Separating Author, Narrator, and Character

Many writers have experienced the problem of a short story or novel that feels flat because the protagonist is really nothing more than a passive observer of the action, and hence winds up being not so much a character as either a once-removed narrator (in the case of first-person POV) or the so-called "brain in a room" (in the case of third-person POV) in which the character sees and ruminates but never becomes the focus of the action. Often this is because the writer is unconsciously merged with the protagonist in his or her imagination, whether the story is autobiographical or not.

When you are writing a conventionally character-driven story or novel, it is crucial to understand that the function of a narrator is to present and somehow to translate the action of the story, such that the reader can understand objectively what's happening, even if the protagonist does not. For example, in Emma by Jane Austen, Emma Woodhouse is quite sure that Mr. Elton is wooing her friend Harriet, and over a sequence of scenes urges Harriet, who has not interpreted Mr. Elton's actions toward her as such, to believe that Elton is indeed building up to a marriage proposal. If read carefully, however, all the scenes involving Emma, Harriet, and Mr. Elton demonstrate objectively—and to comic effect—that Elton is actually interested in Emma and that Emma has drastically misread the situation. Without overtly stating anything, the third-person omniscient narrator presents the drama in such a way that we, as readers, can see exactly what's happening, even as protagonist Emma remains blind.

The same separation holds true for successful first-person narratives, even in the case of the most voice-driven and unreliable of narrator/protagonists. Holden Caulfield, for instance, narrates J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye from a vantage point beyond the timeline of the story, alternately dramatizing himself as a character and fluidly slipping back into the mode of narrator, in which he makes expository commentary about himself and the little odyssey he is unfurling. But even if Holden is absolutely sure of every last thing he asserts, author Salinger, who exists outside of Holden and the novel, has envisioned the narrative such that we as readers see Holden objectively as a boy who is quite lost. The rift between Holden's perceptions and our objective perception—which has been built into the narrative through Salinger's ability to separate himself from Holden in his imagination—creates pathos as well as narrative tension.

If you would like to understand this idea more intuitively, I welcome you to try the following exercise:

Part I

Write the words "Once upon a time there was a(n)" on a sheet paper and then continue, letting yourself write whatever story automatically ensues. Take ten to twenty minutes and then restart using the same prompt.

Part II

Choose one of your two "fairy tales." Remove the "Once upon a time" prompt from the beginning of the story and rewrite at least the first paragraph in a realistic manner, adding character details, realistic setting, modern syntax, etc.

The objective of this exercise is, as mentioned, that of recognizing the author-narrator-character separation that should naturally occur. "Once upon a time" is a storytelling convention that we've all internalized, usually in the voice of a nice old man who looks and speaks somewhat like Anthony Hopkins does while playing C.S. Lewis in the movie Shadowlands. In addition, the phrase "Once upon a time there was" prompts us to envision whatever character we create with an implicit separation between the time of story and the future vantage from which it is told. As a result, three things tend to happen automatically: 1) We do not mix ourselves up with the narrator; 2) We do not mix the scene up with our present day lives; 3) We are oriented outward and hence cued to invent a character and/or place, usually within a noticeably specific context.

Whether one begins with something truly fairy tale-ish such as "Once upon a time there was a very sad turtle who lived in dying pond," or with something more realistic such as "Once upon a time there was a woman who was dying of leukemia," or even something self-reflexive such as "Once upon a time I was walking down the street in Brooklyn," the separation will, in almost all cases, be apparent.

Of course, the separation is not always going to be as obvious in a realistic literary narrative, but a successfully envisioned separation of author, narrator, and character is still the key to a work's texture, depth, and dimensionality. By translating your "Once upon a time" fairy tale to a more realistic narrative, which generally entails providing the characters with more specific and singular details, as well as going deeper into a character's point-of-view, you should be able to see how the separation is structured into any good piece of fiction. Keep in mind that the separation begins in your head, and that no amount of tinkering with sentences is going to fix the problem unless you are able to envision your character, autobiographical or not, on the screen of your imagination.

This piece first appeared in What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers (2nd edition), edited by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter.