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

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I would have had at least one chapter of Felix in his right mind and thinking he was in control of his life before everything collapses. As you say, risky. But I do like the books a lot -- and I'll make cake for Mildmay any day.

The trouble with risky things is that often I can't say if they work or not because if they lose me then I don't bother going on with them. Would you say the prose style of Moonwise was a risk? How about Cherryh telling a very usual story of a lone human among aliens, exclusively from the alien POV? When that sort of thing works, it really works.

I think you can take one risk. You can have one really weird thing. When you get more than that, you're asking the reader to work too hard. If you have a really odd world, you should probably have less odd characters, and a reasonably calm prose style, and a plot people can follow. If you're writing in this world you can get away with writing out of order a lot more easily, for instance.

[kate_nepveu]

I haven't read _Moonwise_, though I did like the first Chanur book and fully mean to get back to the series.

A one-risk-per-story guideline strikes me as similar to comments at the 2004 Worldcon panel on exposition, about one "to be explained" at a time. Which half makes me want, as a reader, to protest that I can handle it, really!--but then I come to my senses and remember I'm reading for enjoyment, not to prove my intellectual chops. => (That's what work is for.)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Maybe I heard it and didn't actually think it, but somehow it got wired into my head a long time ago that mainstream lit is ordinary people in ordinary circs. Genre is extraordinary people in ordinary circs (argument aside about extraordinary "ordinary" folks as opposed to powers or aliens, or other-than-humans) or ordinary folks in extraordinary circs (going to another world, discovering vampires, or time gates here), but the most difficult to pull off is extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. There is no anchor point, so the writer has to try to build one by implication.

[kate_nepveu]

That sounds like a reasonable rule of thumb to me, and also neatly encapsulates why mainstream doesn't interest me. =>

I suspect that the natural goodwill of the reader, the willingness to identify with a protagonist at the start, is the anchor point that the extraordinary/extraordinary stories must start with and build from.

[avocadovpx.livejournal.com]

I was reminded of this passage, from chapter two of Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

"It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself attractive. But a moment's thought will show that if disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease. A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture. And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. To the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is quite true. A man who thinks himself a chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass. It is the homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world."

I think he may be excluding some of us from his definition of "odd" in ways that our friends and neighbors might not. Nevertheless...

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That whole essay is awesome, esp chapter four on fairy tales...

[kate_nepveu]

but not out of a dragon among dragons

Hah.

Every rule about writing has at least one exception.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

If you have a really odd world, you should probably have less odd characters, and a reasonably calm prose style, and a plot people can follow.

I was thinking of mentioning Lifelode, but thought it wouldn't be fair to those who haven't had a chance to read it.

[kate_nepveu]

Actually, yeah, I think that also has a risky narrative strategy--at least, I think that the narrative form contributed to my feeling somewhat distanced from the story.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It's very weird.

I've fixed it a bit since you saw it, but it's still very weird.

Mind you, I learned a lot by writing it. Like, for instance, try not having everything weird at once next time!

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

There was a very poetically written s.f. novel I read back in the 90's, I think, called ? Winterlong? that managed to take a seriously odd (disturbing, even) world w/odd (disturbing, even) characters and (from what I recall, as I don't actually remember everything that happened so much as I remember some of the imagery) a difficult to follow plot that somehow worked for me, tho I found the overall atmosphere depressing and could only read it in relatively small doses at a time . . .