MF - I'm not always too happy about the very much loooooooooonger authorial sections you hinted at, but what was often enjoyable was when, after a narrative section, there would be a couple of paragraphs, clearly differentiated, which enabled the reader to share the author's (usually gentle) reflections or observations on the proceedings before being returned to the fray. The trick was to add to the narrative rather than to disturb it and that would often mean that their observations would tend to confirm or crystallise the conclusions the reader would nearly have come to at that point and to prepare them for the next developments. Actual changes of direction would be reserved for the narrative itself.

Chris

It's a long time since I've done literary theory, but isn't it the case that the author is simply incapable of appearing in the book, since even where they appear to be telling the story (e.g. Dickens) they are still a narrator, a constructed voice no matter how close to the actual author? I.e. if the author appears in the narrative they are not the author. IYSWIM.
Regardless, seems to me that the trick is to make sure that the voice that tells is a pleasure to listen to. Then you can get away with anything.

I think one says 'author' meaning authorial persona - 'Dickens', rather than than man Charles with the wife he was horrible to and the peculiar hangup about the sister-in-law...

Emma

So Great Expectations: 'Dickens' is the author, Pip the narrator. But Pickwick Papers: 'Dickens' is both author and narrator...? (If I'm remembering right, that is).

Yes, I think that's right. And of course an author needn't ever say 'I'; if there isn't an internal, character-narrator, like Pip, then 'Dickens' is the external implied narrator. There's always one of those, because someone is telling the story and the assumption by the reader is that it's some sort of version of the author - an authorial persona.

Emma

'always', Emma? Or just in some types of books?

<Added>

Isn't this why agents are so keen on novels having a distinctive 'voice', so it's the main character who's in the position of narrator, and the authorial voice is absent.

Cormac MacCarthy surely has a distinctive voice, and there is no narrator-character, just an author-narrator.

The voice doesn't have to be that of a character-narrator for agents to like it: a implied narrator can have a very distinctive voice, without ever becoming personified. What they look - or rather listen - for is just something that makes you want to keep listening. Rosy T's, for instance, or Wodehouse.

Emma

I think it might also be fair to say that there's a difference between the authorial voice of a distinctive implied narrator (there are plenty of accomplished examples to choose from: Flannery O'Connor, Richard Yates, etc) and clumsy, unintentional authorial intrusions (ie., too much 'tell' that crop up in work by less experienced writers trying to shoehorn information into a story without considering their reader...

The latter is something I pick up on quite frequently in some of my students' work - because it's unconsidered, and often lazy, 'shortcut' writing. Developing a strong and consistent authorial voice takes hard work, too - cf. Emma's recent thread about voice in the third person.

I think it might also be fair to say that there's a difference between the authorial voice of a distinctive implied narrator (there are plenty of accomplished examples to choose from: Flannery O'Connor, Richard Yates, etc) and clumsy, unintentional authorial intrusions (ie., too much 'tell' that crop up in work by less experienced writers trying to shoehorn information into a story without considering their reader...

Yes, absolutely true, and it's one reason I get cross when I hear of tutors insisting that an external narrator must be completely characterless and colourless: it cuts of so many perfectly valid possibilities. It's like writers who assume that the purely technical quality of omniscience somehow means that a narrator must fancy themselves as God. Whereas it only means knowledgeable, really. The OU textbook talks about 'degrees of knowing', which I think is a good way of thinking about it.

Emma

(

ie., too much 'tell' that crop up in work by less experienced writers trying to shoehorn information into a story without considering their reader...

Mmmm...

It can be a real challenge to get right, funnyv - I'm struggling with this at the moment (starting a new novel wtih a third-person narrator, and trying to figure out how "intimate" the voice should be).

I've written five pages so far, of which three are complete crap: lots of tell, lots of backstory, setting up a character in a scene without yet getting to the stage where they're doing something, etc. It's the equivalent to the first paragraph in a short story that my supervisor describes as the author taking a deep breath. Chances are, it should be chucked and the "real" story should start at paragraph two. But those three crap pages are, I think (I hope!) a necessary step towards homing in on that "right" voice...

I think those first pages are often process writing: you need to write them. It's just that the reader won't need (want?) to read them.

(starting a new novel wtih a third-person narrator, and trying to figure out how "intimate" the voice should be).

This is waiting for me once I'm through and out the other side of the WIP.

Emma

That's what I'm telling myself, Emma.

Though when I mentioned this to my supervisor yesterday - the fact that, for the first time, I find I'm struggling to get "in" to a voice - his advice was to hold off writing that first chapter until it was positively bursting to be written. The implication being that you shouldn't have to think too too much about constructing voice - it should emerge as a natural part of the story. Which was definitely my experience with my children's novel, and with the first adult one - but then, both of those used the first person!