An important consideration in writing your story
probably as important as deciding what genre it is
is deciding which mode in which to tell it.
Now, on one level, this can be the most simple decision.
Do you want to tell it as a comedy
in a comedic mode?
Or do you want to tell it as a drama
in a dramatic mode?
I think that you'll find
that almost any story that you've ever heard of
could have been told in the opposite mode.
It would have made it a completely different story
but the most horrific things, the most dramatic things
could have quite easily been comedies
with a slight shift of emphasis.
I think that it's worth remembering
that comedy and horror, say
are actually working on the same principle.
Both of them regard
setting up a bunch of expectations
which you will then
basically disappoint the listener
by moving beyond those expectations.
As an example
say, in the joke
by Tommy Cooper
and my apologies if you haven't heard this one already
but...
a man walks into a bar
he breaks his arm.
Now, what Tommy Cooper has done there
is to set up an expectation
that means one sort of bar.
But, no, he's using a different sort of bar
which results in the person breaking his arm
when he walks into it.
It's a betrayal of expectations for comic effect.
And I know that explaining a joke like this
kills any joke stone dead, so please bear with me.
Now, the same thing is done in a horror narrative
where it sets up a set of expectations
but will then surprise the reader
in a way that is not humorous
in a way that is actually startling
and frightening, perhaps.
In fact, the horror narrative and the humour narrative
they slide very easily between each other.
You will have probably noticed
if you've ever gone to see a horror film in a cinema
how many of the audience are laughing
if only as a release of tension
and how sometimes a horrific effect
can be so over the top
that the only possible reaction is to laugh.
These things are very, very close to each other
almost side by side.
I remember doing a story once
back in my comic book days
when I was working on the title Swamp Thing
and I did a story about a haunted house.
It was, in fact, a version of the Winchester house
that had been built according to the Winchester gun fortune.
And I remember that I had
two of the ghosts of deceased gunfighters
that were haunting this place.
They're chasing each other around a table
in the séance room, shooting bits off of each other
and eventually there's just a pair of legs
chasing the remains of the other gunfighter
while a head that has landed in the fireplace
shouts instructions to the remaining parts of its body.
Now, yeah, that's horrific, it's also kind of funny.
One can become the other
with just a slight shift of atmosphere.
So, the mode of a story
is... is massively important.
Now, on another level, this is the decision:
What tense is the story going to be in?
Is it going to be in the past tense or in the present tense?
Yeah, alright, it's possible
to write a story in the future tense
but I wouldn't advise it.
Your main choices are past and present.
Now, past is the one that is most generally used
perhaps the easiest one.
Its advantages are that it's very comfortable upon the ear
it's very non-threatening
there's a sense of distance there.
You're telling a story that happened
perhaps a long time ago.
With a present tense narrative
it's completely different.
There is much more immediacy
there is much more engagement
it is somehow more electric
to have these things happening in the present.
Now, also
as well as the tense that you're telling these things in
you should consider the person that you are telling them in.
A lot of writers will probably go for the third person.
The third person: he, she, it.
That's very useful.
That is probably the most broadly useful person
to write in
because the third person is omniscient.
The third person is an author's voice
that already knows everything about the story.
So, the third person narrator
can suddenly switch to something
that's happening 100 miles away
without the characters' knowledge.
The third person can jump all over the place
and is not restricted
to what a single character knows or experiences.
However, the first person
that is very immediate
very powerful
it puts you right inside the character.
And while it is perhaps more difficult
it does allow for some really nice literary tricks.
It allows for the possibility of an unreliable narrator.
Now, unreliable narrators are marvellous fun.
It's a kind of misdirection
like we were talking about earlier.
One of the masters of this kind of narrator
would be Jim Thompson
the crime writer.
I can remember in one of his books
he has got a law officer
who is the first-person narrator.
And by about ten pages in
you start to realise
that this law officer is psychopathic
that he hates everybody
that he is trying to belittle
and scare everybody that he talks to
that he thinks that the rest of the world
is composed of scum.
He is a monster.
But this is something
that only dawns upon you slowly as a reader
and is a very creepy experience.
I remember another Jim Thompson book
where his narrator
tells about a brutal bit of domestic abuse
where he had pushed his wife into a full bath.
Later, perhaps a couple of chapters later
he tells the story again.
This time, it's a good-natured
bit of joshing and fooling around
that ended amusingly
when his wife had slipped accidentally
and landed in the bath, how they'd both laughed.
And you realise he's lying to us now.
He's also lying to himself now.
He is editing his past.
This is a fantastic insight into a character
that makes you feel very close to the story.
You've figured out something about the character
from the way that they talk
from the way that they express things
you have made this revelation.
Now, we've talked about the first-person narrative
which allows you an intimacy with the character.
And we've talked about the third-person narrative
which allows you that omniscience
that a third-person narrator can have
where they know everything that's happening
in the world of the story.
But there is a third alternative
which is very, very useful.
This is the close third person.
It's where, yeah
you're talking in the third person about somebody
you're saying, he walks down the street
she goes to the laundry, she does this and that
but you're so close to the person
that you can hear their thoughts.
As an example from my own work
in the incredibly big
impractically big novel Jerusalem
in the second chapter, I have
the main character
is a crack-addicted sex worker called Marla.
And, yes, it's a third-person narrative
but we're so close to her
that we can hear her thoughts
and we can see how those thoughts
run around a rat maze
from need to fear to anger
back to need again.
We can be so close to her
that we can hear her made-up internal arguments
where she's shouting in block capital letters
at her mother who isn't in the room with her
and who she hasn't seen for three years.
We can be right at the centre of this person's experience
and, at the same time, we can pull back
and we can look at them from outside.
This is basically having your cake and eating it too.
It's having the best of both worlds
the close first person.
Another thing that this is very useful towards
is that it allows for something called
free indirect discourse.
What this is, it's a term that has just arisen from neurology
but what it means is
you're giving the reader the opportunity
to dip in and out
of different people's consciousness.
And what this does is
it increases the reader's empathy.
It enables the reader to see
even inside a flawed or villainous character
and to see why they did the things that they did.
So, of course, an increase in empathy
it can really not be anything but a good thing, can it?
And so, yes, person and tense
these are things that should be thought about.
What kind of effect do you want to have upon your reader?
And what would be the best mode to actually convey this?