More on Unreliable Narrators: What The Girl on the Train Can Teach Us

Warning: This post contains spoilers about The Girl on the Train. Don’t read if you don’t want to know!

Unreliable narrators continue to be on a roll. Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train continues to lead bestseller lists five months after publication, and the just-published Luckiest Girl Alive is being called its follow-up due to its unreliable narrator. Manuscripts I’m reading at the agency I work for are full of them.

In February, I wrote a blog post on unreliable narrators that gave writers guidelines on how to tell whether their story’s unreliable narrator works. After reading The Girl on the Train several times along with several more manuscripts using unreliable narrators, there are a couple more points I’d like to make.

An unreliable narrator is not unreliable if she tells the reader she can’t remember whether or not she committed the act. Hawkins’ Rachel is not considered unreliable because she’s a drunk who thinks she might have murdered Megan. She’s an unreliable narrator because she doesn’t immediately tell the reader that she’s lost her job, that she’s not on the train because of her work commute but because she’s lying to her roommate about being unemployed, and because she doesn’t tell the reader she’s a drunk. Once she puts her cards on the table with the reader – and I believe it’s fairly early on in the narrative – she is no longer an unreliable narrator.

Most new writers playing with this gimmick are straightforward with the reader. Their protagonist doesn’t know what she did because she was drunk, or knocked out, or she sleepwalks and wakes up to find blood all over her hands. A confused narrator is not an unreliable one. When the protagonist tells the reader everything she knows, she’s as reliable as she can be.

If you want your story to have an unreliable narrator, you must have her lie to your readers. Forget the dreams or the reincarnation fantasies or hypnosis stuff. She’s a liar, plain and simple. She cries to the reader about her divorce; it’s her husband who reveals in dialogue how she cheated on him with the entire New York Giants offensive line.

Stories with unreliable narrators are almost always mysteries, and the manuscripts I read that feature them are always overpopulated with possible suspects. Readers have trouble keeping track of who’s who and what their motives are. What’s worse, with so many possible suspects, the killer almost always stands out.

Hawkins avoids this by having very few characters in her novel. There’s Rachel, her ex-husband Tom, his new wife Anna, the dead girl Megan’s husband, Megan’s therapist/would-be lover, and Rachel’s roommate. That’s pretty much it. Since the book is also told from Anna and Megan’s points of view, there’s an additional finger of blame pointed at Rachel. Rachel thinks she may have killed Megan and Anna is certain she did it. The reader thinks Rachel may have done it, but there’s also the possibility that either Megan’s therapist or her husband was the killer. While the reader is wondering whether Rachel could be the killer, Hawkins casually drops all the information needed to figure out the real murderer: Tom and Megan are both cheaters. Megan once babysat for Tom and Anna. Paying attention to these details, it’s obvious what happened.

The real unreliable narrator wasn’t drunken, jilted Rachel. It was stupid Megan, who doesn’t let on that Tom was her lover until it was too late.

Revenge is a Dish I Totally Saw Coming

Thanks to Deb for having me as part of her blog hop on “I Totally Saw That Coming!” When she invited me, she mentioned that last year, after the big “Revenge” reveal that David Clark was still alive, I posted on Facebook that I had predicted this plot twist since the show debuted. Now maybe that’s because this twist was obvious or maybe it’s because I have ESP and I’m wasting it by predicting TV plots rather than buying lottery tickets. In any case, if you’re a writer and you totally saw that coming, it doesn’t necessarily mean the story telling’s bad. Maybe it just means you’re thinking like a writer.

Revenge debuted in 2011 as the story of Amanda Clark, returning to the Hamptons as Emily Thorne, with the sole goal of getting revenge on everyone who hurt her father, who was framed for terrorism, tried and convicted, and then killed in a jail fight. Now, when I lay out the story that way, it becomes pretty obvious that one of two things was going to happen: Either Amanda/Emily was going to find out that David was actually guilty as sin, or David was really alive. Since the former plot point was kind of depressing and a dead-end, the second one was obvious. Having David alive turns the entire story on its head. And as writers, we need to do those handstands in every story.

Think about it: Almost every story has the “all hope is lost” moment that turns things in a completely different direction. Where the protagonist reaches the right door, only to find it locked. Where everything that has gone on before seems for naught. While Revenge’s plot twist doesn’t fulfill those criteria exactly – for Amanda/Emily, it’s more a good thing than a bad thing – it does make everything the protagonist did for the first several seasons seem meaningless.

This is a plot point that’s built into the very fabric of your plot, and you should be able to identify it once you come up with your initial concept. Here are some examples:

Saving Private Ryan: The team finally finds Ryan, but he doesn’t want to leave his platoon.

The Wizard of Oz: The group finally meets the Wizard, only to be told to go get the witch’s broomstick.

Star Wars: The group travels to Alderaan, only to find Alderaan isn’t there anymore. (Granted, this happens a little earlier than the third act.)

The Ring: Rachel frees Samara’s corpse from the well, only to be told that she’d made the girl more powerful.
Titanic: Rose and Jack escape the sinking ship, only to be ignored by the life boats.

If you’re a Revenge fan, were you surprised when David showed up, or did you know it all along? As writers, we should be able to predict these plot points while keeping our own as surprising as possible. Just another one of those tasks that keep us typing away at our keyboards!

Please check out Kerrie Olzak’s thoughts on this subject on Thursday!

Lessons from Half-Pint: What “Pioneer Girl” Can Teach Writers

Like many women my age, my very first book love affair was with the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Because it was a TV series at the same time I discovered the books, my love quickly flowered into obsession. I poured over all the books regularly, slept with my favorites, wrote my first “fan fiction” based on the Laura/Almanzo/Nellie love triangle (he took them both out on buggy rides!), planned my life around 8pm on Monday night when the show came on, and forced my friends into acting out “Little House” scenarios. Of course, we all fought over who got to be Laura. When I found out that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s original manuscript “Pioneer Girl” had been discovered and published, I squealed like the fan girl I am. I’d heard that she had originally written a book for adults that contained material her publishers deemed too adult for the children’s series that resulted (like the death of her baby brother, which actually was addressed in the TV series). Now I’d finally get to read those stories myself!

It’s a lengthy book, which covers all the material from the books Wilder wrote (except “The First Four Years,” which was written by her daughter Rose.), plus extensive notes from Wilder’s biographer. The book was originally non-fiction and intended for adults (although the voice is still rather young, reflecting the age of its protagonist). I was fascinated by the stories that had been left out of the series for children, but even more so by the decisions that Wilder, helped by her editor daughter Rose Wilder Lane, made to turn the book from a biography intended for adults to a children’s series that was labeled fiction. In many cases, Wilder deliberately turned a non-fiction scene into a fictional one in order to express a specific character trait or dramatic theme.

It’s not a coincidence that everyone wanted to play Laura in our games of make-believe. It was a deliberate decision on Wilder’s part to make her fictional counterpart a brave and sassy tomboy. And Wilder altered her family’s timeline, removed people from their lives and created composite characters in order to stress that her fictional family was completely self-reliant, on a non-stop journey to move west (in reality, they ended up moving back east and living with extended family members for a while), and that Laura received all her moral guidance from Pa. As a writer who was sometimes derided for just writing down events that had actually happened to her family, Wilder was sorely misjudged. “Pioneer Girl” reveals her to be an author with a strong hand who knew the story she wanted to tell and the characters she wanted to create, and how to do it.

What this says to me as a writer is that choices that determine character and theme are very important, and they can be seamless. When Laura jumps bareback on a horse for the first time and joyously gallops away, I never thought, “Boy she is a strong and confident young woman!” But Wilder knew that was the type of girl she wanted to portray, and fearlessly riding bareback for the first time was the way to do it.
It also goes to the expression of “kill your babies.” There was good work in what Wilder decided to leave out, but it didn’t fit her themes, so she left those scenes on the cutting room floor. It takes a careful eye to realize when work doesn’t fit, and not all writers have it.

Reading “Pioneer Girl” was a wonderful journey back to my very first book love affair. (And now I’m going to have to read everything written by Laura’s daughter Rose and her other descendants….) I wasn’t expecting to get a personal writing lesson from Wilder as well. What an amazing book “Pioneer Girl” is.

Revising Your Novel: What You (or your Editor) Should Look For

As a reviewer for Chick Lit Central and a reader/editor for a major New York literary agency, I read about 6-10 self-published or unpublished manuscripts a month (I just got another one as I sat typing this out). They all need work – even the ones written by current agency clients. That’s what I’m here for – to bring those manuscripts to a higher level. There’s nothing more gratifying to me than when my boss tells me k that a book I worked on sold, was released to great reviews, or was accepted by the publisher as part of a contract.

On the flip side, it’s frustrating to read a self-published novel (which may even have been written by an acquaintance) that thanks an editor on the acknowledgements page, but still has glaring errors in structure or story. Unlike many readers, I can forgive a few typos – to err is human, blah blah blah. And I know it’s not cheap to hire a freelance editor, and if you’re investing nearly a thousand dollars to make your manuscript shine, I really hope you’re getting your money’s worth. And if the plot points are confusing, the plot itself is routine, the characters are superficial or predictable, or there’s not a good balance between scene work and internal narrative, then the story doesn’t work. You wasted your money on an editor who might have a keen eye for typos, but can’t tell if a scene doesn’t forward story.

How can you tell whether the freelance editor you’re considering is the right person to take your book to the next level? There are no easy answers, because editing is very subjective. A story that doesn’t work for one agent or publisher might leap off the page for someone else. But in general, there are a few important factors to consider:

Does the editor have agent or publisher recommendations? Agents and editors read dozens of manuscripts a month, and they know what it takes to get a good story to the point where it’s sellable. If you’ve gotten a kind rejection from your dream agent, it wouldn’t hurt to write and ask if there’s a freelance editor that she or her clients have worked with. While it’s okay to get recommendations from other writers, sometimes they are not the best judges of an editor’s work. They might recommend an editor based on a personal relationship or chemistry, or how flattering the editor was about their book. Of course you want to work with a nice person who genuinely likes your story, but it’s not helpful if the editor isn’t knowledgeable enough to help you take it apart and put it back together.

Will the editor read the first several chapters for free and let you know exactly what the book needs? Many writers hire an editor at the point when they believe they are just a “polish and proofread” away. (There are many that advertise for beta readers at this point, too.) Truthfully, though, most manuscripts still need help with plot and plot points even when their writers think they are almost perfect. You want to hire the editor who is honest with you. An editor who returns your first several chapters with some comments about sentence structure or commas, without noting the way you’ve set up your story, is not going to be able to help you with the bigger issues.

Does the editor specialize in a few genres, or is she a “jill of all trades?” Not everyone can know all the tropes of all the types of stories out there. Hire someone who is well-versed in your genre, who can name several favorite authors in the genre and knows the players in it. Yes, some story rules are universal no matter what type of story you’re telling, but when it comes to writing, it’s the specifics that will trip you up.

Does your editor respond promptly to emails? Does he seem to have a realistic idea of how long the project will take? Does he offer a contract? All these questions point to the professionalism by which the editor approaches your work. You’re taking your novel seriously; you want an editor who takes his job seriously, too.

Finally, here’s a quick checklist for developmental editing that can be used by the writer to examine her own work. This is what an editor worth his salt will be looking at when evaluating the first few chapters:

What’s the story about? Does it encompass the most important event in the protagonist’s life? Is the plot dynamic? Does it feel contemporary? Is it a new twist on a tried-and-true conflict? Does it make me wonder “Why hasn’t anyone written this before?” Does the plot imply action or a lot of hand-wringing? Can I tell what the narrative question is?

What can I tell about the main character? Does personality shine through? Does she have a goal, or is there something specific she’s working toward? Is she someone readers will be able to identify with? Does she have a mix of likeable traits and flaws?

Does the first scene strongly set the stage for what’s to come? Do I know the main character, what’s at stake, genre and tone? Do I want to read more? Can I infer the setting, including time period?

What’s the narrative voice like? Does it match tone and genre? Is it natural? Does it disappear into the story and character, or does it stand out for the wrong reasons?

Does the dialogue work? Is it appropriate for the characters? Does it have subtext (not “on the nose”)? Does the writer leave out everyday expressions and observations that don’t forward plot or add character?

How do the scenes work? Are they a good balance of thoughts, dialogue, action and description? Does each scene forward plot and/or reveal character? Is it clear exactly what’s going on? Is there a nice mix of short and longer scenes? Does the pace fit the genre and story?

Looking at the first few chapters gives the editor a strong sense of how much and what type of editing the novel will need. Of course, these chapters almost always tend to be the best in the book, and it’s possible an editor will find the book needs a lot more help as the novel progresses.

But note there’s nothing in here about word choice, grammar, spelling, or sentence structure. A poorly plotted novel without any spelling mistakes is still just a poorly plotted novel. Find an editor who concentrates on the questions above, and knows how to get a novel to that point.
For information about my editorial services, please check out my blog post here.

He Said, She Said

I’m a writer who wears other hats – book reviewer, mom, real estate agent, editor. Due to that last one, I’m pretty well versed on the “rules” about what makes good writing. I can discuss point of view or show versus tell and why it’s important that new writers listen to what the experts have to say.

But there’s one rule that’s constantly giving me fits, and now that I’m deep into yet another rewrite of my women’s fiction novel THE SEESAW EFFECT, I’m wrestling with it on a daily basis. And that rule concerns the so-called invisibility of dialogue tags.

I don’t argue with the injunction against adjectives. Thanks to those Tom Swiftlys, we know how silly certain sentences can read: “I’ve lost my wife,” Tom said ruthlessly. “This bouquet doesn’t have enough flowers,” Tom said lackadaisically. “I like boys,” Tom said gaily.

Even without the puns, “I don’t know,” she said stupidly, reads as redundant and slows the action. Moreover, we’re taught to expunge the verb/adverb combo and replace them with stronger verbs. “He walked slowly” becomes “He shuffled.” “She softly touched the baby’s cheek” becomes “She stroked the baby’s cheek.” (The one exception is “sarcastically.”)

But this rule does not apply in dialogue tags. Not only are writers discouraged from using “He said pleadingly,” we’re also not supposed to use “He pleaded.” Everything is supposed to be either “said” or “asked.” This is gospel. Even Stephen King quotes it.

And I hate it. Yes, I know the dialogue is supposed to speak for itself; that we are supposed to pick up tone and meaning from the words that come out of the speaker’s mouth. But that doesn’t always happen. There are myriad ways to say the same sentences, and sometimes you need to spell out exactly how it’s said. Furthermore, there are scenes where multiple characters are speaking, and each one needs a tag to keep the conversation straight. We’re taught not to use the same word over and over again, but in these scenes, that’s exactly what happens.

But, those are the rules, and I’m going to follow them. So if you read THE SEESAW EFFECT, and you’re distracted by so many “saids” and wondering whether my protagonist’s son was whiny or brave when he got kicked out of school, I am sorry.

She said apologetically.

Rewrite or Trash? What Harper Lee’s Story Tells Us

Ever since the sequel to TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD was announced, Harper Lee has been all over the news. The latest is that the state of Alabama is getting involved to make sure she’s not being exploited. Feelings about that particular state aside, the quality of the book seems to be one of the driving issues behind the investigation. The story goes that, rather than a traditional sequel, the manuscript is actually an earlier version of MOCKINGBIRD. Lee originally wrote the story about an adult Scout, with flashbacks to her childhood and her lawyer father. The publisher who read it found the story told in the flashbacks more interesting (I’m guessing) that present-day adult Scout’s dilemmas, and encouraged her to rewrite it with that focus. And a classic was born. This story fascinates me because as a reader/editor, it’s not too unusual to find a manuscript with this exact problem: a back story that’s more interesting that what’s going on in the protagonist’s present day life. A novel should tell the story of the biggest thing that ever happened to the protagonist. If that happened in the back story, then just like Harper Lee did, the writer should rework the story so those incidents in the past become present day.

But how does a writer know when a book is worth rewriting or if it should be tossed out all together? After all, we all hear stories about how certain famous writers threw out the first three novels they wrote. They were horrible, these writers say. They should never see the light of day.

I honestly have trouble believing that they were really THAT bad. It’s more likely the writer just got completely fed up with the story and abandoned it. It’s hard to fathom that someone whose voice attracted the traditional publishing world would create something so bad it couldn’t be salvaged.

Or maybe that’s just because I think most books that aren’t working can be rewritten. Plots can be reworked; characters further developed. The only thing a writer is really stuck with is her voice. Unfortunately, a flat, stilted narrative voice coupled with obvious dialogue is a sign that writing is perhaps not the creative outlet this particular person should pursue.

So unless you’ve been told by a couple of people that your writing seems forced or artificial, don’t toss that novel in the trash and start another one. Rework it. Make sure it’s about the most important thing that ever happened in your protagonist’s life, and go from there.

We aren’t all Harper Lee, but we can learn from her example.

And controversy aside, I’m dying to read the new book. What if the publisher was wrong, and Scout’s adult life is even juicier than her childhood dilemmas?

Unfinished Business

The good news: I got a request from an agent who’d read the first fifty pages of SEESAW EFFECT and asked for the complete manuscript. Even so, based on the not-so-great feedback from the seven who rejected it, and some pointed notes from an editor friend, I’ve gone back to the drawing board with this project.

It’s not a great feeling. I was emotionally done with SEESAW; over a hundred pages into my mystery, the ENCLAVE, and really enjoying that process. Returning to a project I’d thought I’d finished feels like defeat. And I find myself in a mental argument about certain changes. How much should I have to spell out? Should certain character motivations be obvious or do I need my protagonist to explain them? If you know why someone’s being a jerk, does that make their jerkiness less obnoxious? And am I the only reader on earth who finds snarky characters funny?

It’s common wisdom that in between drafts one and two, a writer should put their manuscript in a drawer for six months, so when she pulls it out again, it will be fresh and new and the mistakes glaring and obvious. But that’s never worked for me. It’s been almost six months since I started querying this project – I sent letters right after the election – but when I opened it again, it was like I had just finished it yesterday. I remembered every plot point, every scene, every line of dialogue. It’s my baby. Forgetting what I’d written would be like forgetting the way my son’s head smelled when he was a newborn.

I don’t know if I can fix it. To me, like my son, it’s perfect.

And what’s even more frustrating is that I’m constantly critiquing other people’s novels, and the problems are easily identifiable and the solutions obvious. Between the reviews I do for Chick Lit Central and the reports I write for the agency I read for, I read about eight books a month. Why can I diagnose other books’ issues but not my own?

I know many writers who enjoy the rewriting process – they find it less daunting than starting a brand new story and facing a blank page. For me, the rewrite is the worst part … tearing apart scenes I loved because they didn’t forward the plot; reworking a character because no one else found him funny.

But the bottom line is, the only difference between writers who make it and writers who didn’t is that the former didn’t give up. And declining to rewrite a story that doesn’t work is a type of giving up. And yes, I’ve seen those stories about writers who queried 200 agents and got 199 rejections before they found the one who finally realized how wonderful their book was. But those anecdotes never mentioned if the writer did any rewrites during that query period. I’m going to assume rewrites were done.

So, back to the drawing board with SEESAW EFFECT. A little older, a little wiser, and a little humbler. Wish me luck.