How Characterized Narrators Foster Unforgettable Story
Studying big personality narrative voices in spec fiction
On our last trip to the library, my newly graduated first grader raced up to his little bro and proudly presented him with three books. Look!, he told us. I read these books when I was your age! You’re gonna love them!
In typical little brotherly fashion, my four-year-old shouted: no thank you! And ran off to our new library playground. However, a few days later, I pulled See the Cat out of the library bag, and it was love at first sight word for our second-born with this delightful easy reader series.
The See the Cat series by David LaRochelle starts like the mundane beginner books we associate with early childhood literacy:
See the cat. See the blue cat. The blue cat is in the green dress.
It’s reminiscent of Dick and Jane, albeit with a blue cat wearing a dress. How did LaRochelle turn such basic beginner sentences into a memorable story absolutely beloved by both my sons and me? Let’s find out.
The dog who talked back to the book.
Does anyone remember Duck Amuck, the 1950’s Warner Brothers cartoons where Daffy Duck interacts with—and talks back to—his animator? The playful antagonism between Daffy and his animator is exactly the dynamic going on in See the Cat.
In See the Cat protagonist, Max (who is a dog, NOT a cat, you can be sure he’ll inform you), goes head-to-head with his Book. It’s a battle between the narrative text and Max. As readers, we’re really not sure who’s gonna win.
What happens when the antagonist of your story is the Book, itself? This amazing magic happens where the narrator, invisible to the reader, takes on a distinct personality. Making the narrator a character allows the author to get meta and play with form. This playfulness instantly includes the reader in a game at once intimate, delightful, and deliciously dangerous.
Lucky for me, I’m wrapping up my read of Sourcery, the fifth book of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Pratchett is playing the *exact* same game as LaRochelle—giving his novel’s narrative voice a distinctive personality.
Funny footnotes and fantasy
Some authors sprinkle in bits of personality throughout their narration, particularly during scene and setting transitions. The Dragonsquisher by Scott McCormick is a fun example of this. Another place to highlight narrative personality is through footnnotes.
In his Discworld series, Pratchett’s quirky narrator makes their appearance during footnotes. The footnotes typically illuminate some world building detail, usually with a wry perspective that not only tickles readers’ funny bones, but expresses the values and opinions of the author of the footnote. Expressing values and opinions about the world around you makes a character—out of anyone or anything—even a disembodied voice.
There’s something very British about the dry humor of the footnotes and their cynical, opinionated wit that reminds me of another well-loved British speculative fiction writer, Douglas Adams.
Encyclopedic narrators in science fiction
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the fictional guidebook for which the series is name isn’t just a reference, it’s a character with its own worldview. Unlike in Pratchett, the Guide isn’t constrained to footnotes; it intersperses its encyclopedic facts with the main text of the novel. However, when the Guide feels like detouring into an in-depth explanation of a world building detail outside the main narrative, footnotes come to its aid. The Guide is so funny because of the blasé approach it takes to phenomenon that would stun us Earthlings, like Babbelfish and torture by Vogon Poetry.
As in Discworld, the Guide not only tickles readers with its deadpan, but witty opinions, but it breaks the fourth wall, inviting readers into a broader perspective of the world and its wonders. It takes readers behind the scenes of the action, which is not only tons of fun, but it adds a frisson of suspense and danger. Readers are seeing behind the action, and there’s nobody present in the wings with the power or the empathy to rescue our heroes when the chips are down.
That very sense of our heroes being on their own in a world that doesn’t care whether they live or die makes the narrative voice in footnotes ideal for yet another speculative fiction genre: horror.
Footnotes, annotations, and horror
Two of my favorite books told through footnotes are S by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst, and House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Both books were incredibly memorable adventures because their stories were told between the lines of the actual text of the book—and in the margins, footnotes, and in some cases the newspaper clippings and other paper media inserted in their pages. These two reads were also some of the scariest books I’ve managed to finish
In S characters heavily annotate the text of an ostensible fiction book. Different colored inks and distinct handwriting distinguish the characters. Conversations between the two main annotators appear in the margins. Over time, we come to know the characters intimately based not only on how they respond to each other, but by what aspects of the text they underline, circle, and expound upon.
In House of Leaves, the annotative commentary foreshadows that unfolding events in the main story will not end well. Readers see all the warning signs the annotator highlights, but the action has all taken place long before the annotations were made. As the reader’s understanding blossoms like fungus on a rotting log, their role as participants in the story is one of terrible, suffocating helplessness. There’s no way to call characters back to safety.
More meta fiction reads to love
When narrators become characters, they blur the boundaries between fiction and reality. They disrupt our expectations. They nurture a unique style of engagement with story. This is why, *decades* after I finished reading it, House of Leaves is unforgettable for me. It’s why my older son grabbed See the Cat off the shelf and ran to deliver it to his little brother. When narrators become characters, something truly special happens.
If, like me, you’re tickled by narrators with big personalities, metafiction, and footnotes or annotations that lead you deeper into worlds of wonder, check out a few other reads I didn’t have space to study in this post: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. Both are hauntingly magical realism novels that play with form and elevate readers’ involvement in story.
I’m loving the cover art for the latest issue of Luna Station Quarterly. "Celestial" by Erika Taguchi. My science fiction story, “The Growing Song,” is included in the issue!
