Manual For Fiction Writers, Block, Lawrence [best books to read for beginners txt] 📗

character as narrator is by no means limited to mystery fiction. Consider Maugham's first-person narrators in The Razor's Edge, The Moon and Sixpence, and Cakes and Ale, John O'Hara's Jim Malloy, or Melville's Ishmael. These voices are hardly Watsons, but their functions are not all that dissimilar.

In a handful of stories I wrote about a criminous criminal lawyer, I used several techniques to keep the reader at a distance from my character, Martin H. Ehrengraf. For example, I frequently referred to Ehrengraf as the little lawyer or the diminutive attorney. The purpose of this was not so much as to fix Ehrengraf's appearance in the reader's mind as to make the reader aware that he was reading a narrative, that this was a piece of fiction about an imaginary character.

Why did I do this? For one thing, the Ehrengraf stories were by nature unrealistic, the character a dapper eccentric who fabricates evidence and murders people in order to exonerate guilty clients. Write something like that and make it genuinely realistic and, paradoxically, readers react by failing to come through with the voluntary suspension of disbelief which fiction requires. By distancing the reader from Ehrengraf, I was effectively saying, Relax, this is just fiction, this disagreeable madman doesn't really exist, so it's okay to unwind and pretend that he does long enough to enjoy the story.

Similarly, the Ehrengraf stories were illogical and implausible?or would have been if seen from up close and treated realistically. At a remove, they could be allowed to have their own mad logic.

I generally feel a little funny writing about specific fictional techniques. I think it's enormously valuable to know how writers get the effects they do. I know that my own reading is marked by a good deal of reflection as I notice the particular technical choices a writer makes and their various effects.

At the same time, it is exceedingly rare that I consciously apply the fruits of this analysis in my own writing. I have just now been reflecting on those Ehrengraf stories, and I cannot recall ever deciding to keep the reader from stepping on Ehrengraf's heels. The techniques I employed were selected intuitively, without thought; it simply seemed the natural way to tell a particular story. Once in a great while I make this sort of decision purposefully, but the rest of the time it's an unconscious one.

This makes it no less a choice, but it does make me feel wary of overexplaining this sort of thing to you. If you were to gain anything from this column, I would hope it would be just a little more awareness of your options as a storyteller, and perhaps a touch more analytical perspective when you read other writers' work. And perhaps this will ultimately improve your ability to make choices of your own, on the unconscious intuitive plane where most creative decisions seem to be made.

CHAPTER 33

It's a Frame

GOOD MORNING, class.

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Good morning, Mr. Block.

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As you may recall, last week we were discussing?yes, Arnold?

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Actually it's afternoon, sir.

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So it is. Thanks so much for bringing that fact to my attention, Arnold. Ahem. Last week we were discussing distance in fiction, and the various ways in which the distance between the reader and the story may be either diminished or increased. There was one rather interesting distancing device I didn't mention at all. It's called a frame. Anyone know what a frame is? Rachel?

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Yes, sir. it's when you're innocent but the police fabricate a case against you anyway. Or the real criminal leaves false clues so that you'll be suspected. Or?

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Thank you, Rachel. I'm afraid the frame I'm referring to is a different matter. A frame as a literary device is a way of setting a story?either a short story or a novel?within a fictional superstructure of one sort or another. In its simplest form, such a story might consist of two men running into each other in a bar, say, and?yes, Gwen?

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Why do they have to be men, sir?

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They don't. They could be women. They could be one man and one woman. No reason, actually, for them to be human beings at all. Let's say two Venusians encounter each other in a bar, all right? They're having a friendly drink together, and one says something and the other is reminded of a story. Which he?or she, Gwen?tells at considerable length. When the story's finished they have one last drink and go their separate ways.

See how this works? The actual core of the story is whatever the one Venusian relates to the other, and the reader's in the position of a person on the next barstool, eavesdropping on their conversation. That barroom sequence encloses and sets off the true story just as a picture frame surrounds a canvas.

If the story's worth telling in the first place, it could stand by itself, unsupported by a framing device. What one Venusian tells the other could be related directly to the reader, either by the Venusian in the first person, or through third-person narration. What do you suppose are the effects of using a frame?

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You mentioned distance, sir.

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Indeed I did, and that's the most obvious result of building a frame around a piece of fiction. You create distance between the story and the reader. Right off the bat, you make him?or her, Gwen?conscious of the fact that this is indeed a story. Fiction owes a lot of its impact to the