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odd_buttons) wrote2004-11-26 09:44 am
odd_buttons) wrote2004-11-26 09:44 am
Negative Positive Knowledge
The following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Negative Positive Knowledge
This term refers to the technique you use when you want to tell readers what is not happening. It addresses the problem of how to call readers' attention to what a character is not saying, or doing, or thinking.
Fiction is silently selective. Readers assume that what you omit is not significant. If you don't mention bathroom behavior, readers assume that the characters' toilet habits have no bearing on the story. Similarly, not commenting on what characters eat or when they do laundry doesn't imply that they are starving or not washing their clothes. If your character's job is described briefly and never mentioned again, readers don't assume that it's making her miserable. They just don't think about it. If you don't tell her childhood memories, describe her bedroom, portray her husband, that signals to readers that these things are not important to know about.
If you do want to draw attention to your character's habit of forgetting about her children for hours at a time, or not eating regularly, or being unable to bring back the image of the room she slept in as a child, you have to create what is not there.
In The Overcoat Nikolai Gogol tells what happens "when the gray Petersburg sky is completely overcast and the whole population of clerks has dined and eaten their fill." This singe, elaborate sentence goes on for hundreds of words, describing the hours when "all the clerks are scattered about the apartments of their friends, playing a stormy game of whist, sipping tea out of glasses, eating cheap biscuits, sucking smoke from long pipes, telling, as the cards are dealt, some scandal that has floated down from higher levels." And it continues to pile on detail until Gogal closes -- "even when everyone was eagerly seeking entertainment, Akaky Akakievich did not indulge in any amusement." We vividly feel Akaky's isolation by our knowing the rich world that Akaky is not experiencing.
You can tell what a character is not understanding. In fiction it feels like no violation of point of view to have a phrase like:
See Exposition, Sex.
Negative Positive Knowledge
This term refers to the technique you use when you want to tell readers what is not happening. It addresses the problem of how to call readers' attention to what a character is not saying, or doing, or thinking.
Fiction is silently selective. Readers assume that what you omit is not significant. If you don't mention bathroom behavior, readers assume that the characters' toilet habits have no bearing on the story. Similarly, not commenting on what characters eat or when they do laundry doesn't imply that they are starving or not washing their clothes. If your character's job is described briefly and never mentioned again, readers don't assume that it's making her miserable. They just don't think about it. If you don't tell her childhood memories, describe her bedroom, portray her husband, that signals to readers that these things are not important to know about.
If you do want to draw attention to your character's habit of forgetting about her children for hours at a time, or not eating regularly, or being unable to bring back the image of the room she slept in as a child, you have to create what is not there.
In The Overcoat Nikolai Gogol tells what happens "when the gray Petersburg sky is completely overcast and the whole population of clerks has dined and eaten their fill." This singe, elaborate sentence goes on for hundreds of words, describing the hours when "all the clerks are scattered about the apartments of their friends, playing a stormy game of whist, sipping tea out of glasses, eating cheap biscuits, sucking smoke from long pipes, telling, as the cards are dealt, some scandal that has floated down from higher levels." And it continues to pile on detail until Gogal closes -- "even when everyone was eagerly seeking entertainment, Akaky Akakievich did not indulge in any amusement." We vividly feel Akaky's isolation by our knowing the rich world that Akaky is not experiencing.
You can tell what a character is not understanding. In fiction it feels like no violation of point of view to have a phrase like:
Patrick stared at Helen and she looked back hard. He refused to think about what might happen next.Don't be afraid of saying what your character doesn't know, is forgetting, repressing, or avoiding. If he's puzzled, show that.
Patrick thought Helen just plain fell out of love with him -- no reason at all. But he couldn’t' be sure. That last fight was so ferocious -- you don't throw a fish at someone you don’t' care about. But he didn't understand what he had done. What drove her crazy like that?
See Exposition, Sex.