Narrative Conventions

[rowyn]

I was thinking about these this morning: the implicit rules of Western storytelling, without which stories tend to be unsatisfying or feel badly constructed. Such as:

* The Rule of Plans: If the characters explain The Plan to the reader beforehand, it cannot work. This is because no author wants to describe the same thing twice and if it worked, acting it out would be just like explaining it.
The Corollary of Detailed Plans: If the characters explain the Plan in detail, it will go horribly, horribly wrong. The description of the Plan is only there to serve as a blueprint of how it went wrong.

The Rule of Significant Characters: Any character important in the second half of a story must be introduced in the first half. This is to prove you're not just making it up as you go along. Writers who are just making it up as they go along are advised to introduce a lot of extraneous characters in the first half just in case you need them later.
The Corollary of Secret Identities: Characters whose specific identity is unknown but who appear throughout the story as an actor (eg, a masked thief) must be mentioned by their secret identity at least once in the first half of the story and be revealed as such in the second half. This applies even if their real name is irrelevant and your story is not about the mystery of unmasking them.

The Rule of Resolutions: Any special abilities/skills/super powers/vulnerabilities which will be critical at the climax must be mentioned well before the climax. This is also to prove that you aren't just making it up as you go along. Writers who are just making it up as they go along should be aware that introducing extraneous powers well before the climax in case you need them later doesn't work as well as doing the same thing with characters.

What other narrative conventions can you think of? When have you seen these conventions flouted -- especially flouted effectively? The best case of flouting that I know is on the Corollary of Secret Identities in Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta": V is never unmasked and it doesn't matter who he "really" was, or if he was anyone that appeared elsewhere in the graphic novel.

Or, almost as good: followed but followed badly? I remember two instances of bad implementations of the Corollary of Secret Identities: one where the author clearly had one character in mind for the "real villain", and then decided that was too obvious and switched it to a different character, who made no sense at all as the secret id. And another where the secret id was completely irrelevant to the story, but had still been mentioned in a single throwaway paragraph near the start just to satisfy narrative convention.

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I was just reading Mission of Honor, and there was this plan the enemies had to blow up Manticore that was stretched out over TWO WHOLE BOOKS of foreshadowing (in little vignettes between chapters), describing in great detail the hardware and theories and risks.

It went off without a hitch. Actually, almost every plan anyone has in the recent Honor Harrington books is described ahead of time and works just fine.

He also tends to introduce new technology by surprise, and the idea is that it's an obvious extension of the last technological advance (to the point where the fridge logic is 'and no one thought of doing this in the previous 2000 years? Really?) instead of being something foreshadowed per se.

[rowyn]

The "new ability that follows logically from old ability" is fairly reasonable. It's okay to have your sorceress who turns into a cat become a tiger in the grand finale. Having her summon an AK-47 and be an expert shot, not so much.

The plans that are explained and then work, though, that's pretty different. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

The Story Oligarchy: often I see braided books where the writer alternates between several viewpoints. This becomes a guarantee that these characters will live out the book, and that they will play equally important roles in furthering the story, or witness equally important events. Often individual threads will end chapters on a cliffhanger and send you off to see what happened to the other characters, leaving you anxious to get back to the first thread.

Description Evolution: Victorian times used to be filled with long and lengthy descriptions of settings which would then not be referred to much thereafter, if at all. (they were, after all, being paid by the word) Robert Heinlein did away with all this and went to the other extreme, describing things as little as possible and using the way characters acted to make them come alive in the reader's mind. We could go an entire story without knowing what color was the main character's hair - because this was after all, entirely unimportant.

These days stories span the gap between the two, but by and large, I think there's an understanding that you describe what you mean to use, and skimp on description for things you don't intend to use. Lengthy description has become the literary equivalent of a camera slowly panning over a scene.

[rowyn]

Hee, I like the Story Oligarchy one. :) Although Prophecy kind of violated it. c.c

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I think Prophecy did a fine job of showing that it can be "violated" and work. =)

...

I still wanna read the final version, by the way.

[rowyn]

Did I never send it to you? I'll try to remember to email it when I get home tonight.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Re: Story Oligarchy: I've run into this in some books, but there are also others where a viewpoint character didn't necessarily survive the book. In fact, there was one particular story that I had to read as a class assignment, wherein each chapter was told from a different point of view (some for more than one chapter, here and then later on), of a family who was traveling to bury their mother. If I recall correctly (which I may well NOT), one character who was a viewpoint character earlier on ended up dead later on in the story (so having part of the story told from your viewpoint was no guarantee that you'd see the end), one chapter was "narrated" by the character of the dead mother (who was in no position to do so, and this wasn't meant to be a "supernatural" story), and at least one chapter was told by a dishonest narrator (and possibly several were).

Can't remember the title. Wouldn't really recommend the story, either. The narrative gymnastics were, in my opinion, "artsy," but the result wasn't a spectacular story ... mostly just an outrageously depressing one. (The father of this clan is a worthless scumbag who basically leeches off of the efforts of others and inexplicably gets away with it, and by the end of the tale, he's the only one who ends up well off, while all of his kin end up dying, maimed, insane, and/or emotionally scarred by the end of the journey.)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Clearly an example of why defying the story oligarchy is an unwise idea. };)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

In that particular instance, yes, but I think it COULD have been done, if the "star" of the story wasn't necessarily a single person. It's just that where I think it would work doesn't necessarily defy your story oligarchy - because it replaces one "character" with another.

For instance, let's consider a horror story about the "history" of a haunted house. The "star" of our story is really the house itself. We may be introduced to a character who SEEMS to be "the star," but then he or she is killed off. (Although I think of a certain Alfred Hitchcock movie here, it's not really a good example because this happens fairly early on, leaving us opportunity to introduce the "real" main character before the halfway point.)

What you might end up with is essentially a series of vignettes or "accounts" of encounters with this haunted location, with some threads that tie together (evidence is found of previous encounters, or it might not even be presented chronologically, so that we're fitting in bits and pieces of a larger mystery as we get more information from different encounters), but it's not so much about identifying with one specific focal-point character that we get to follow throughout the whole story.

Still, the "common theme" that takes the place of a viewpoint character would be that house. If there's no continuity at all, then we'd just have a collection of short scary stories - maybe of some value in their own right, but you could just as easily separate them and scramble with other stories.

[rowyn]

A related staple is that "The Protagonists Can't All Die in the Middle": you can kill the protagonists all off at the end, but if you start out with four viewpoint characters, at least one of them has to make it to the end (if not survive thereafter). Illegal Aliens pretty much violated this, by starting with one group and then killing them all partway through. I think it had a viewpoint character or two before that who wasn't with the doomed group, though.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

And even if it were a set of characters witnessing the house, I'd still feel like it was more a themed set of vignettes. Part of the pull of the oligarchy is that you want to find out what happens next to a character, and you're being delayed from finding out by the next character's thread.

[rowyn]

I remember you mentioning this story before, in the context of dishonest narrators. You gotta admit, it's stuck with you. >:)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

True, but largely because of the teacher. It was the first time that the concept of a "dishonest narrator" was called to my attention, among a few other things. The concepts were interesting. I just wouldn't go so far as to recommend the dreary story that was used to demonstrate these concepts.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Either it's Faulkner's As I Lay Dying*, or someone else wrote a very similar story that is also studied in English classes, in the apparent effort to convince teenagers that storytelling was a terrible idea and should be abandoned at once, because, I'm sure, some people sincerely value it.

*I couldn't actually remember the title either, or rather, I kept getting stuck on "In My Time of Dying" or something like that. I found it by searching for Faulkner "my mother is a fish" because before I read the book, I noticed someone had put up that line from it in the collection of memorable quotes all over the classroom walls.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

That sounds vaguely familiar, and thus that might very well be the book. Armed with such knowledge, I suppose I could actually try to locate it in the library system, and confront the likely fact of just how badly my memory has failed me on the details.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Maybe check tvtropes, see if they have something like this?

[rowyn]

Aww, but where's the fun in that?

Also, TV Tropes is focused more on story elements -- the themes and archetypes that occur in many different types of stories -- than on narrative structure. Structure isn't really a trope, because a trope is something that can be used, inverted, or ignored with zero impact on the quality of the story. I'm thinking of rules that are almost universal, where going against them or ignoring them nearly always weakens the story.

[shadowwolf13]

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[rowyn]

D'aww! What a great idea for a post. :) Thanks for the link!

[shadowwolf13]

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[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[H'm. I am making it up as I go along; that is part of the distinctive charm practical considerations of the art form. I wonder how obvious that is, or if it's a problem. -bb]

[rowyn]

You planned some of it out! :) "Making it up as you go along" is not unique to web serials by any means. Charles Dickens used to do it; most of his novels were written as print serials in magazines. It's a hallowed tradition!

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Rule of Plans: That's one thing that really bugs me on a "meta" level when reading stories or watching TV. Like, "Oh nooooo! They're spending too much time planning! It'll NEVER WORK!"

Still, some shows seem to call for the idea of competent heroes who make a plan and it DOES work - but telling us in intricate detail about the plan and then telling us again (or, "showing us") would be lame. So, they signify this by:

1) Leader Guy says, "I've got a plan..." Fast forward into the heroes actually carrying it out.
1b) Optionally, for TV or movies, have a narrative that is apparently taking place during the planning session. Rather than watching the characters stand around and talk, we're watching the events play out. It might just be Leader Guy talking, or other team members might jump in with "what if?" concerns (which may or may not be borne out by the events we're witnessing). This is something that takes advantage of the medium of TV/movies in that we can have two "tracks" going on: what we see, and what we're hearing. I think I've also seen it done for comics. I haven't really seen this done in a text medium, except (sorry, can't remember example), some story wherein it kept bouncing between "past planning" snippets, and "future acting out" bits.

As in, here's a section of things being carried out, then, break, suddenly we're back at the planning session, and someone says, "Hey, what if...?" with someone else saying, "Well, then..." ... and then we go back to "the present" and see, whaddyaknow, this problem cropping up, but our team is prepared. Not quite the same, though.

2) Detail one, highlight the other. E.g., we hear in great detail the plan, but "fast-forward" through carrying it out. Usually, though, this means "fast-forwarding until something goes NOT according to plan," and then the "action" picks up again there ... which falls right into that trope, because that's what I *expect* to happen whenever too much "telling" is given up front.

3) Different POV. We witness character group one making their plan. Later on, in a chapter from the POV of the "bad guys" or whatever, we get to see events unfold from their perspective, and we can "fill in the gaps" on what the heroes are up to where we can't see them directly based on what their plan was. Still, I strongly expect, if the opposing team has become the "viewpoint" character, that they'll get to throw a monkey wrench into things somehow. It's not much fun (for me, anyway) to watch doomed characters from their POV, where you know the outcome is predestined (even if they're "bad guys").

[rowyn]

Variants on 1) are what I see most often.

3) can work for me. Some of it depends on how much I hate the bad guys, and how badly things go for them. Sometimes it can be a lot of fun. >:)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Rule of Resolutions: I'm afraid that's just not something I want to "break" as a writer. If there's any sort of mystery element to a story, I want, as a reader, to feel as if I COULD have seen it coming, that there was some sort of "clue" or setup ... though it's more fun to actually be surprised.

I remember season one of "24." It seemed like a really cool show, aside from the occasional stupidity with the hero's daughter getting into contrived trouble now and then (a MOUNTAIN LION SHOWS UP FOR THE CLIFFHANGER! ... and goes away next episode because the writers must have caught on that this was just too stupid...). And then there was an interview with the writer, and he basically says that, "Yeah, that big reveal that So-and-So was actually the villain ... we didn't figure that out until halfway through the series."

So, any ideas of CLUES were purely the invention of an overly imaginative audience. Any sensation of, "Wow, I didn't see that coming!" is only natural because the WRITERS didn't, either. And then it prompts me to think back more critically and to realize how many things don't make sense (and shouldn't have ... because the character wasn't SUPPOSED to be evil at first anyway). It breaks the illusion for me.

It's all right for a writer to make it up as he or she goes, but if you're writing a book, you at least have the luxury of going back and editing. You could INSERT those clues back at the beginning, however obscure. NOT doing it just strikes me as lazy.

It's a bit harder if someone is releasing the story as a serial of some sort. E.g., broadcast TV series, or a story being written and released as chapters on LJ. In that case, I'd like to have a plan up front. Sure, I might have to change things here and there partway (something always comes up!) but I'd like to at least have an overall plan. Or, at least, if it's a murder mystery, I personally think the author really should know WHO DID IT at the start.

[rowyn]

Yes, the closest I can think of to a successful violation of the "Rule of Resolutions" is either what Terrycloth described -- where a new thingamajig shows up to solve the problem, but it's a thingamajig which follows logically from existing ones -- or it's something which makes sense culturally but hasn't been explicitly referenced in the story. Ie, it's 'common knowledge' that holy water hurts vampires, so the author doesn't really have to explain that before the protagonist annihilates Draculid with a baptismal fountain.

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Western convention: Linear motion. The plot starts at point A and moves toward point B, although it may jink along the way.

Eastern convention: Spiral motion. The plot starts at point A and, instead of going straight toward B, instead circles point A in gradually widening arcs until it eventually crosses over point B.