This is why you cannot leave Substack, Brandon. It's so refreshing to have someone say EXACTLY what needs to be said...
...and not hiding it behind a paywall. Lol. Because I love sharing your posts with my fellow writer friends. They're very helpful, and incredibly validating.
There's definitely a parallel here to the way social media "trends" (in particular through TikTok, though old Twitter probably started this) burrow their way into people's psyches and how they view the world. Some weirdo on TikTok describes a specific thing they've experienced, coins a catchy term to describe it, then traditional media writes about it and now suddenly tons of people filter their life experiences through this concept. Then it gets picked up by Netflix screenwriters and that's game over. Not to say these social media trend concepts are uniformly bad, but I don't like the process.
Am I the only one who wants to print out this essay so I can properly annotate it?
Brandon, I think another good example of first-person narrative that is somewhat maddening to read but also exhilarating is Claire Louise Bennett's 'Pond.' I love that the protagonist makes no attempt to fill in the reader because ... why would she?!
Do you think that we’re meant to think that the narrator in Pond is losing her mental stability as the book progresses? I’ve always wondered what others thought on that.
Oh! Yes, please do. I was very interested by Pond also; have written about it in passing in a couple of pieces. Have always thought that it would be a nightmare to translate.
There is a new podcast interview up on it, I noticed the other day, from Shakespeare and Co — sounds interesting. Haven’t listened to it yet, but mention it in case of interest (for after you finish the book).
Thank you so much for that. Bennett's interview on The Granta podcast is the reason I picked up Pond in the first place. Will definitely check it out, after I finish. Also, I was just a used bookstore this past weekend and picked up Checkout 19, which I plan to read right after.
I read "Pond" some years ago and loved it. At the time I really didn't understand anything about fiction so I couldn't explain why I liked it, but I did. I should reread it, although I also have Checkout 19 waiting to be read...
So good, Brandon. I especially like this: "A scene is not life. A scene is an orderly storytelling unit, set off by the filmic narrator or the editors, the person in charge of structuring the montage. So that while it might seem like life, it is actually highly ordered, designed to elicit a particular response or to achieve some greater narrative end.."
I will add -- because I'm focused on the effects of AI -- that writers should take note that the trends you are describing are those that AI can do just as well as a human author and that writers who want to be read by humans (into posterity) ought to spend time being human, looking into their soul.
This, exactly. The same principle applies to good acting, in film especially - to ‘telegraph’ or indicate emotion is very different to surrendering to a character’s visceral reality and allowing an interior experience to show as an authentic (and often unpredictable/unexpected - thus, vulnerable/scary) byproduct.
Mimicry in acting is just as common as this contemporary first person void in fiction, and leaves the same kind of empty, confused impression where it should impart depth and clarity. But imo it takes a sincere willingness to engage with the world, a sort of kind of stubborn honesty of a first person character, before you get the transformative stuff, the heart of the story - especially for actors, who are their own first person narrator. As a director, actors who show up and listen in the moment to their scene partners rather than recite become like the active first person narrators who excite us so much. (Though as you point out, the genuine performances are then simulated by others… screen or no, there is no substitute for meaning.)
I liked this very much, thank you. I haven’t encountered the kind of no-interiority writing you’re describing here, but am fascinated to read about it. And the whole discussion is rich.
On Knausgård and Cusk - love that you raise them together. I spent a solid year, while Cusk’s Outline was coming out in installments in The Paris Review and I happened to be reading the Knausgård My Struggle books at the same time, almost obsessed with thinking about the formal differences between their projects and what the impacts were on the reader. I found them both groundbreaking in how they used the first person, in opposite directions. Have never written it up but maybe will, because of this.
My early-morning not-enough-coffee-yet scientist brain initially latched onto "deracinated" and momentarily linked it to "racemic" to land on "deracemated" (which is not even a word, I think) and thought "Oh that works...a first-person narrative that has some of its naturally occurring components stripped out in favour of one of them". Thirty minutes later, I was feeling both foolish and proud of my own creative linguistic license.
Thanks for this piece...it gelled some observations from my own reading and challenged me to re-read and think about point of view more deeply. I am so enjoying this newsletter...and I wish I could take your class!
Loved the bit about The Morningstar, it reminded me of Umberto Eco's essay about Superman (and Superhero stories in general) living in myhtic time. There's alien invasions, time travellers, all sort of monsters, and nothing about society changes. Everything stays the same. A guy finds a spaceship with a baby alien in his farm and goes right back to farming, no questions asked.
Also, Borges' essay on Swedenborg, and how he "...did not exercise that vast influence he should have exercised. I believe that all of this is part of the Scandinavian destiny, in which it seems that all things happen as if in a dream and within crystal sphere. For example, the Vikings discover America several centuries before Columbus and nothing happens. The art of the novel is invented in Iceland with the sagas and that invention does not spread. We have figures that should be world-class—that of Charles XII, for example—but we think of other conquerors who have carried out military enterprises perhaps inferior to that of Charles XII. Swedenborg's thought should have renewed the church in all parts of the world, but it belongs to that Scandinavian destiny of being like a dream."
Good article with application to third person narration as well. Far too many books written in 3rd are treated as TV shows on paper when some simple interiority can really change it for the better.
Also, don't forget to fix this later!
"That is, there is the part of them (the exterior) who experiences the world and the interior (the part of them who processes and reacts to the world while also observing and making meaning)."
This is so illuminating, Brandon! I wonder, then, what to do with the feeling that characters are telling the reader what they feel all the time. Like, for me when I write it's quite common to find instances in which my characters think that they are angry, or they go and spiral down in some thoughts as I often do. But then I see a lot of people saying that this is explaining, not showing. So I'm confused—how would yo go about it? Do you have any good novel recommendations —maybe classical novel— aside from the ones youu mentioned?
I swear if you would open fiction consultations I would book you asap :') Your takes in literature are always so refreshing and interesting to read. It feels like what Substack should feel in the first place: that you've encountered some private thoughts deserved to be read.
Aaah... I just submitted one of my few first person pieces. Did I do some of this??? Maybe!?! (Insert facepalm emoji) Will this help with another draft?? Certainly!!
PS Thank you for your generosity with your writing advice, these are not-miss newsletters for me!
Brandon, one of the most ironic posts I’ve read in a long time, a lengthy, deep first person stream criticizing the abundant modern use of lengthy, deep first person. Love the “deracinations” to dramatically put it over the top. Do your students pick up your humor in class? There is much oversharing in our modern world, whether from casting tape and movies or social media or something else. And first person is the tool. National Geographic chose first person over a century ago for its pieces as a way to bring readers closer to the often exotic worlds they wrote about.
So glad to have this the same week the critics at large podcast examined first person (not their strongest episode, alas) - the entire time I kept thinking....I just want to hear what Brandon has to say about this!
I have a question then, I absolutely and this has given me a new perspective as a whole. But I saw a video of a girl saying the introduction to any writing piece should be action filled, how can I do this if I’m busy writing the characters thoughts? Is that even possible? Am I overthinking this? I’m not sure.
That being said, lol, my advice is to write what feels engaging to you. For some people, that's a lot of action. For others, it's a dynamic and vivid interiority. Either way, I DO THINK that context is important that one thing to keep an eye on is whether or not you have provided the reader enough context to appreciate what is engaging and active in what you have chosen to present.
Now, it is true that in today's world, "action" is what hooks attention. But even the most action-driven scene needs context. It needs thoughts. It needs some human dimension. Otherwise, we'd just watch TV.
Your example of wanting to achieve something like "Isabelle Huppert's face in furious silence in The Piano Teacher" is fantastic. Haneke's movies are all stony and sparse because they're about making us observe and unpack the interiority ourselves (which is also why they're so gloriously terrifying). But if I had to write The Piano Teacher as a first-person novelization (I haven't read the original novel), a lot of it would necessarily read like her letter from the end of the movie. The woman is a howling cyclone on the inside, and the narration would have to reflect that.
"All past-tense first-person narration is retrospective" is an important point. My novel "I Hear You Watching" is about a man who hears voices but doesn't know he's hallucinating, and I struggled with the problem of past tense through the first two drafts specifically because it demands a frame, and I realized for the book to work as a visceral experience of the narrator's psychotic episode, it had to be in present tense.
"The world draws responses from them and though these narrators may keep those responses private, we are nevertheless witness to them." Part of the horror of hearing voices and paranoia as depicted in my book is that we weather the storm with (inside) the narrator, but everyone else around him is oblivious to his experience. It's like the story of Hitchcock's suspense bomb hidden under the table—as experienced from the POV of the bomb.
Please don't leave Substack. I've just discovered your work here, and it's very valuable to me. Also, welcome to Paris! I'm from Seattle, been here ten years.
This is why you cannot leave Substack, Brandon. It's so refreshing to have someone say EXACTLY what needs to be said...
...and not hiding it behind a paywall. Lol. Because I love sharing your posts with my fellow writer friends. They're very helpful, and incredibly validating.
Seems like mediated experiences have replaced genuine introspection in a lot of fiction. And IRL. Both art and life have been flattened.
There's definitely a parallel here to the way social media "trends" (in particular through TikTok, though old Twitter probably started this) burrow their way into people's psyches and how they view the world. Some weirdo on TikTok describes a specific thing they've experienced, coins a catchy term to describe it, then traditional media writes about it and now suddenly tons of people filter their life experiences through this concept. Then it gets picked up by Netflix screenwriters and that's game over. Not to say these social media trend concepts are uniformly bad, but I don't like the process.
Sooooo true.
Am I the only one who wants to print out this essay so I can properly annotate it?
Brandon, I think another good example of first-person narrative that is somewhat maddening to read but also exhilarating is Claire Louise Bennett's 'Pond.' I love that the protagonist makes no attempt to fill in the reader because ... why would she?!
Do you think that we’re meant to think that the narrator in Pond is losing her mental stability as the book progresses? I’ve always wondered what others thought on that.
I am reading it right now, 100 pages in! I will make a note to return to your comment after I finish.
Oh! Yes, please do. I was very interested by Pond also; have written about it in passing in a couple of pieces. Have always thought that it would be a nightmare to translate.
There is a new podcast interview up on it, I noticed the other day, from Shakespeare and Co — sounds interesting. Haven’t listened to it yet, but mention it in case of interest (for after you finish the book).
Thank you so much for that. Bennett's interview on The Granta podcast is the reason I picked up Pond in the first place. Will definitely check it out, after I finish. Also, I was just a used bookstore this past weekend and picked up Checkout 19, which I plan to read right after.
I read "Pond" some years ago and loved it. At the time I really didn't understand anything about fiction so I couldn't explain why I liked it, but I did. I should reread it, although I also have Checkout 19 waiting to be read...
So good, Brandon. I especially like this: "A scene is not life. A scene is an orderly storytelling unit, set off by the filmic narrator or the editors, the person in charge of structuring the montage. So that while it might seem like life, it is actually highly ordered, designed to elicit a particular response or to achieve some greater narrative end.."
I will add -- because I'm focused on the effects of AI -- that writers should take note that the trends you are describing are those that AI can do just as well as a human author and that writers who want to be read by humans (into posterity) ought to spend time being human, looking into their soul.
This, exactly. The same principle applies to good acting, in film especially - to ‘telegraph’ or indicate emotion is very different to surrendering to a character’s visceral reality and allowing an interior experience to show as an authentic (and often unpredictable/unexpected - thus, vulnerable/scary) byproduct.
Mimicry in acting is just as common as this contemporary first person void in fiction, and leaves the same kind of empty, confused impression where it should impart depth and clarity. But imo it takes a sincere willingness to engage with the world, a sort of kind of stubborn honesty of a first person character, before you get the transformative stuff, the heart of the story - especially for actors, who are their own first person narrator. As a director, actors who show up and listen in the moment to their scene partners rather than recite become like the active first person narrators who excite us so much. (Though as you point out, the genuine performances are then simulated by others… screen or no, there is no substitute for meaning.)
Always enjoy your insights!
I liked this very much, thank you. I haven’t encountered the kind of no-interiority writing you’re describing here, but am fascinated to read about it. And the whole discussion is rich.
On Knausgård and Cusk - love that you raise them together. I spent a solid year, while Cusk’s Outline was coming out in installments in The Paris Review and I happened to be reading the Knausgård My Struggle books at the same time, almost obsessed with thinking about the formal differences between their projects and what the impacts were on the reader. I found them both groundbreaking in how they used the first person, in opposite directions. Have never written it up but maybe will, because of this.
DOOOOOOO IT. Not enough people attend to their formal aspects, tbh!
Oh, thank you! That’s the encouragement I needed!
My early-morning not-enough-coffee-yet scientist brain initially latched onto "deracinated" and momentarily linked it to "racemic" to land on "deracemated" (which is not even a word, I think) and thought "Oh that works...a first-person narrative that has some of its naturally occurring components stripped out in favour of one of them". Thirty minutes later, I was feeling both foolish and proud of my own creative linguistic license.
Thanks for this piece...it gelled some observations from my own reading and challenged me to re-read and think about point of view more deeply. I am so enjoying this newsletter...and I wish I could take your class!
Loved the bit about The Morningstar, it reminded me of Umberto Eco's essay about Superman (and Superhero stories in general) living in myhtic time. There's alien invasions, time travellers, all sort of monsters, and nothing about society changes. Everything stays the same. A guy finds a spaceship with a baby alien in his farm and goes right back to farming, no questions asked.
Also, Borges' essay on Swedenborg, and how he "...did not exercise that vast influence he should have exercised. I believe that all of this is part of the Scandinavian destiny, in which it seems that all things happen as if in a dream and within crystal sphere. For example, the Vikings discover America several centuries before Columbus and nothing happens. The art of the novel is invented in Iceland with the sagas and that invention does not spread. We have figures that should be world-class—that of Charles XII, for example—but we think of other conquerors who have carried out military enterprises perhaps inferior to that of Charles XII. Swedenborg's thought should have renewed the church in all parts of the world, but it belongs to that Scandinavian destiny of being like a dream."
Good article with application to third person narration as well. Far too many books written in 3rd are treated as TV shows on paper when some simple interiority can really change it for the better.
Also, don't forget to fix this later!
"That is, there is the part of them (the exterior) who experiences the world and the interior (the part of them who processes and reacts to the world while also observing and making meaning)."
This is so illuminating, Brandon! I wonder, then, what to do with the feeling that characters are telling the reader what they feel all the time. Like, for me when I write it's quite common to find instances in which my characters think that they are angry, or they go and spiral down in some thoughts as I often do. But then I see a lot of people saying that this is explaining, not showing. So I'm confused—how would yo go about it? Do you have any good novel recommendations —maybe classical novel— aside from the ones youu mentioned?
I swear if you would open fiction consultations I would book you asap :') Your takes in literature are always so refreshing and interesting to read. It feels like what Substack should feel in the first place: that you've encountered some private thoughts deserved to be read.
Aaah... I just submitted one of my few first person pieces. Did I do some of this??? Maybe!?! (Insert facepalm emoji) Will this help with another draft?? Certainly!!
PS Thank you for your generosity with your writing advice, these are not-miss newsletters for me!
Craft collection in a book soon please 🙏🏼
It's coming. From Graywolf, lol.
Agree!
Brandon, one of the most ironic posts I’ve read in a long time, a lengthy, deep first person stream criticizing the abundant modern use of lengthy, deep first person. Love the “deracinations” to dramatically put it over the top. Do your students pick up your humor in class? There is much oversharing in our modern world, whether from casting tape and movies or social media or something else. And first person is the tool. National Geographic chose first person over a century ago for its pieces as a way to bring readers closer to the often exotic worlds they wrote about.
I think they do—we crack up a lot in class, lol. I do think I am pro deep first person as long as there are thoughts and reflections!
I’m missing much, not taking your class.
So glad to have this the same week the critics at large podcast examined first person (not their strongest episode, alas) - the entire time I kept thinking....I just want to hear what Brandon has to say about this!
I have a question then, I absolutely and this has given me a new perspective as a whole. But I saw a video of a girl saying the introduction to any writing piece should be action filled, how can I do this if I’m busy writing the characters thoughts? Is that even possible? Am I overthinking this? I’m not sure.
Most writing advice is bad and stupid.
That being said, lol, my advice is to write what feels engaging to you. For some people, that's a lot of action. For others, it's a dynamic and vivid interiority. Either way, I DO THINK that context is important that one thing to keep an eye on is whether or not you have provided the reader enough context to appreciate what is engaging and active in what you have chosen to present.
Now, it is true that in today's world, "action" is what hooks attention. But even the most action-driven scene needs context. It needs thoughts. It needs some human dimension. Otherwise, we'd just watch TV.
Your example of wanting to achieve something like "Isabelle Huppert's face in furious silence in The Piano Teacher" is fantastic. Haneke's movies are all stony and sparse because they're about making us observe and unpack the interiority ourselves (which is also why they're so gloriously terrifying). But if I had to write The Piano Teacher as a first-person novelization (I haven't read the original novel), a lot of it would necessarily read like her letter from the end of the movie. The woman is a howling cyclone on the inside, and the narration would have to reflect that.
"All past-tense first-person narration is retrospective" is an important point. My novel "I Hear You Watching" is about a man who hears voices but doesn't know he's hallucinating, and I struggled with the problem of past tense through the first two drafts specifically because it demands a frame, and I realized for the book to work as a visceral experience of the narrator's psychotic episode, it had to be in present tense.
"The world draws responses from them and though these narrators may keep those responses private, we are nevertheless witness to them." Part of the horror of hearing voices and paranoia as depicted in my book is that we weather the storm with (inside) the narrator, but everyone else around him is oblivious to his experience. It's like the story of Hitchcock's suspense bomb hidden under the table—as experienced from the POV of the bomb.
Please don't leave Substack. I've just discovered your work here, and it's very valuable to me. Also, welcome to Paris! I'm from Seattle, been here ten years.