Bittercon: Risky Narrative Strategies

[kate_nepveu]

Bittercon panel number two. Yes, my personal biases are showing; what of it?

Risky Narrative Strategies

Sarah Monette's Mélusine sends one of its two first-person narrators into a tailspin on his third page and drives him crazy before the chapter's over. It certainly doesn't play safe, but it's also risky because it gives the reader very little baseline for the character—particularly since the POV is so tight and he doesn't cross paths with the other narrator for a while. What other narrative strategies are risky, and how? Is information flow the principal kind of risk? In what books do risky strategies work, and in what don't they—but in interesting ways?

Presume that there will be spoilers for Mélusine and The Virtu within; for any other works, ROT13 spoilers or put them between <span style="color: #999999; background-color: #999999"> </span>.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

No, they're a type of horse, any age, that's bred to be small.

[kate_nepveu]

Gosh. Learn something new every day.

[spartezda.livejournal.com]

Yep, me too. The more modern storyline just could not keep my attention.

[jorrie-spencer.livejournal.com]

lol! I believe it was the modern storyline that I read.

[spartezda.livejournal.com]

Ah! *laughs*

[avocadovpx.livejournal.com]

Probably so, because I could probably read a book about a part of history I didn't know, and still enjoy the book. I could even go read up on the history, come back to reread the book, and enjoy it more the second time.

But hearing a joke that requires me to know a piece of information that I don't know -- that joke won't be funny when I hear it before I know the information, and it won't be funny after I've heard it and learned the information too late. The author needs to know that I know it, or the author needs to provide it in a way that I don't find obtrusive or annoying.

It also won't be funny if I know that information but don't recall it fast enough. It's almost as if the comedian needs to make sure that that piece of information has been moved into my immediate grasp before the joke can be told.

[avocadovpx.livejournal.com]

>> Every now and then someone haughtily replies, "I know what a memoir is!"

Grrr, I hate those "can't win" moments. Console yourself with the thought that, if your life were a TV show, that would be the moment you could turn to the audience and roll your eyes, and they would laugh in sympathy with you at the absurdity of it.

At least, they always did for Bob Newhart.

Re: More risks:

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm more forgiving of the "too soon to resolve this movie" problem. What annoys me is when the creator doesn't seem to understand that it's been enough already and it's time to start wrapping things up.

[kate_nepveu]

Also, if the story was told in chronological order, I don't think it would be *interesting*.

I hope you don't regret trying _The Virtu_.

Re: More risks:

[oyceter]

I think a lot of it is word choice and not actual pronunciation. So if I read written Cantonese, I'll come across a phrase that means absolutely nothing in Mandarin, but if it's pronounced out loud in Canto, it means something else. And I think words/characters that mean one thing in one dialect mean another in another dialect (like "biscuit" for Americans and Brits). That and there are a good number of characters that many dialects share, except things are pronounced differently.

In Taiwan, we use the bopomofo system as well, so occasionally you'll see things "spelled" out that way for Taiwanese words. I'm not sure if they use the pinyin system like that in China, though it would be cool.

Re: More risks:

[kate_nepveu]

I don't think I really understand how something could be word choice, but could also be meaningless outloud in Mandarin while meaningful in Cantonese?

But then I'm not good with languages at all.

I'm guessing that this creates fertile ground for puns and allusions, much like Heian Japan's use of Chinese writing?

Re: More risks:

[oyceter]

Um. I don't think I'm explaining this well at all =(. I remember being in Hong Kong and seeing these Chinese characters and thinking it made no sense -- maybe like seeing "car freezer oops" in the middle of a normal sentence. So all the characters themselves were something that I could read and would normally make sense, just as "car," "freezer" and "oops" all usually make sense. But in the context, it made no sense at all unless you spoke Canto (ex. say "car freezer oops" was somehow Brit-speak for "lawnmower").

But of course the thing that makes it more complicated is that spoken Canto doesn't sound like spoken Mandarin at all. They share a lot of the same words and phrases (like American-speak and Brit-speak), but the pronunciation of all of these are usually so different that a Mandarin speaker won't be able to translate what a Canto speaker is saying. But then there are the times when the words and phrases are different, as with the "car freezer oops" bit.

Um, I'm not sure if that made sense at all...

Also, OMG Chinese puns. You have no idea! None! (says the person who had to painfully memorize all random pun allusions for poetry in Chinese class)

[inkylj.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I agree that his madness didn't seem like real madness, but I didn't think it was intended to -- I mean, it was basically a curse on the guy, right? So it worked for me as something that was intended to keep him from being able to understand or communicate with* other people and nothing more. I did think the timing of his madness felt somewhat forced, but that's another issue.

*Or, at least, to communicate with them on a human level, since mastery of the subtle social cues is what Felix prides himself on.

[kate_nepveu]

I think so--the opinion of Vida is that Felix "didn't _go_ mad--he was _sent_ mad." The Celebrants who cure Felix talk about trauma, but they don't know how the Virtu was broken.

Question: is it possible to write "real madness" in first-person headlong (non-retrospective) without completely losing the reader?

Re: More risks:

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks, I think I understand more now.

I wonder if puns are one of those universal human language things?

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Ah, Felix's madness (both from his p.o.v. and Mildmay's dealing w/it) was what really made the book for me. Part of why it worked from my take is that the way he related to both people and the atmosphere around him is quite akin to how a certain cringing part of my brain works when I'm either deeply depressed or in the grip of a really bad migraine, sans hallucinations. Which could be an argument in your favor, I guess (I don't *think* I'm clinically insane), but I always thought that particular part of my thinking is usually a little off, and if that was the only part of my brain working in those episodes, I'd class myself as well and truly nuts.

This would be further backed by my experiences around people who occasionally do lose the more step-back-and-observe portion of their heads when the mood swings swamp them. I can't tell you how much I also identified w/Mildmay taking care of the crazy person and sort of angrily/humorously/desperately dealing w/keeping them from hurting themselves while waiting/hoping/praying for things to return to normal before it gets beyond workability . . .

The other, not-so-related-to-RL part of F's madness that I thought worked perfectly was how his crazy!perception was oftimes spot-on and more accurate in its assessment of people's character than our normal visuals would be, and the loosening of filters that let him see ghosts and atmospheric things that I assumed were really there, etc. Which I've always wondered about w/regards to some hallucinagenic experiences people have recounted -- how much is just distortion, and how much is seeing things in a completely valid way that normally isn't avaible. Heh, I could write an essay on this stuff and the book, so I'll stop myself now. (could possibly go on as well w/Snitter, tho it's been so many years since i've read that . . . in both cases, I really loved how well the author put us inside their heads and how well it worked for me, at least)

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

This is a damned interesting question. And possibly why I wasn't able to get into "The Sound and the Fury". But I'm guessing "yes, if done well enough, as long as you're willing to lose quite a few readers" is my answer. *g*

Re: More risks:

[aswego.livejournal.com]

Emma Bull succeeds, IMHO, in Bone Dance.

Re: More risks:

[kate_nepveu]

I agree, because it's not gratuitous.