Breaking the Spell

As a writer, you're an illusionist: you create brave new worlds for your reader and go to great lengths to make them seem as real and as plausible as possible -- that is what writing good fiction is all about.

The subversive in me is interested in the effects of setting up an illusion only to destroy it with a kind of devastating sleight of hand.  It can be the most fantastic plotting device and leave your reader open-mouthed with astonishment. Sarah Waters is an absolute genius at this: without wanting to give too much away, in her novel Fingersmith she creates one reality only to whip the rug from under the reader's feet and reveal another, different one in a way that can leave you feeling a little giddy.

So here's a challenge for you: set a wheel turning  within a wheel -- as you're weaving one illusion, produce another like a string of bright silk handkerchiefs hidden up your sleeve. Fiction is bluffing anyway, but take it a step further and go for double bluff. It can be a circus trick: cue drumroll, cue fanfare...

An Alphabet of Better Writing # U

U is for...Unreliable Narrator

Mostly, when we read a story, we take the narrative at face value.  We believe what the author is telling us, either directly in a first person narrative or through the hero or heroine in a third person one, because -- well, why wouldn't we?

Precisely. As readers, we are trusting and - necessarily - gullible.  We want to believe.  If something happens inadvertently to break the magic spell, we feel cheated and / or irritated and may well chuck the book to one side.

But what if the writer deliberately pulls the rug from under her reader's feet, by revealing that the narration or the narrator is in some way unreliable?  What then? However you achieve it, gradually with a drip, drip, drip of hints and suggestions, or with a flourish of leger de main, it's an extraordinarily manipulative thing to do.  It is bound to provoke an intense reaction in your reader and (as long as they don't cast the book to one side) this is a Very Good Thing. Firstly, it will make them re-evaluate everything they have read so far, to see how they could have misread the situation so completely; it will niggle away at them and keep them in the world of your story for longer.  Secondly, they will want to know why: why has the writer subverted her own story?  What is she trying to achieve?  Where will it lead?

If you want to see how to do it (without giving too much away), read Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, or check out one of my previous posts...

Top Ten Writers (Today)

Until my lovely shed is finished I'm hot-desking with my husband -- nightmare -- I'm tidy and he's NOT! So for today's blog, rather than something profound and thought-provoking, I'm having to resort to a list.

Here are the ten writers I most admire (at the moment, because any time I read a good book the author automatically becomes my new best favourite).

• Hilary Mantel - for her humane, tender, all encompassing characterisation.
• Tim Winton -- for prose to plunge into; rounded, salty characters and a sprinkling of magic realism that wrong-foots and amazes me.
• Helen Dunmore - for blurring the boundaries between poetry and fiction.
• Geoff Dyer - for never, ever being obvious about anything; an oblique, bone dry, stylist.
• Hugo Williams - for making the art of understatement all his own; for never succumbing to any kind of literary compromise.
• Pat Barker - for her first world war trilogy: Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road  perfectly capture the pity of war; no one else can hold a candle to her.
• Miriam Toews-- for being sparky, witty and original.
• Lorrie Moore - for her unflinching, funny chronicles of the shortcomings of the human heart.
• Sarah Waters - for being a plotting supremo, her books are masterpieces of construction: smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand, prestidigitation!
• Georgette Heyer - because flu wouldn't be survivable without her. These Old Shades?  Bring it on...

N.B. Writing list for blog not soft option after all.  Makes you think what you value in other writers.  Makes you realise what you aspire to yourself.  Who would be in your top ten ?