Originally posted at Livejournal Oct. 5th, 2011
Who is telling the story and why? This affects the way they tell it. - Emma Darwin
Also in Emma Darwin's novel-writing course we went over the choices a writer makes in how to tell the story.
The first and most obvious choice is of narrator - are they in 1st or 3rd person (or, god forbid, 2nd)? If the novel is in (or partly in) 3rd person, is the narrator limited to one person's viewpoint or are they omniscient? This of course lead us to head-hopping, the bane of many a writer-reader's life (I know it certainly annoys me). Emma suggested that if you really have to, not to do it more than once a page, and to move to a different psychic distance so as not to confuse the reader. In general, move out to a more remote distance, move across, and zoom back in again.
There was one brief piece of advice about minor characters: don't spend ages describing them, or the reader will think they're more important than they are. I suppose it's different if you want them to be a red herring though....
We also had a discussion on tense. As present tense has no sense of time it can lose tension, but is useful for dreams or flashbacks where a sense of disconnection is needed. Sarah Monette used it to great effect in the first book of the Doctrine of Labyrinths series, Melusine, to differentiate between a 1st person narrator, and the same narrator when he's batshit crazy. Tenses can also be combined to keep plot strands or timelines separate, although this can be quite difficult to do well.
The story itself doesn't have to be told in chronological order, but Emma cautioned against putting the "zingy stuff" at the beginning of a chapter and going back to explain as it breaks the momentum. Also, if you do this and the thing you're explaining turns out to all be a big misunderstanding the reader can feel cheated (I've come across this and yes, it did annoy me).
Whether you're hopping around between timelines or narrators, you should always make sure the reader know where they are. Do something to orient them, preferably within the first sentence. If you're chosing to disorient the reader on purpose, make sure to ground them afterwards - a confused reader can quickly become an irritated reader.
The last things I'm going to mention, because this is rapidly looking like it's going to be a four-part post, are subplots, and backstory. Subplots should be linked thematically to the main plot - difficult if, like me, you have no idea what the theme is when you start, but you can always go back and add things. That's where the handy chart comes in, I suppose. Emma also uses it to plot where significant pieces of backstory are revelaed, although she cautions against getting hung up on knowing all the backstory before you start. What will happen is more important than what has happened, as you write forwards the important backstory will rise to the surface. Hearing a published novelist advocating what is essentially pantsing was a relief to me, since this is how I work. Finding out the backstory as you go is half the fun.
Anyway, I'm going to leave it there and write up the last few bits and pieces in another post.