I love books about the craft of writing. They’re like candy. I don’t take every piece of advice as gospel, just like I don’t eat black licorice. I discard the things I don’t agree with, or don’t think will work for me, but I am willing to try techniques that I have doubts about, just to see how they work. But a few years ago I felt glutted. I was reading a lot of non-fiction, and a lot of it was writing-related. But I write fiction, and I wasn’t reading much of that at all. So, I decided to immerse myself in fiction. I did this not only because I love stories, but because I wanted to see what I could learn by observation and osmosis. And I haven’t stopped yet. Here are a few thoughts on what I’ve learned from some of the amazing literature I’ve read over the past few years.
***
Tell or don’t tell. Either is fine! Yes, long, dense chapters of information not immediately relevant to the characters or the plot will slow the pace down for many readers. But beautifully written passages of history, science, and politics, like James S.A. Corey gives us in the Expanse novels, presented in such a way that we know why it’s important for us to get this information now, can add to the tension just as much as a space battle.
On the other hand, Gene Wolfe never throws the reader a lifeline in The Book of the New Sun. Never. And I love that about that series, which I actually read decades ago, but still think about a lot. In the hands of these masterful authors, either works. For those of us not as masterful, the adage to “show, don’t tell” is probably useful, but it’s not an unbreakable rule. (Spoiler Alert: There are no unbreakable rules).
***
Use the points of view the story needs. You’re two-thirds of the way through the story and the reader needs to know something, but only a secondary character who’s never had a POV chapter before is there? So what? Give them a voice. Why shouldn’t they have a little spotlight time too? It works for Mur Lafferty, and for James S.A. Corey, and for Martha Wells, and for many, many others I’ve read.
***
And about those points of view. It’s true that the reader needs to be clear about who they’re experiencing the story through at any given time, and that simply leaping from head to head can become confusing. But I’ve found that many skilled and successful authors are not nearly as obsessive about the old “head swap” as I have been. One of the things that stood out to me when reading Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment was the way he would shift points of view, even mid chapter, by having a character leave a scene and following that character. In the apartment, we’re in Raskolnikov’s head, as he talks to Razumikhin. Razumikhin leaves, and now we’re in his head, and following his thoughts and actions.
Okay, but that’s old-timey writing I thought. I loved it, but I didn’t expect to see it anymore. But I see it all the time in Maurice Broaddus’s Knights of Breton Court trilogy. And he’s not alone. Some writers are quite strict about it, but others are not. The important point, to me, is that we always know whose eyes we’re seeing through at any given point. I’ve heard people refer to this as omniscient, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be strict 3rd person that simply shifts target more frequently than we have come to expect in modern genre literature.
***
On the subject of character, I would have to say the Martha Wells is the master of character abuse, in the best possible way. There are so many ways to mishandle characters, and I’m sure I’ve been guilty of all of them. Handing the character the idiot ball because you need to move the plot forward. Creating characters who never make mistakes, or for whom everything comes easy. Wells gives us characters who may be deeply flawed, but are also intelligent, competent, and highly skilled, and then she throws really hard problems at them relentlessly. No matter how good a person is at something, they’re going to make mistakes under extreme pressure. Or they’re going to suffer from exhaustion, or trauma, or injury. Or they’re going to do everything right and still fail. Hell, smart people make mistakes all the time under the best of conditions. Interestingly, it wasn’t the Murderbot books that really brought this technique to light for me, although they are chock full of it. No, it was the terrible, terrible things she did to Thomas Boniface in The Element of Fire that suddenly made the light bulb click on.
***
Wells is also adept at hiding information from us even while we’re in the character’s head. And she tells us right up front that she’s doing it! Here are a couple of simple examples:
He knew who he thought it was, but that couldn’t be.
Then she had an idea. {end chapter}.
***
Still talking about character — maybe you can tell that character is very important to me — one thing that all the authors I enjoy do is give us at least a little bit of insight into why the most important characters in the story are the way they are. It doesn’t have to be through long flashbacks or exhaustive discourses on their upbringing. Sometimes, it’s just brief mentions of formative moments, or figures, in the character’s life — sometimes we don’t even get into the details, but we get a sense that the author has thought deeply about the character and knows them well.
I’m not saying that characters can’t ever be random. Real people don’t always know why they’re doing what they’re doing. Happens to me all the time. But nurture matters. People are influenced by their experiences, their culture and society, their source figures. It’s always a factor, even if they end up being very different from those who grew up in similar circumstances — which they probably are, if they’ve earned the protagonist spot.
***
Speaking of flashbacks, something I greatly admire Cat Rambo’s ability to move seamlessly back and forth between flashbacks and current time without losing any forward momentum. I have to confess, I’m not entirely sure how she achieves it. I think I need to read more and pay careful attention. But I think it’s because the flashback scenes are as dynamic as the current events scenes, and told within the narrative, rather than being broken out as something separate.
***
And finally, nobody is perfect. Yes, this is a thing I’ve learned from reading — and listening to — so much wonderful fiction. Even the best authors repeat a word here or there, craft a less than elegant sentence, let the tension drop briefly before picking it up again. That old phrase, “It happens to the best of us,” is true. I find that extraordinarily hopeful.