Unstable Narrative

[Logan_Frost]

I wrote about it in my blog, and it's pretty long to repost here.

Generally when I write these blogs about the craft, it's primarily because I have questions about it, and I hope that in creating a definition for myself, I can see it more clearly.

So what I want to know is - and this is for the Velvet nation as much as it is for the Trio - am I on the right track?

Originally Posted by Logan's blog

Okay, so now I’m looking at a new crew of characters, some deranged, some sweet, some vicious. But our narrator is now clinically and legally insane, and the story is taking place in the first person. If you’re a writer - and if you’re not family and reading this, chances are you are - you’ll know the issues one has when dealing with an unstable and untrustworthy narrator. For example - if he’s insane, how can we believe anything he says is true - or if he’s telling the truth, how can we believe that it’s real?

...

In a character-driven story, this is very much possible, since the plot is secondary to what’s going on with the character. The narrator is true to himself; if he’s lying, there are ways of showing it. Little ticks in his character that hint at how he perceives truth and falsehood. In the short story, I used colors to suggest truth/fiction. If he starts using red colors to describe what’s going on, it’s more or less untrue. If he starts using blue colors, it’s true. Colors like purple and green suggest that he’s not completely sure whether or not it’s true.

If one creates an unstable narrator, you have to understand that there needs to be consistency in his instability. In Fight Club, there was constistency - when Jack started to sleep, Tyler started taking control. The two never did something together when people were watching. Why? Because that would be impossible beyond his own mind. If Tyler and Jack fought two different people at the same time, that would be inconsistent with the idea of two people in one body...

There's a lot more to it, but this is some of the pertinent stuff.

[vandamage]

Unstable first person should be easy to pull off, simply because that particular character holds authority. In third person, the rule of thumb is to stay out of their thoughts, unless you're Thomas Harris, who sleeps in the same bed as Hannibal Lector.

[Thielir]

This is just my opinion and I feel kind of weird posting here, but I have a compulsive liar of a narrator myself armed with a faulty memory, and, who knows yet whether or not what I'm doing works, but this is what I think...


There are two basic styles I've seen used really well with unreliable characters/narrators.

First style- Repetition. If your narrator is insane, then maybe they've got a couple different versions of certain scenerios clunking around up inside their head. You can drop these around in various places mixed in with the regular story line. Obviously, this is what WCB uses in his books, most frequently in KMJ.

If the narrator is insane and doesn't know what's going on themselves, some parts of the story don't need to be clear to the reader, either. This adds to the dillusional atmosphere. Sometimes it's so wrong to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothin' but the truth.

Also, I think that this tends to work better with books than in movies or anything. Just on a side note. This is something that's generally hard to portray visually unless there's a narrator in the background.


Second style- subtle hints. More what you're talking about with the colors and Fight Club. Used most often in fiction dealing with questionable people. Particularly when there's a big shocker at the end. It takes a lot of careful planning. It's the type of book that you feel the need to immeadiatly go back and reread the moment you finish just because the beginning suddenly makes more sense now.

Although... while a symbologist, psychologist, etc would pick up on the colors thing, it's maybe just a little too technical for the average fiction reader. Even the above average ones. It certainly makes for a more interesting read once it's been pointed out to you, but if it's being used as the sole defining factor between truth and dillusionment, most people will be lost. They're not going to read your book to feel like they're taking a psych. exam.


Sorry if I hijacked this thread, but I just guessed the "Velvet nation" might be referring to any member. I didn't know... but no one else was posting. And, I've been agonizing over these same questions recently with my own characters.

[vandamage]

Originally Posted by Thielir

Sorry if I hijacked this thread, but I just guessed the "Velvet nation" might be referring to any member. I didn't know... but no one else was posting. And, I've been agonizing over these same questions recently with my own characters.

Don't worry, you're part of the velvet nation.

This ain't the cult, where 'you are not your post count' means 'you are your post count'.

in the velvet, the rule seems to be 'you are your post(s)'...quality, not quanity.

You answers are dead on too. good post.

[THX 1138]

Originally Posted by vandamage

Don't worry, you're part of the velvet nation.

This ain't the cult, where 'you are not your post count' means 'you are your post count'.

in the velvet, the rule seems to be 'you are your post(s)'...quality, not quanity.

You answers are dead on too. good post.

i hear ya, the cult is full of like one word threads and people just trying to "put up big numbers" so to speak.

when i forst opened this i thought it would be about not being able to sustain a narrative style. a problem i have sometimes. after reading it however, i might suggest that. if the character is insane (or schizophrenic) have the narrative change back and forth as he drifts in and out of reality

[OnlyLivingWitness]

Even the insane, and I mean the deepest of the clinically insane, think in a structure. Instability, deception, skewed perception and the like must still follow some form of logic. The way your character makes connections and associations, his progression of thought, and his moral barometer must follow an internal consistency. Otherwise, you're working with something random and, regardless of what deconstructionists what to say about it, you cannot build character without some kind of pattern. That pattern can shift and evolve, but it has to for a reason.

"I'm dead, doctor."
"What, Joe? That's absurd."
"Really, I mean it. I'm dead, 100% dead."
"Can dead people bleed, Joe?"
"No. I don't think so. Why?"
"Well, if I do this..."
"Hey, ow, goddammit."
"See, now you're bleeding. Ergo, you are not dead."
"Isn't that something?"
"It certainly is."
"Dead people can bleed."

It's all about interior logic.

[Spike]

This should help with speech patterns:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_thought_disorder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alogia

[gavin]

I agree with jason on the pattern idea. . . also, schizophrenics specifically tend to see themselves as intregal parts of large systems, especially paranoid ones. . . I used to be a case worker at a homeless shelter and at one point I had a client list consisting of a woman who could see demons in other people, a man who had been the victim of a sex/kidnapping ring in hollywood as a child who had parlayed that knowledge into becoming a special agent for the NSA's elite sex/violence terrorists unit, and a catatonic who washed his hands at least two hundred times a day and stood frozen in the courtyard for hours on end who upon being confronted with the possibility that he suffered from mental illness prompty hired a lawyer. . . . what all of these had in common was that they didn't even for a second view themselves as ill, and on confrontation, ran with either a severely paranoid answer for the diagnosis or just failed to listen in the least. . . . so for the fiction writer it might be good to remember that the 'crazies' know they are sane, and that sanity is always a matter of perception. . . . so the question becomes, who is the author trying to "fool"; the reader (as in fight club), which would take one bag of tricks, or the other characters, which would take another. . . .

[OnlyLivingWitness]

Another thing is, if you're writing about mental disorders, owning a copy of the DSM never hurts. Even better than that is the DSM Casebook:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846

Almost 600 pages of case study in the most prosaic, straightforward language you can imagine. It's got great organization and gives you a lot of information you won't find in the standard diagnosis. It's a solid reference tool, check it out.

[topbunknoose]

The unstable narrative is a lot more difficult to pull off that Bob implies at the beginning of this, because they are your narrator and as unstable as their speech or thoughts might be, you still have to make the person believeable. The only way to do that is show the consistency of their world and the connections between their thoughts to make things appear logical for the character. Other people can confront your narrator on it, but it's still fairly difficult to force yourself to think outside your own standards of thought to act like the narrator and better immerse yourself in his world.

I personally don't like the FIGHT CLUB example, because it's a big trick, gimmick so to speak and I sorta feel that it cheapens the character to some extent, because even split personality persons know something happens, but they don't know what. But it was one of the better executed examples of the technique and I appreciate it's finesse.

However I think the real possibly insane characters predating Shakespeare that convince you that they're perfectly normal are the more powerful ones. Like Hannibal Lector with his savage wit and Phineas with his disconnected memories [although I have a different theory for why that is]. Even Amos in ATBS was reasonable to an extent because his thoughts were solid, they just reached obscure conclusions that others would not approve of.

[topbunknoose]

Originally Posted by JasonofMacAdamCage

Another thing is, if you're writing about mental disorders, owning a copy of the DSM never hurts. Even better than that is the DSM Casebook:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846

Almost 600 pages of case study in the most prosaic, straightforward language you can imagine. It's got great organization and gives you a lot of information you won't find in the standard diagnosis. It's a solid reference tool, check it out.

I'll have to hit up my library or see if the Baylor Medical Schools around have a few copies in their libraries, because $53 is a tad expensive for a reference book. Although it's cheaper than the one they'd make me buy for Psychology class... So using a school loan for books on that one.

[StephenG.Jones]

wouldn't TIN DRUM's Oskar count as more or less insane, here? seems the mouth he's talking with is his drum, and he's in a padded room, etc. but, too, it's just a wholly coherent narrative. unlike Faulkner's guy in THE SOUND & THE FURY (Benjy, yes? I'm no Faulkner fan), who's also lost it/never had it, but sounds like it. me, I suppose, I agree with what Noose was saying: same premises, different conclusion. just b/c that seems to be the fundamental definition of someone out of touch with reality.

if your insane characters were focal characters instead of narrators, too, this'd be such an easier question to answer. b/c it'd all come down to distance: whether we're looking at them, or sharing their eyeholes (which is essentially the difference in us feeling the 'insane-ness' or being distanced enough from the text that we get a little dramatic irony going on--we know the guy's crazy, but of course, like Gavin was saying, the guy himself doesn't).

too, this a question where we could replace 'insane character' with 'child,' think? just seems to raise some of the same issues: reliability, diction. writing from a kid's POV's nothing like easy, either, at least not for me (Howard Buten's WHEN I WAS FIVE I KILLED MYSELF is an excellent example of how to do it, though).

anyway: luck.