Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to (not) CHEAT THE NARRATION

Cheating the narration is typically a 1st person or 3rd person limited point of view bluder writers often make. It means the main character says something they couldn't possibly know. This happens most often during dialogue. Here are a few examples of where I cheated the narration in an old draft of The Guardian Legend:

“Stay with me, Kai.” Joren's voice trembled from the strain the Healing was putting on him.

There is no way the protagonist, Kairi, could know for sure that his voice trembled from the strain of the Healing.

He ripped off a big chunk of meat with his teeth, chewing it slowly so he wouldn't have to respond, and he followed me quietly.

How could she know he's chewing slowly so he doesn't have to respond? All she can see is that he's chewing slowly. Maybe she can ask herself “Is he doing that so he doesn't have to respond?” but if she says it definitively, it's cheating the narration.

He came up to me, wondering how this plan was going to work and feeling anxious.

Those are the character's personal thoughts, so the protagonist could never know what he's thinking or feeling.

My partner looked up at her in surprise. It still came to him as a shock that people could continue to care about him. Or that they had cared in the first place.

How could she know it still came as a shock to him? She can't.

UNLESS: There is only one way cheating the narration can work, and that's if your protagonist is a mind reader or can get inside your character's head (so I suppose the previous three examples would still work since Kairi can hear Cleon's thoughts and feel his emotions, but even these sound very cheaty, so I'll be revising them).

Other instances of cheating the narration is when the protagonist (in a story written in 1st person) seems to know what they look like: My face turned red. They can't know that unless they were looking in a mirror. They can feel their face get hot, but they can't see the blood rushing to it or the pink glow in their own cheeks. They can't know their hair is frizzled (maybe if they feel it), or what their own walk is like. When you write in first person, you really have to immerse yourself into your main character and pretend you are them in that very moment, knowing only what they do. This is really hard since we already know why the other characters are acting the way they do, what they're thinking and feeling at that moment, but once you establish that, you have to go through each line carefully and ask yourself, "Is that something my character can know, or is it something I know?"

If you've cheated with emotions, a very easy fix to that would be to give physical descriptors of the person that reveal how they're feeling. If the character is anxious or nervous, you can show them fiddling with a zipper, eyes darting back and forth, sweat glistening on their foreheads. If they're tired, show their limp posture, their droopy eyelids, their slowed reflexes. (For a more detailed explanation of showing, please check out the How to SHOW vs. TELL & DESCRIPTION chapter.)

If you want a lot of examples of cheating narration, just check out a copy of Twilight. Bella is quite the scholar on Edwardian thoughts and emotions. If you read the Reasoning With Vampires blog (which every aspiring author NEEDS TO. I am dead serious. Read it. I've learned so much about proper writing from that. I've linked to it in the External Link, so you all better click, read, laugh, and learn. Or else you will have a very angry Yuff on your hands.) Dana points out a lot of instances where Meyer is cheating the narration, among other things (which every writer should know).