732 Characters and viewpoint

You will meet a tall handsome stranger. Oh? You think that's a cliche? Too vague for you? Too anonymous? Then let's see how you like the detailed version. A tall handsome stranger, but you will pay no attention to him. He will keep following you around. You will wonder if he plans some sexual or violent act. He will give you no sign of it. I will not tell you, either. If you want him to go away, you will have to give him the small red folder. You don't have that folder yet-it will be given to you by someone you thought was dead. Perhaps it will be given to you by someone who really is dead. If you give him that folder, he will go away. Or at least I think he'll go away. The vision isn't clear.

Again, it's easy to imagine writing in an odd tense, but very hard work to do it-and hard work to read it, too. In reading these two examples, you were constantly aware that there was something strange about the narration. Strangeness always attracts the audience's attention, in the story or in its performance; but strangeness in the writing calls attention away from the events of the story. That alone is usually enough to make a storyteller reject a strange tense.

I gave you these examples just to point out that there really are a lot of options-but almost every time, your story and your audience will be best served by the tense that is so universally used that audiences don't notice it: the past. Because past tense and first or third person are the conventional choices, they are invisible. The audience doesn't notice them. Therefore they become a channel between the story and the audience. If the audience does notice the tense or "person," it is a barrier.

There are many young writers, particularly those with training in college literature classes, who believe that good writing must be unconventional, challenging, strange. This is a natural misconception. In literature courses we study many stories that were written for another time and place. The language has changed, as have the literary conventions and expectations of the audience. Also, the most common method of literature classes is dissection-cutting a story to bits to analyze symbols and discover sources. We also hear some writers praised because they were revolutionary or experimental, violating the conventions and expectations of their time. So it's no surprise if many young storytellers reach the conclusion that great writing is writing that has to be studied, decoded, and analyzed, that if a story can be clearly and easily understood, it must be somehow childish, inconsequential, or trite.

This is far from the truth. Most great writers followed all but a few of the conventions of their time. Most wrote very clearly, in the common language of their time; their goal was to be understood. Indeed, Dante and Chaucer were each the starting point of a national literature precisely because they refused to write in an arcane language that nobody understood, and instead wrote in the vernacular, so that people could receive their stories and poetry in words they used every day.

In a way, every story you tell is experimental-you have never told that story before, and your audience has never heard you tell it. There are plenty of challenges for the audience in the process of getting used to your voice, to the kind of events and characters you write about. Even when you

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write as clearly as you can, many readers will misunderstand you or reject your vision of the world. So why would you want to make the story even more difficult, so that even readers who would otherwise understand and believe in and care about your story are driven away?

Of course, if your purpose in writing is to be admired, to impress people with your cleverness or skill, then the story itself is only a secondary concern to you, and your writing will be designed to dazzle your readers more than to enlighten them. But if your purpose in writing is to transform your audience, to give them a clear memory and understanding of truthful and important tales, your writing will be not an end in itself, but a tool. Sometimes, to tell the tale as it must be told, you will have to violate conventions or try out new techniques; sometimes this will make your story more difficult or challenging to read. But I believe the great writers will always be the ones who have passionate, truthful stories to tell, and who do all they can to help their readers receive them.

A rule of thumb: Choose the simplest, clearest, least noticeable technique that will still accomplish what the story requires.

CHAPTER 14

PRESENTATION