Comments on: Stupid Writer Tricks: 10 Writing Tricks to Avoid

By: Faye

Faye — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 00:26:54 +0000

Gyp: I think ending the story with “We find the defendant…guilty.” and then switching to Shanghai would be an effective use of a cliffhanger — and why we have the name for that type of ending at all.

It reminds me of when I read Phillip Pullman’s Shadow in the North and one of the characters is in a burning house. Right as he gets to a window to escape, the house collapses. And the chapter ends. My mind did the equivalent of “oh shit! what just happened?!” and of course I wanted to go on to the next chapter to see what happened to him. However I was younger and my dad dictated my bedtimes and had said I could finish the chapter before I turned my light out, but not more. I spent the entire time before sleep imagining continuations of the chapter. And I’ve remembered that cliffhanger for years while I’ve forgotten most other’s I’ve read.

By: Derek Lowe

Derek Lowe — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:12:47 +0000

Good points, all - and it’s honest of you to include the honorable exceptions. The usual response to advice like this is to cite the good works that don’t follow it, but (to quote, of all people, Rickie Lee Jones), “you can’t break the rules until you know how to play the game”.

The Truman Capote story you mentioned is, I believe, “Children on Their Birthdays”, and you’ve remembered it correctly. But he sure didn’t try that trick very many times. . .

Another honorable exception in the mixed-up chronology category would be some of the Cordwainer Smith stories, where the main event of the plot is mentioned in the first paragraph or two.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:20:05 +0000

John: Agreed. I’m not sure if my distinction between “biased” and “unreliable” narrators is a good one. But I think there’s a difference between the first-person narrator who’s not presenting the full story because it’s impossible for any one person to ever present the full story… and the first-person narrator who’s not presenting the full story because the author is trying to shoehorn him into a severely limited position strictly to ratchet up tension or make a cheap point. The narrator of OMW I think clearly falls in the former camp.

By: John Scalzi

John Scalzi — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 15:46:37 +0000

To echo what Jesper Svedberg says, a narrator may be unreliable not because he’s being deceptive but because he simply doesn’t know all the details of his situation and may not be in a position to find out. The narrator of “Old Man’s War,” for example, is an unreliable narrator about the nature of some aspects of the universe he finds himself in, because he’s basically fed a particular line of information, and he doesn’t have the resources to discover more (nor would it be appropriate to diverge from his point of view in fill in the audience with what he doesn’t know, because the book is written in first person).

I think this sort of unreliable narrator is fine (naturally, because I wrote one) because I think it’s fine to have ambiguity and not have everything explained at the outset or even at the conclusion.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:44:22 +0000

Definitely some good points, Jesper. I’m tempted to say that bad cliffhangers are like pornography — you know them when you see them.

You’re right, GRRM generally does cliffhangers well. One place where I think he’s done a bad job at them occurs at the end of A Feast for Crows — it’s the last scene in the book involving Brienne. (If you’re read the book, you’ll certainly know what I mean.)

By: Jesper Svedberg

Jesper Svedberg — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 17:05:59 +0000

I don’t think you can do a good first person narrative without making it to some extent unreliable; it’s comes naturally with a limited perspective.

I also can’t see how one can say that having a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter is any more artificial than not having a cliffhanger there. They’re two different ways of telling a story, but both are pure artifice.
That’s not to say that there are people who handle cliffhangers poorly, but one example of someone doing it often and well is George R. R. Martin in his series “A Song of Ice and Fire”.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 13:18:57 +0000

Breakfast of Champions is kind of unique. It’s told in this childish tone of voice and it’s full of childish scribbled illustrations. Basically the whole thing is a disillusioned Vonnegut trying to make sense of a Watergate-era America gone insane, and so he deconstructs everything — including the book itself — down to the point of absurdity.

Admittedly it’s not for everyone.

By: Gyp Oriens

Gyp Oriens — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 07:35:28 +0000

“As for Vonnegut, at the end of Breakfast of Champions, he shows up as a sort of god and sets his protagonist free.”

I don’t see how that could EVER be done and not be a cheap move. -_-; Up till now I was blissfully unaware that anyone did that except–well, that anyone did that at all.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:39:19 +0000

I must plead ignorance, insofar as (gasp!) I’ve never read Gene Wolfe. Heresy, I know.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 17:12:26 +0000

What do you think of Gene Wolfe in regards to unreliable narrator? I think it works very well in Books of the Foo Sun.