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

[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.