If you were my student I’d tell you to read the story collection Campfires of the Dead by Peter Christopher. It was Peter who taught me about submerging the “I.”
The theory goes that stories told in the first person carry the greatest authority because someone assumes responsibility for them. The storytelling source is present, not just some omniscient writerly voice. The trouble is that readers recoil from the pronoun “I” because it constantly reminds them that they, themselves, are not experiencing the plot events.
We hate that, when we’re stuck listening to someone whose stories are all about himself.
The fix is to use first person, Peter taught me, but to submerge the I. Always keep your camera pointed elsewhere, describing other characters. Strictly limit a narrator’s reference to self. This is why “apostolic” fiction works so well. In books like The Great Gatsby the narrator acts mostly to describe another, more interesting, character. Nick is an apostle of Gatsby, just as the narrator of Fight Club is an apostle of Tyler Durden. Each narrator acts as a foil—think of Dr. Watson gushing about Sherlock Holmes—because a heroic character telling his own story would be boring and off-putting as hell.
In addition, don’t screen the world through your narrator’s senses. Instead of writing, “I heard the bells ring,” write just, “The bells rang,” or, “The bells began to ring.” Avoid, “I saw Ellen,” in favor of, “Ellen stepped from the crowd. She squared her shoulders and began to walk, each step bringing her closer.”
So were I your teacher, I’d tell you to write in the first person, but to weed out almost all of your pesky “I”s. Authority: A Character’s Body of Knowledge
If you went out drinking with me I’d tell you how I used to measure money. When I’d first started writing, Writer’s Digest reported that Playgirl magazine paid three thousand dollars for short fiction. That magazine seemed like the best market for a story I’d written called “Negative Reinforcement.” At the same time a new building had been completed in downtown Portland, Oregon, the KOIN Tower, the new home of KOIN television and the many floors of luxury condominiums that rose above the broadcast studios. They were the swankiest address in town and each cost three hundred thousand dollars, so I did the math.
If Playgirl bought my story and ninety-nine more, I could afford a ritzy condo.
My point is that people measure stuff—money, strength, time, weight—in very personal ways. A city isn’t so many miles from another city, it’s so many songs on the radio. Two hundred pounds isn’t two hundred pounds, it’s that dumbbell at the gym that no one touched and that seemed like a sword-in-the-stone joke until the day a stranger took it off the rack and started doing single-arm rows with it.
As Katherine Dunn put it, “No two people ever walk into the same room.”
Katherine Dunn
We’ve already touched on this. While discussing ways to write from within a character’s point of view, we considered that a painter walks into a very different room than a plumber enters. Some years back I was interviewed over the telephone by a Scottish journalist. Our conversation strayed to the music we’d liked as children, and he mentioned a Hall and Oates song that had always haunted him. The song described a girlfriend who was stealing food from her hungry boyfriend as he gradually starved to death.
A Hall and Oates song? It didn’t ring a bell so I asked him to sing a line.
Over the phone he sang, “Every time you go away, you take a piece of meat with you…”
Another example from real life. A friend’s daughter had her first menstruation, a trauma because to the girl it represented an end to her carefree childhood, not to mention the physical pain and the bother. My friend, the girl’s mother, said that when the process was resolved, her daughter heaved a sigh of resignation and relief and said, “I’m glad that’s only once a year!”
Such moments are funny and heartbreaking. There’s a joy in correcting some mistakes, but a tragedy in negating such a creative interpretation, especially one held since childhood.
My point is that our past distorts and colors how we perceive the world. If I hadn’t said something, this man would’ve heard “meat” instead of “me” for the rest of his life. And how your character describes the world doesn’t have to be based on anything factual. Actually, it’s more interesting if a character views the world through a mistake.
Was it Kierkegaard? Was it Heidegger? Some egghead pointed out how people decide the nature of their world at a very young age. And they craft a way of behaving that will lead to success. You’re praised for being a strong little kid so you invest in your strength. Or you become the smart girl. Or the funny boy. Or the pretty girl. And this works until you’re about thirty years old.
After your schooling is over, you recognize your chosen way of winning has become a trap. And a trap with diminishing rewards. You’re a clown no one will take seriously. Or you’re a beauty queen who sees her looks fading. You’re forced to realize your identity was a choice, and then to choose another. But you know this next strategy will never have the same passion as the one you’d chosen as a child. Now you’re especially aware that it’s a choice. And you know it, too, will likely fade. So many successful books are about a character leveraging youth and beauty for a good marriage, then leveraging that union for education, and leveraging that for wealth. A book like Vanity Fair or Gone with the Wind or The Great
