Bookshelf

What Can Your Character See?

In The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann sets many scenes in the dining hall of an Alpine sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. He describes the hall in careful detail: size, architecture, furnishings, arrangement, and where people are seated. In one scene, protagonist Hans Castorp’s nerves are jolted by a slamming door. He looks about for the source of the noise—a young woman:

Hans Castorp saw only a little of her profile—almost nothing, in fact. In quite marvelous contrast to her noisy entrance, she walked soundlessly, with a peculiar slinking gait, her head thrust slightly forward, and proceeded to the farthest table on the left . . . . As she walked she kept one hand in the pocket of her close-fitting wool jacket, while the other was busy at the back of her head, tucking and arranging her hair. Hans Castorp looked at that hand—he had a good eye and a fine critical sense for hands, and it was his habit always first to direct his gaze at them whenever he made a new acquaintance. The hand tucking up her hair was not particularly ladylike, not refined or well cared for, not in the way the ladies in young Hans Castorp’s social circle cared for theirs. It was rather broad, with stubby fingers; there was something primitive and childish about it, rather like the hand of a schoolgirl. Her nails had clearly never seen a manicure, and had been trimmed carelessly—again, like a schoolgirl’s; and the cuticles had a jagged look, almost as if she were guilty of the minor vice of nail-chewing.

Hmmm . . . did you catch that, too? Based on Mann’s prior descriptions of the hall (not quoted above) and his account of the woman’s path through it, the reader knows that Hans Castorp couldn’t possibly be close enough to see her fingernails in such detail.

I was surprised by Mann’s point-of-view slipup. But then he steadied me: “Hans Castorp only surmised all this, however, more than he actually saw it—she was really too far away.” Clever!

While many writing rules are made to be broken, this one is not: never deviate from your story’s point of view. Point of view maintains the reader’s illusion that your story is really happening or could happen. In appearing to veer off-viewpoint, Mann reveals his main character’s mental workings while at the same time reassuring us (like magician’s patter) that The Magic Mountain is somehow true.

(Note: The quotes in this blog post are from the Everyman’s Library’s 1995 translation of The Magic Mountain by John E. Woods.)

Rule 12 and Lady Audley's Secret

In The Elements of Style, rule 12, William Strunk Jr. writes, “Choose a suitable design and hold to it ... Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of the writer, but not necessarily in the order in which those thoughts occur.” Strunk goes on to say that “design” can refer to something as loosely structured as a personal letter or rigidly organized as a sonnet. The point is to know what we are trying to communicate and choose the appropriate organizing principle so we can write it effectively.

Of course, this is easier said than done, especially when it comes to fiction.

A Children's Biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett

A Children's Biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett

Last fall I attended a children’s book festival and came away with Frances Hodgson Burnett: Beyond the Secret Garden by Angelica Shirley Carpenter (who autographed my book) and Jean Shirley (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company, 1990). Children’s biographies about children’s authors are doubly intriguing, and it had been years since I had read a children’s biography.

I remember reading a children’s biography of Louisa May Alcott as a child. I was sorely disappointed by the black-and-white photographs, in which Louisa’s and her family’s faces were massive and severe, and by the facts of Louisa’s life, which was nothing so romantic (I thought at the time) as Jo March’s.

As I began reading Frances Hodgson Burnett, I was prepared for the unglamorous truth about her life and the pictures of her as a sturdy lady corseted up in bizarre Victorian ensembles. What I didn’t expect was the sheer joy of reading a biography written for middle-grade children.

How to Write about Ships for a Landlubber Audience

How to Write about Ships for a Landlubber Audience

One of the many reasons people read is to experience unfamiliar places, people, and events. Books (both fiction and non) are written about space travel, aristocracies, Regency balls, cults, dreamland, Mexico, and sports figures. Authors must sufficiently describe these things so that readers who know nothing about space, inherited titles, or dancing in Empire gowns are able to imagine them.

We don’t want to confuse or alienate readers by not explaining things with which they are likely to be unfamiliar. Nor do we want to interrupt our stories or talk down to our readers by overexplaining.

Finding that balance—a story that sweeps readers along into new, exciting, and imaginable territory—requires a sense of your audience. If you are writing a mystery novel that will likely be read by mystery aficionados, it is not necessary to explain what dusting for fingerprints is. If you are writing a mystery novel that features a person being murdered in a grain silo, it is probably necessary to describe the silo rather than assume that all of your readers have seen the inside of one (unless your novel is for a niche audience of mystery-reading farmers).