The Reader as a Character

Confession: I ate at a Chinese buffet for lunch, and ate WAY too much. I feel like I'm about to pop over here.

Reading:

• The Van, by Roddy Doyle

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Revising:

• "Dolly Hobbles"

I just got an idea for Ferian Fetlock which I think might be a good idea, something distinctive about the story and the series as a whole (assuming I do continue on with the other two planned stories which set up the other two recurring characters.) It's the idea of the Reader as a character.

The conceit of a first person narrative is that the narrator is telling the story. We see it from their point of view. However, except in rare cases, there's no mention made of the fact that the person who lived through those events is actually sitting down at a computer and typing it out, or telling the story to someone else.

My mind goes to P.G. Wodehouse, whose excellent Jeeves and Wooster novels are written from the first person point of view of Bertie Wooster himself. The character Bertie Wooster is a buffoon, who has a hard time expressing himself in anything other than slang terms and various animal noises, but Bertie as a narrator has a peculiar patois of misquoted quotations and flowery prose. This juxtaposition is part of what makes those stories so enjoyable to read, or even more so, to hear read aloud.

Occasionally, Bertie will mention the previous stories as "these little chronicles" or some other fourth wall-breaking phrase, which implies that at some point down the line, Bertie himself is sitting down to compose his memoirs. In a way that stretches credibility, since Bertie never reads anything more difficult than pulp mystery novels. Still, Wodehouse is clever enough to keep the reader from asking that question most of the time.

In every version of Ferian Fetlock so far, at least all I can remember, the POV is first person, always from the viewpoint of Ferian himself. But to whom is he telling these stories? The short answer to that is, the Reader, but that's in the real world. In the context of the story, who is his audience?

That's not going to be the first question the reader asks of a first person POV story, but if I do it subtly enough, perhaps I can make it work.

I'd like to gradually, over the course of the stories, imply that Ferian is on trial. He will certainly commit enough crimes over the course of the stories for that to make sense. If he is speaking, as it were, in his own defense, then I've got an excellent reason for him to try to phrase his adventures in a manner complimentary to himself; however, the truth will still come through.

Let's say that for some reason, he cannot lie. He can, however, use his remarkable talent with words to make the truth dance, and this is what he will try to do. Instead of an earthly trial, then, he's actually making his case to some Higher Power. For that, I'll need to invent some of the mythology of this world... for that matter, I'm still not certain what Lizaju is, other than that he's blue, and has strange abilities.

But for the first story, I don't need to know more. I just need to know who Ferian is actually talking to. Why does he start the story here? Well, for my own purposes, it's a chance for us to meet the character is an archetypal adventure, before we switch up the mix. From Ferian, though, this is the story of how he caught a cold. And in the next story, "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold," we see how he meets Lizaju. And in the next one, "Ferian Fetlock Takes a Wife," we meet Cassie, and now our trio of main characters is complete. That should serve as the first act of the larger story... wherever that happens to go.

Time to stop putting it off and actually write it, no?