I recently started a new novel. I start lots of novels, and I write a fair number of them, too; over the last two years I finished five novels and Writing Without Rules. I’ve always written first drafts quickly, and I firmly believe in staying busy. I don’t like to sit and wait for inspiration, I like to force inspiration by working constantly and challenging myself to take a lukewarm first few thousands words and transform it into a great story by sheer force of will.
It doesn’t always work.
So, a new novel. It’s an idea I’ve been kicking around in the back of my head for a while, and I started trying to make it work a few months ago. The first six or seven tries went nowhere. The narrative just petered out each time, losing momentum and that sense of excitement that you feel when you’re onto something. And then I finally figured out the problem: My narrator was intimately involved with the secrets of the story. I needed an Outsider.
Your Ways Confuse and Alarm Me
The Outsider is a character who isn’t in on everything—a Stranger in a Strange Land. The function of the Outsider, at their most basic level, is to have things explained to them. A great example of an Outsider is the companions on Doctor Who. The time-traveling Doctor always has one or two humans around for the ride as he battles aliens and solves timey-wimey puzzles, and their main function is to be confused and alarmed so the Doctor has a reason to explain to them—and the audience—what’s going on.
The Outsider functions as an audience surrogate. I realized in my new novel that having my first-person narrator be aware of the secrets was problematic, and that I was dancing around trying to hold off on revelations which just made things weird. By changing my narrator to someone brought in from the outside, I have a lot more control over how those secrets are revealed.
It seems obvious in retrospect, but as writers it’s so easy to get locked into an initial concept. You have that first idea and it just seems so obvious, so perfect. And six months later when you can’t get it started you’re blind to the fact that one vital aspect of the concept is simply wrong.
Things are going well right now for the book. Will it turn out great? Who knows. All I know for now is that by bringing in an Outsider the story is moving again, because I can control exactly what the reader knows without having to resort to amnesia or sociopathy or possibly having things dropped on my narrator’s head at crucial moments.