, giving her glossy black hair, a voluptuous figure, and stylish clothing. Perhaps she dresses on the sexy side but holds herself in a rather prim way. Hmmm, that’s interesting because it’s a contradiction. It seems Maria is turning into a round character on us.

If a character were to greet Maria by saying "hello," you just might get to hear Maria speak. And that would certainly show us more about Maria, no matter what she said. If she says a mere "hello" then goes back to her book, that’s one thing. If she sets the book aside and says, "Well, it’s so nice to see you," that’s something else altogether.

You’ll notice that more actions are seeping out through the physicality and dialogue. The choice to wear sexy clothes is an action, as is the choice to keep reading or, perhaps, set the book aside. If some passing stranger were to make a lewd comment to Maria, we would learn a lot about her by the way she handled it. If the bus were to come down the street, swerve out of the way to miss a cat, and then go toppling onto its side, potentially injuring the passengers, what would Maria do?

You see, it’s really not so difficult to show your characters. And by doing so, you will bring them to life on the page, making three dimensional people out of nothing more than the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.

Discussion

After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the following:

1.   Why do you think actions might be the strongest way to reveal characters?

2.   Do you think it’s important to know what a character looks like? Does this affect who the person is?

3.   Name a fictional character that you "see" very clearly in your mind’s eye. What about this character do you "see?

HOW TO WRITE FICTION - Lesson 5: How to Reveal Through Telling

So. By now you’ve created one or more fictional characters. Maybe you based them directly on people you know well, or not so well. Maybe you combined the traits of a variety of relatives, friends, acquaintances and strangers. Perhaps you’ve even constructed profiles.

In other words, you’ve done your homework. Now what? How do you reveal this carefully observed, compiled, and recorded information to your readers? How do you let your characters come to living, breathing life on the page?

Reveal Gradually

Well, you could simply show the readers your homework. As soon as a character appears, you lay your cards on the table, revealing to the readers everything you’ve learned about the character. Certainly this method would be efficient, not to mention easy.

It wouldn’t make for good fiction, though. Imagine if Fitzgerald had taken this easy route. Remember the scene when Nick first meets Gatsby at one of Gatsby’s lavish parties? Well, suppose at this point Fitzgerald had just given us a profile similar to the one you saw in the last lesson. You would wonder why the book is considered a classic, that’s for sure.

In real life, we don’t know everything about someone as soon as we meet him. We have some first impressions but that’s all. It takes time to get to know a person. Similarly, it should take some time to get to know characters, especially the round ones. It’s also more entertaining if readers gets to piece things together for themselves, rather than receiving the whole person in one neatly tied package.

The way that Gatsby is gradually revealed to the reader – changing from distant silhouette to a fully realized person – is one of the major charms of the story. This has been a recurring theme in our analysis of The Great Gatsby and, in fact, the character of Jay Gatsby is a masterpiece of gradual revelation.

Think of the narrator in Raymond Carver's "Cathedral." We get some information about him early in the story but we don't get to know him deeply until the story's end. Of course, there are things we never know about him; he's like Gatsby in that respect. But wondering about this man, then growing slowly to understand him – perhaps being downright surprised by what he does – is part of the fascination offered by this story.

In general, you want to dole out the material you’ve prepared on your round characters gradually, somewhat mimicking the way people are revealed to us in real life.

Narrators Tell

Now, how do you dole out this information? Here’s where things start to grow really interesting. As a writer, you can reveal your characters in two fundamental ways:

Telling vs. Showing

Let’s focus on telling right now, and on showing during the next lesson.

Telling is a perfectly legitimate way of revealing character. You are, after all, telling a story. The telling about a character may be done by the writer/narrator or by a character. It can be done through narrative description or dialogue.

In "Cathedral," the guy who lives in the house serves as the narrator, telling the story in First Person. (Interestingly, he never gives us his name and, interestingly, he mostly refers to Robert as simply "the blind man." What does this indicate about the narrator?) The narrator is often telling us information about the other characters. Here is he telling us about Robert:

"This blind man was late forties, a heavy-set, balding man with stooped shoulders, as if he carried a great weight there. He wore brown slacks, brown shoes, a light-brown shirt, a tie, a sports coat. Spiffy. He also had this full beard."

Here he is telling us about his wife:

"She was always trying to write a poem. She wrote a poem or two every year, usually after something really important had happened to her."

Notice here that Carver isn't dramatizing this information, as a playwright or screenwriter might – perhaps by having Robert say, "I just turned forty-seven" or by showing the wife intently working on a poem. Carver (through the narrator) merely tells us what we need to know.

We can assume all this information is accurate. There's no real reason why the narrator would lie about Robert's age or clothing, or his wife's poetry habit. Usually, the narrator of the story is giving the reader trustworthy information. However, be warned. This isn't always the case. Especially if the narrator is also a character in the story, as in "Cathedral."

Characters Tell

Characters in fiction are frequently telling us about other characters. But characters can't always be trusted to tell the absolutel truth. After all, they're only human (sort of). They may, indeed, tell us something about a fellow character in the story that isn't quite accurate. Even narrators can be guilty of this.

At one point in "Cathedral," the narrator tells us this about Robert's late wife, Belulah:

"And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led. Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one. A woman who could go on day after day and never receive the smallest compliment from her beloved."

Is this true? Probably not. From what we learn about Robert, it seems that Robert is the type to shower his wife with compliments, even if he couldn't see her. We would guess that Robert was a very loving husband and that, in fact, he made his wife quite happy. Maybe the narrator can't understand this because he's not exactly winning any husband-of-the-year awards himself. The reader senses that Robert could "see" Belulah much better than the narrator "sees" his own wife.

In the above example, the telling is done through narration. But characters also tell about other characters in dialogue. Is what they say always true? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. As in real life, we have no easy way of knowing.

When Robert says, "Bub, I'm a scotch man myself," we sense he's telling the truth about his own drinking preference. What about when he says:

"My dear, I have two TVs. I have a color set and a black-and-white thing, an old relic. It's funny but if I turn the TV on, and I'm always turning it on, I turn on the color set. It's funny, don't you think?"

This is slightly harder to believe – how can he tell the difference? But, after learning something about Robert, we sense that this too is accurate information.

What about this heated exchange between the narrator and his wife:

"'I don't have any blind friends,' I said.

'You don't have any friends,' she said. 'Period.'"

Is the wife telling the complete truth about her husband? Well, we can certainly imagine that this man doesn't have many friends. He's not the friendliest guy in town. So she's probably close. But he might have some friends, at least one or two who are perhaps just as close-minded and miserable as himself. The wife may have been exaggerating slightly when she says he doesn't have "any" friends. She's angry at the time and she's trying to make a point. Do you always tell the exact truth about people you know? Ah, perhaps not.

The fallibility of what narrators and characters "tell" about other characters helps to increase the interest level of a work of fiction. Instead of being spoon-fed the perfect truth, the reader gets to draw her own conclusions about what she's being told. In such situations, we're also learning about the character doing the telling, as well as the one being discussed. Whether it's true or not, we sense years of frustration and resentment when the wife proclaims, "You don't have any friends. Period."

Telling You How To Tell

Perhaps this technique of telling is starting to sound somewhat complicated, but it’s really nothing you can’t handle in your own fiction. Let’s go back to our character, Maria Rialto (formerly known as Mystery Woman). If you were using her in a story, you could tell about her in a variety of ways.

You, as the narrator, may write something like: "Though Maria Rialto possessed a well-spring of kindness, she was incurably shy. As a child she had been quite open and playful but around the age of eleven she acquired this shyness, which, over the years, grew increasingly acute."

Good, you’ve told us a lot about Maria, and rather eloquently, at that.

Other characters might tell us things about Maria too. Her mother might say, "My child is not shy, she is quiet." A fellow employee at the bookstore where she works might say, "Maria is so rude. She never says a word to me." Someone else might say, "What a weirdo." Who is right? Perhaps all of them, perhaps none of them. Remember, when other characters are doing the telling, it’s not so easy to tell where the truth lies. You’ll also notice that we’ve learned something about each of these characters by what they say, or tell, about Maria.

What would Maria tell you about herself? If you’re really curious, perhaps you could go ask her.

Discussion

After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the following:

1. Is there a stronger way to reveal characters than telling about them?

2. Do you prefer a story to be told by a writer or by a first person narrator (who is a character in the story)?

3. When people tell you about themselves, how do you know whether or not to believe them?