Monday-morning quarterbacking, instant replay, and perspective

retrospect--looking back at a moment or era in time; a point of view containing information or knowledge of the consequences of past action; a narrative or personal attitude arrived at after the fact; Monday-morning quarterbacking.

A significant use of retrospect comes when the details of a novel or story are filtered through one or more characters giving historical versions of a story, allowing them to reflect attitudes or subtexts of regret, pleasure, or moral superiority over past events. This use of retrospect becomes one of the writer's first major decisions, coming right after who or whom the narrator(s) will be. The issue now becomes at what rate of awareness to set the story; is it meant to seem as though it is taking place in the immediate present or at some remove, after all the issues and permutations have been sorted out. Thus the necessary decision, was the narrator naive, reliable, or unreliable then? And,indeed, is the point of view is retrospective, has the narrator remained naive, reliable, or unreliable?

Huckleberry Finn was told from the narrative eye of a young boy. One of the few anomalies is the likelihood of his being literate enough to have composed any narrative in the first place. His honesty and pragmatism quickly override any tendency to suspend belief. His approach to all matters seems appropriate for a street- and country-wise person of his age, a pragmatism that makes him all the more likable and seemingly truthful. Certainly he is in touch with his emotions. Would Huck have been more convincing in his depiction if events if he'd picked up the Conklin fountain pen ( the one with which Mr. Twain began the first draft) in his forties or fifties to reflect back on the events? Most likely not--even more likely, the story would not have been so resonant. It needed, in fact, to be told as it was, as though it were happening to a twelve-year-old boy in the immediate now. As readers, we "forgive" him his literary abilities as we jump directly into his explanation of the device by which he came into being in the first place, "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer..."

Twain uses in the opening sentences a stunning device that actually paved the way for Primo Levi and his frequent trespasses into postmodernism. "...but that aint no matter," Huck assures us, and indeed it isn't, thanks directly to that street-smarts honesty. In the second sentence, Huck tells us, "That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly-- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before." By the first paragraph, we're in, willing at that early point to trust Huck's retrospective account of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Shortly after the retrospective account begins, Huck tells of Aunt Polly's sister, Miss Watson, "took a set at me now with a spelling-book." Thus between Miss Watson and the soon-to-appear Tom Sawyer is Huck put on a collision course with literature. Mostly Huck's street smarts win out and mostly we are left with the precious relic of him at the age where he lit out for the territory ahead because Aunt Polly and Miss Watson wanted to civilize him, and he couldn't stand it.

The focus from immediate present to retrospective shifts one hundred eighty degrees as the unnamed narrator of Daphne DuMaurier's unforgettable Rebecca addresses us as directly as Huck did: "Last I dreamt I went to Manderly again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gatge leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me." We now know exactly where we stand in regard to the framework of time, and we have as yet no reason (nor will we have any) to doubt the reliability of the narrator. True enough, she is in at the payoff, telling us, "...it was my lack of poise that made such a bad impression on people like Mrs. Danvers. What must I have seemed like [to Mrs. Danvers] after Rebecca...?" This retrospective assessment makes her all the more believable a narrator. Unlike Huck, who wants to light out for the territory ahead, this individual is sitting on the veranda with her loved one. "I fix my dark glasses, reach for my bag of knitting. And before us, long as the skein of wool I wind, stretches the vista of our afternoon."

In law and in writing, the perspective of timing and intent are everything. Scenario One: Bill goes to the neighborhood pub to collect a bet from Fred, who denies having made the bet in the first place. The two get into a scuffle in which Fred, alas, does not emerge alive. Scenario Two: Bill takes his gun with him as he goes to the neighborhood pub, intending to teach Fred a lesson if Fred decides once again to renege on a bet.

Worst case in Scenario One would be justifiable homicide. In Scenario Two, worst case is murder.

The differences between retrospective and present time perspectives are significant, just as significant, as Mark Twain reminds us, as "The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

Thinking it Over, Family Matters

retrospect--a vision of a character, place, or situation from a later point in time; a revisit to a person, place, or situation with the implicit promise that at the very least the reader will learn something not known before, and possibly one or more characters will similarly profit.

Returning to a past event is a springboard to an emotional revelation; a character who revisits a situation will now have awareness to see what had not been visible before, to understand the implications of responses or treatment not understandable before. In such retrospect it is possible for a character to recognize lost opportunities or behavior that will cause time-released humiliation.


family--a group of characters related by blood and/or adoption, conventionally considered a mother, father, and one or more children, but easily taking grandparents into the equation or, in contemporary times, a single mother and her children, a single father and his children; a potentially diverse group involving one or both spouses having remarried, bringing step-children into the family equation; a parental pairing of a gay couple with children from a previous heterosexual marriage; a parental paring of a gay couple with adopted or artificially inseminated children.

By their very individual nature, families may be supportive, neglectful, abusive, eccentric; they supply energy through direct action or backstory that has direct influence on all who live within their borders. Families are believed by some to have procreation as their primary goal, followed by the raising of young to the point of their own independence. This view is dramatic in itself since there are substantial numbers who see the function of family as entirely different.

Family gatherings, whether to celebrate holidays, indulge such rituals as funerals, weddings, and anniversaries, are frequent sources of story, suggesting that plots are not necessary; there is already ample story within every family.

Get to the Pointillism

point of focus, the--a temporal perspective from which a narrative is related. There are two major points of focus, the immediate NOW, and the retrospective.

A story is related by one or more characters as though it were taking place in the immediate now, which means the narrator has a vocabulary and emotional range of experiences commensurate with that character's age, background, and experience. Using this point of focus, the narrator is under the pressures of having to make evaluations and decisions as they occur; the story is set right now. Thus if the narrator is a youngster of, say, pre-teen years, the story is rendered through the filter of a character of that age. An eight- or nine-year-old does not have the vocabulary, emotional and intellectual understanding, and response mechanisms of an adult.

In the other available point of focus, the retrospective, the narrator resides in the immediate present, coping with some occasion of stress while recalling the events and consequences of a story that took place earlier--perhaps years earlier. This accounts for the If-I-knew-then-what-I-know-now approach; it also allows the narrator to use a more sophisticated and worldly vocabulary and awareness.

The writer needs to consider with care the advantages and disadvantages of setting a narrative at a particular point on the horizon, particularly to avoid focus leak, a situation in which a young character appears to have intellectual or intuitive information well beyond the age range of the narrator.

Each point of focus has a potential for underlying irony, the most exquisite of which is when a more mature narrator relates a story of childhood focus in which the outcome could have been different or even prevented had the narrator only known at the time, then before the readers' eye, proceeds to make the same error as an adult. (A notable example of this irony resides in Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier.)

As an illustration of how rules for dramatic writing await being broken, consider the Brazilian Balzac, Machado Assisi, and his memorable Epitaph for a Small Winner, and years later, Alice Seybold's The Lovely Bones, both of which take wing against the conventional wisdom of narrating a novel from the point of focus of a person who begins the story already dead.


writers' conferences--places where, under the guise of wanting to learn more about their craft, writers attend to insist they are right about what they have written.

writers' workshop advice--if they tell you they want more details and background for your characters, it means they are hooked. Never take the reader where the reader wants to go.

show--don't tell--an admonition directed against fiction writers by publishers of thick novels and teachers who have written relatively little. The adjuration to "show--don't tell" is meant to direct the writer to dramatize important information rather than doing so in narrative, warning that doing so is like holding up a sign that informs the audience such details as "it was raining," "the moon is up," "he didn't feel well," "she didn't watch where she as going," and similar bits of information thought to be relevant to the story. Publishers of weighty novels charge more for a thicker novel; showing everything certainly adds to the bulk. "It was raining when Fred got out of his car," if merely an observation, will not offend many readers whereas a number might stop reading altogether if Fred takes up too much time and space in performing largely mechanical steps. True enough, fiction is an evocative rather than descriptive art but seasoned writers have learned the wisdom of telling the smaller, inconsequential details rather than distracting from the emotional bite of the story by overpopulating it with information.

Dramatizing an event gives weight and importance to it. If every step in a story appears to be of the same weight, dramatic intensity will suffer. So will the readers' patience. A good ratio to keep in mind is the one between narrative and dialogue: Show only what moves the story along, complicates it, and/or reveals information about characters. Tell the rest.


kicking a character when he is down —a condition common among entry-level and intermediate writers in which, having established an antagonist, opponent, or other force with a negative agenda or attitude, they proceed to vilify that/those characters in deed, dialogue, and description. Thus someone who means the protagonist no good becomes enhanced to the point of being personified as evil incarnate.

Truth to tell, the good guys of your story need some opposition with dimension; pure, unbridled meanness, lust for power, or greed doesn’t get it. Further truth to tell: if you want the reader to experience genuine concern that your protagonist is up against a formidable opponent, one of the best ways to address the situation is by creating a thoughtful, quick-witted, well-versed individual, steering clear of such dialogue attributions as snorted, sneered, and smirked. There have been enough smirks in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction and twenty-first century politics to last us for some time; we don’t need any more cads or temptresses smirking in this century.

The entire philosophy of kicking a character when he is down comes from the fledgling writer’s insecurity of not being sure the reader will grasp the depths of meanness to which an opponent will go to bring misery down on the head of the protagonist. This is a world of moral absolutes, a comic-book world in which ex-mates have no redeeming qualities, all opponents are mean spirited, and the Boy Scouts who help little old ladies across the street are pickpockets, working for Fagin.

A good rule of thumb to follow is to allot about sixty percent of the brains, good lines, and tenure-track jobs to those who oppose your good guys, saving the remaining forty percent for your favorites. Then, when your anointed ones prevail at the end, the reader will see them as having triumphed over a believable and significant force.