Exercise: The Paper Cup – Narrative Device (Part 2)

We’ll take our raw story about a paper cup from the previous What Is Story? exercise and give it some narrative awareness.

“A foam cup once fell from a picnic table and stood upright. A boy’s arm had knocked it over. His sleeve really, so not much. The cup landed on its bottom and stood upright. A stampede of children’s feet beating the grass could not shake it; indeed, it seemed to float there with a lip unmarred by any stain or blemish of production. Even the squirrel, darting curiously closer at bursts, would not touch the cup before all at once dashing away with her nut. But then a wind came and blew the small cup over, and the groundskeeper easily speared it up and into the trash. This is why a child cannot fight alone.”

The narrative device in a story contains Who’s telling the story. Editors often describe the stories that win their confidence as having a “consciousness,” compared to those that do not. Remembering the “narrator as a character,” in any point of view, will give your fiction more self- awareness.

EXERCISE: Who’s telling the story? Let’s think about what or who is telling our story about a paper cup.

1. Take the story you wrote as an exercise for the previous topic, What is Story? and rewrite it from the perspective of someone NOT present in the story.

This version of the paper cup takes a simple approach to make the narrator more present. It adds “once” to the first line to set up the tale bookended by the cryptic final line, “This is why a child should not fight alone,” to insinuate meaning. We were earlier concerned with the story being more observational than self-contained. Putting our otherwise untouched version of the raw story between these two thoughts makes it feel more self-contained (though no less cryptic).

2. As you begin to craft your narrator’s presence, consider who or what they are and what authority they are assuming in order to tell the story.

It seems that our narrator has clearly reflected on the meaning of our paper cup’s circumstances. The story does not appear to be something the narrator is observing but has intentionally pre-determined for us. All narrators intentionally contain a set of details for the reader, but not always deliberately. Who might the narrator be in this version of the paper cup?

For work in progress: Consider who is telling your story and what authority they exploit to tell the story. Take 500 words from any point in the story that this narrator controls, and evaluate 1. How the narrator’s presence is felt based on the authority the narrator assumes (or the permission given them) in telling the story, 2. The narrator’s insights (or lack of insight) into the story, and the narrator’s patterns of speech.

Exercise: Take 500 words of your fiction. Who is telling the story and what authority are they assuming to tell the story? If you don’t know the narrator, consider who it is you imagine telling the story as you write.

If you must, choose one quality of narrative remove, such “the narrator retelling the story as told to the narrator,” and rewrite your 500 words with this inflection. The narrative does not have to be in “first-person” to accomplish this. Go ahead and try writing the narrative in the first-person point of view and third-person point of view, so that you can begin to compare how accessible information becomes in each
voice.

Next: The Paper Cup – Dramatic Line (Part 3)

Previous: The Paper Cup – What Is Story (Part 1)