“Don’t Stand So Close: Part I” by faculty member Peter Turchi

Don’t Stand So Close: Part I

About two-thirds of the way through Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the two outlaws, having fled the American West to Bolivia, decide to clean up their act, to go straight. They attempt to get work as payroll guards. As part of their job interview, as it were, their would-be employer asks if they can shoot. He tosses a tobacco plug, as a target, to test them; Sundance, the notorious gunslinger, misses badly. Butch looks stunned. Sundance, sullen, asks, “Can I move?” Even as the mine owner asks, “What do you mean, move?” Sundance drops to one side, drawing and firing, and blows the tobacco plug to bits.

As the dust settles, Sundance says, “I’m better when I move.”

I’m not suggesting that the narrator of a story or novel is equivalent to a mythic gunfighter seeking work as a payroll guard in Bolivia. But I often think of that scene when I read a story, or a draft of a story, and the narrator seems locked in place—particularly a third person story when the narrator seems to have yielded all independence and authority, and essentially records the point of view character’s thoughts and actions.

I had not thought much about shifting narrative distance until a particular graduate workshop forced the issue. As we discussed a student’s draft, one of the participants noted that we had no idea what the main character did for a living; someone else added, “Or what he looks like.” That started the sort of avalanche we sometimes see in workshops: someone else noted that we didn’t know who the character’s close friends were; someone pointed out that we knew virtually nothing about his past; someone else noted that the other characters were never physically described. Exasperated, the author said, “I know, I know—but how am I supposed to get him to think about all of that?”

The writer had somehow picked up a strange notion about the limited third person: he believed that once a story indicated it would be close to a particular character, it was somehow required to stay close to that character, within the confines of that character’s thoughts. Even more surprising—to me—was that other students agreed; some went so far as to say it was a “violation of the rules” of the limited third person to include information that might come from a narrator, even when that information was as objective as the color of a character’s hair, or the fact that she drove a Camry in disrepair—never mind the fact that her co-workers thought she was irresponsible, or that her mother thought she had a worrisome number of cats.

I was tempted to quote another line from Butch Cassidy: “Rules? What rules?”

[…continue reading “Don’t Stand So Close: Part I” as well as “Don’t Stand So Close: Part II” at Fiction Writers Review.]