Games Writers Play

We all know the basics of writing - either fiction or fact, the objective is to communicate a message to a larger audience. With storytelling, we want to give the reader the most valuable parts of the events and parties involved, along with anything that carries an emotional theme. With poetry, conveying the sentiment is paramount as opposed to description. And of course, our choice of dialogue is all about the spoken words. However, writers get to reach into a bag of tricks and play some little games with the reader if they so choose, along with the actual technical writing. These are some of the things that make a simple story very complex, or create a compelling narrative.

One of my favorite writer tricks is The Unreliable Narrator. The writer gets to tell a story from someone's perspective, but maybe doesn't tell the reader that this character might play fast and loose with the details. Maybe the narrator doesn't remember everything and leaves out critical details, maybe they have an altered sense of reality, or maybe they are trying to convince you of their innocence when they are, in fact, guilty. The Unreliable Narrator is broad in scope, and can cover a lot of different areas, but it has to be done with a purpose other than just to say, "Gotcha!" to the reader. It's the difference between a trick and a prank - the former being an impressive turn of events while the latter is just annoying. 

Another grand game to play is the Multiple Perspectives Narrator - giving the reader several characters' first-person perspectives, and letting the unreliability be sorted out by things such as deduction. We see this in mystery novels through the interrogation of various suspects, but when it is done from the perspective of those suspects, the reader gets to view the story from many different, perhaps conflicting angles. Epic storytelling often does this, leaving the reader to get a true-to-life feeling for the story because they have to fill in details.

Oh - regarding details, there are a lot of games writers can play with details. Everyone understands the basics of description and fleshing out scenes and characters. One great game is for the writer to describe characters without throwing in all these sensory cues but rather through metaphor, simile, and conneciton to ideas. The character's looks are never revealed but the reader should get a keen visual of what the character feels like. If I describe a shady senator, I can use terms like a lopsided smile, a sinister expression, shifty eyes, etc. and those physical traits will come through. However, what if I take their appearance and fill it in through character traits? Maybe I go with, "The senator stood at the podium with a smile made wide by dozens of broken promises, adjusting a tailored suit made entirely out of bribes and kickbacks." No two people would be able to sketch the same vision of the character, but the reader would have an unquestionable image of who that politician was, what he looked like to them, and what he was all about.

These games are all fun as long as they are done with a purpose. As long as the shady senator doesn't need to have a distinguishing physical trait, go ahead and describe him through his faults. If a narrator is unreliable because he is actually the bad guy, make sure his narrative is crafted to broadcast his innocence even in the face of evidence against him. And if there are several characters offering conflicting stories, make sure that you - the author - know the real story, and why everyone else's is just a little different.