Inside or Outside?

Simple Guidelines for Opening Stories and Scenes
by
Max Griffin

Some of the greatest literature of the nineteenth century used an omniscient narrator.  This technique places the author--and the reader--outside the events of the story, looking in.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this approach. However, modern commercial fiction has almost completely abandoned the omniscient narrator.  Today, about thirty percent of all commercial fiction uses a first person narrator, while the overwhelming majority of the remainder uses third person limited.  The purpose of this short essay is to discuss the latter approach and its consequences for opening a scene in a short story or novel.

Before starting on our main enterprise, it's worthwhile to have a short discussion of the prevailing theory of fiction today.  The guiding concept is that of the fictional dream.  John Gardner conceived this idea and was its most articulate spokesperson.  In his excellent guide for authors, The Art of Fiction, he states

"In the writing state—the state of inspiration—the fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols. The dream is as alive and compelling as one's dreams at night, and when the writer writes down on paper what he has imagined, the words, however inadequate, do not distract his mind from the fictive dream but provide him with a fix on it, so that when the dream flags he can reread what he's written and find the dream starting up again. This and nothing else is the desperately sought and tragically fragile writer's process: in his imagination, he sees made-up people doing things—sees them clearly—and in the act of wondering what they will do next he sees what they will do next, and all this he writes down in the best, most accurate words he can find, understanding even as he writes that he may have to find better words later, and that a change in the words may mean a sharpening or deepening of the vision, the fictive dream or vision becoming more and more lucid, until reality, by comparison, seems cold, tedious, and dead." 

To be sure, there are other theories of fiction than Gardner's.  Many powerful works of modern literature deliberately use a "distancing effect" (German: Verfremdungseffekt), promoted by Bertolt Brecht among other masters.  This competing idea purposefully reminds the readers--or the audience, in the case of theater or cinema--that the fictional events are an artifice and thus strives to engage the readers on a more critical and intellectual level.  

However, this essay is about commercial fiction, and in this arena Gardner's ideas have become dominant.  One might think of the "fictional dream" as drawing the reader into the story from the outside world, while the "distancing effect" places the reader outside the story, looking in, hence the title for this essay.  Commercial fiction today is firmly on the side of putting the reader inside the story.

This dichotomy is certainly an over-simplification, but it's a helpful paradigm to keep in mind.  If you want to construct a fictional dream, you need to draw the reader into the story and hence into a dream-like state.  You want to avoid things that pull the reader out of that state.  While the readers are inside the story, you do not want them thinking--you want them believing,imagining, and feeling.  

It's not that you don't want your readers to ever think--surely every author has a message they want their readers take away from their story.  However, you don't want them puzzling out the details of the fictional world while they are reading the story.  Later, as they reflect on the meaning of tale, that's when you want them thinking.  

So, the basic idea is to draw the readers into a fictional dream.  The readers become the author's active partners in imagining the fictional world, in a state of suspended disbelief.  In crafting the opening of any fictional work, it's the author's primary task to launch this dream.  Each change in scene runs the risk of disrupting the dream, and so the author must use all the tools of his or her craft to keep the dream-state alive and to lure the reader into the new setting.

Here are two simple guidelines.

1.  Launch a new scene by orienting the readers.  The reader needs to know who the point-of-view character is, where that person is, what they are doing, and why they are doing it.  If the scene is embedded in the story, the readers also need to know when it's taking place relative to the earlier scenes.

2.  At the very start of a scene, put the readers inside the head of the point-of-view character.  

These are simple ideas, but difficult to carry out in practice.  It's amazing to me how many stories I read where the authors have omitted all the informational tasks listed in the first guideline.  The second step, putting the reader inside the point-of-view character's head, is even more challenging.  Let's look at an example, starting with a basic opening and then tweaking it.

It was dinnertime when John walked into his brother Tom's hospital room.  He felt bad seeing Tom's injuries and wished he'd been more careful when planning their hunting trip. 

These two opening sentences accomplish the basics of orienting the reader:

We know who point-of-view character is: John.  We've established we're in his head because we know he's "feeling bad."
We know where he's at--in a hospital.
We know what he's doing and why he's there--visiting his brother.
We know when the scene takes place--dinnertime. 

Thus, this opening does the basic job of orienting the readers.  Note you have to name John to answer the "who" question.  The sooner you name him, the better, as this helps readers to identify with him.  

Do not start by writing, "It was dinnertime when he walked into the room."  The pronoun "he" has no antecedent and makes the reader stop and think about who walked in.  Even if the point-of-view doesn't change between scenes, a new scene marks a break in the fictional dream.  Reinforcing that we're still in John's head helps maintain continuity of the dream-state.

Do not start with dialogue. A disembodied voice will almost surely put the reader outside the story looking in, hearing the words on their own instead of through the point-of-view character's ears.  Establish the point-of-view first, before anyone speaks.  Further, opening with dialogue will lead the reader to think about who is speaking and where they are.  You don't want them thinking--at least, not yet!  

The worst thing about this opening is that it does almost nothing to put the reader inside John's head.    Doing that takes thought and craft.  The author needs to be inside John's head, imagining entering the room, imagining the sensations and emotions that pass across his psyche as this scene opens.

John heaved a cleansing breath and his nose tingled as he inhaled astringent hospital scents.  He stepped into his brother Tom's room where a nurse's aide huddled beside the bed, spooning a liquid dinner of steaming soup into Tom's waiting lips.  John blinked back tears at the sight of the casts immobilizing his brother's limbs.  Guilt clenched at his stomach and tightened his throat while memories of yesterday's hunting accident came flooding back.

This opening is by no means perfect. Instead, it's constructed to make some specific points about craft.  It starts with John doing something personal--heaving a cleansing breath.  We learn that he's in a hospital from the scents that this breath brings.  In fact, his nose tingles in response to the "astringent" scents.  All of this combines to make this bit of information intimate and immediate, since it's about what John smells rather than just telling the reader that he's in a hospital.  In the next two sentences, we learn about Tom's injuries in specific ways: he can't feed himself, he's on a liquid diet, and his arms are immobilized in casts.  We also learn that he's getting dinner, which answers the "when" question.  Finally, we learn that John "feels bad" through descriptions of his physical responses to seeing his brother: he blinks back tears, his stomach clenches, and his throat tightens.  These are all visceral, inner sensations that help to put the readers into John's head and establish him as the point-of-view character.

It takes approximately twice as many words to establish the point of view--the first opening is 29 words and the second is73 words.  But notice that the second does a much better job of drawing the reader into John's head and hence into the scene and the story.

Let me do one more example, this one based on an opening to one of my short stories.

Matt looked at the snow storm through his window.  It was night, and the streetlight illuminated the storm making him think of death.  Downstairs, his best friend argued with his wife.  He wanted to yell at them to stop, but he couldn't.  He had had a headache and rubbed his eyes.

Here we know some the basic answers:

Who: Matt.
Where: upstairs.
What:  He's looking out the window.
Why:  This is an unanswered question, although it seems to have something to do with the argument downstairs.
When: It's night.

Notice that the "why" question is largely unanswered.  Exactly why is Matt looking out the window instead of going downstairs?  What is the argument about?  If he wants to yell at them, why can't he?  Why does he have a headache and what does that have to do with the story?  Sometimes leaving one of the basic questions unanswered or partially answered can launch the plot, which is the case here.  Part of the point is that the guidelines are just that: guidelines.  It would be a mistake to follow thes rules, lemming-like, over a cliff.

Here's the opening I actually wrote for this story "In Dreams" .

Matt pressed his palm against the window pane and let his forehead kiss the glass.  Outside, an immaculate shroud of snow enfolded the night-shadowed avenue.  Flakes, silent and inevitable, wafted through the streetlight's halo.  He tilted his head to peer through the window, where icy facets glittered like stardust across the drifts.  

Voices from downstairs, muffled and indistinct, muttered through the heating ducts.  He wanted to scream at them, his wife and his best friend, but no sound escaped his throat.  Matt withdrew his hand from the chill glass and rubbed his eyes.  His cold fingers soothed the pain that lingered there.

In this story, it turns out that Matt is dead by his wife's hand, and we are in his disembodied soul--a pair of twists not revealed until the very end.  In the opening, I wanted to foreshadow these very specific plot elements and crafted language to this end.  Words like "shroud," "inevitable,"  "silent," "halo," and "stardust" all have deliberate portent.  Instead of saying "he couldn't" yell at his wife and best friend, I say "no sound escaped his throat," which is quite different.  His "cold fingers" are also foreshadowing, as is the fact that the pain "lingers" between his eyes--where his wife shot him.  

Once again, as with the prior example, the point with this opening is to draw the readers into the point-of-view character's head and, through the character's emotions, deeds and sensations, to draw them into the fictional world.  If, at the same time, you can foreshadow the action and plot of the story, so much the better.  

I'm sure you can find examples of your own where the author makes use of these guidelines.  Indeed, I've posted this as a message board so that you can add your own examples and comments.

Also, never forget that guidelines are just that.  They are suggestions, based on both theory and practical experience.  Your story may have different demands or structure.  Maybe you want to employ the "distancing effect," in which case nothing in this essay applies.  As in the second example above, maybe some element of orienting the reader is connected to the twist that makes the story work.  Always follow your muse, not that of someone else.  At the same time, take advantage of things that make sense for your story and your style.

Good luck, and good writing!

Max