Main Character test in reverse

writing
#1

Other threads and @jhull’s Narrative First articles have discussed one of the most useful, objective tests for the Main Character – withholding knowledge from the Audience. If the character in question has a “secret” or does something crucial without the Audience knowing, they can’t be the Main Character otherwise I would have known about it. (Where I indicates the perspective of the MC Throughline that the Audience appreciates in the story.)

Or, applying that test to your writing an unfinished story, you can turn it the other way. If you (as Author) know someone is the MC and they’re withholding knowledge, then don’t do that! Or realize they’re not actually the MC.

But now we come to my question. What if the MC is missing knowledge that’s sort of crucial to him, but some other characters know about it. Is it okay for the Audience to find out those details before the MC does?

Example: MC sees something he shouldn’t, so some other characters erase his memory of it. Is it okay for the Audience to find out about this event while the MC is still in the dark about it?

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#2

Okay, answering my own question here. (I almost didn’t submit the post since the answer was so obvious by the time I finished typing it, but maybe this will help somebody some day. :slight_smile: )

Of course there are many examples where the Audience knows important facts that the MC doesn’t, facts which are often important to the MC and even sometimes relevant to his/her personal issues. It’s pretty much guaranteed that unless you’re focused on telling the whole story from MC POV, stuff will happen that the MC doesn’t immediately know about.

  • Even Harry Potter – told almost entirely from Harry’s POV – has things like the prologue of Book 4 (Goblet of Fire) where we see the truth of Harry’s “dreams” when Nagini kills an intruder to the Riddle House. So we know through the book more about the reality of these “dreams” than Harry does, and more about Voldemort’s plans.
  • In The Princess Bride, We know Humperdinck didn’t send Westley back to his pirate ship a long time before Buttercup finds this out.

You could probably find examples in almost any movie, and books other than strict first person or single-POV 3rd person books.

I think what’s happening here is that we as Audience can incorporate knowledge from various throughlines, and still appreciate the “I” perspective based on the knowledge the MC has.

It’s funny how thinking in theory terms can sometimes mess you up on something so obvious!

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#3

The entire reason for the difference in Main Character and Overall Story perspectives.

And now you’ve discovered the benefits of thinking out loud when it comes to Dramatica. Can’t tell you how many times I rifled off a question to Chris, only to stop at the very end when I answered it all by myself!

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#4

Of course your question made me think again about the idea that the MC can’t withhold information from the audience.

But what about all of the unreliable narrators out there?

In some of these examples we have a variation on your point, in which the main character unwittingly reveals something to the audience that he/she isn’t aware of. But then there are other cases where the narrator is deliberately “lying to” or misleading the audience. Of course you only know this through some kind of reveal.

Maybe in those cases the real MC is the reader/audience? But that seems to be stretching it a bit. Another possibility/speculation: there’s some sort of disruption or disidentification that happens when you realize that you can’t trust the “I” perspective of the storymind – something that in turn affects the message of the whole. Or something.

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#5

As you mention, a lot of those examples are proving the point (first-person perspective of what it’s like to be a kid like Scout, to be an idiot like Forest Gump, etc.). Then you have examples that aren’t the MC like Keyser Soze (he’s the IC).

I haven’t read Gone Girl, but in the movie I never felt like the MC was withholding anything from me. In the movie, she honestly didn’t remember what had happened when she was drunk; she was misled by her husband and thus so was the Audience.

It’s possible that stories with truly misleading MC narrators are tales, so not even trying to be complete stories (and can still be pretty great as tales). Or that they’re almost complete but break structure to mislead the reader? Not sure.

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#6

I don’t think you have to break structure with an unreliable narrator, assuming the narrator is unreliable as a part of their character. The unreliable narrator sees (or relates) the world through their biased, compromised perspective, which makes the story even more interesting, because don’t we all have biases at some point or other?

But now we come to my question. What if the MC is missing knowledge that’s sort of crucial to him, but some other characters know about it. Is it okay for the Audience to find out those details before the MC does?

Sure. For example, someone says or does something which the unreliable narrator spins in their biased perspective to come up with a totally misleading meaning. But the words or actions are still there for the audience.

The real reason an unreliable narrator provides the “shock” is not because of a broken structure, but because the audience hasn’t perceived that this person is unreliable! A good storyteller will give clues to this at the very beginning, but the natural inclination for the audience to take the MC’s ideas and perspective as gospel is what leads them down the false path.

#7

I think this is The Girl on the Train.

Also, I recall – though not sufficiently enough! – that we discussed a movie where this test fails. The MC does not reveal something to the audience until very close to the end, yet there is no mistaking that they are the MC. @jhull talked about this specific test at the meeting, so it should be on the podcast. Sorry, I can’t remember which movie it is.

I think the relevant point of the conversation is that the POV is clear by the end of the movie, so there is nothing missing from the interpretation by the end.

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#8

Right, totally agree. This MC test only implies that things the MC knows shouldn’t be hidden from the Audience. If an MC narrator isn’t sure about something, or has forgotten it, or doesn’t notice it, is biased against it, etc., that’s all fair game to make them unreliable without breaking structure. Sorry, by “truly misleading MC narrator” I meant a narrator who purposely tricks the reader – leaving out things they know.

An example is an MC detective narrator who figures out the mystery but doesn’t tell the reader. This can be okay for a little while – like, at the end of Chapter 29 you realize he’s figured it out, and then in Chapter 30 he confronts the badguy and you find out then. In this case it’s not really misleading, more like a question of style (presenting the info through action and dialogue rather than narration).

But in Harlan Coben’s first Myron Bolitar book Deal Breaker, the MC (Myron, who’s also the 3rd-person POV narrator) figures out the mystery, but doesn’t tell you what he knows. (At that point you can tell he knows something important, though hard to be sure how much.) Then there’s a couple other scenes, including a funeral where the person Myron now knows “did it” is present, and he doesn’t tell the reader. Finally, the confrontation scene happens and he explains to everyone who the killer is and how he knew, and as reader you’re finding out along with everyone else.

This wasn’t terrible, since it wasn’t for that long a period, and you can see why Coben presented it that way to amp up the suspense. But it definitely pulled me out of Myron’s perspective a bit and I think harmed the overall narrative. (the story was sort of lacking on the IC and RS fronts anyway)
Maybe the other reason it wasn’t terrible was that those scenes were almost entirely OS, so it was Myron-the-Protagonist who was narrating, not Myron-the-MC. But even so, it still confuses the reader a bit. In the end, Coben probably decided – if only at a gut level – that the “cool suspenseful twist ending” was worth it even if it alienated the reader a bit.

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#9

Crap! You’re right. Oops. :slight_smile:

#10

I’m going to disagree with this: the MC can try to purposefully manipulate us if they want. How someone narrates a story is a storytelling choice, not a storyforming choice.

(I could go further and say anyone talking about their own problem is unreliable, because they talk about the symptom anyway.)

But this is exactly why we ask: what are the problems they are having? How do they try to solve them? What do they seem concerned about? Because these things are independent of what they say about them.

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#11

Mike, I’m glad you’re challenging me on this because I don’t feel like I’m grokking it for novels/prose.

Are you saying that if an MC narrator hides something important from the reader, it wouldn’t undermine the “I” perspective of the MC throughline?

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#12

In the case of an unreliable narrator MC, would the important thing be that the I perspective of the Storymind has the information even if the audience doesn’t? That is, the Storymind knows that the character is an unreliable narrator even if the audience doesn’t receive that info until late in the story.

The reason for that would be that the I perspective is the audience’s window into the story, but it’s still a perspective of the Storymind rather than a perspective of the audience itself. When the Storymind looks at the question “How do I solve the problem?”, audience reception should see part of the answer as “I lie or keep info hidden, maybe even from myself, until the very end.”

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#13

I think this is getting a bit tough without a specific story to talk about.

(First, I want to make sure that everyone knows that the narrator isn’t necessarily the MC.)

But, I am thinking about it this way: how do you know that a narrator is unreliable? I think it’s because we eventually learn the real story. So, if we learn the real story, what has been hidden?

Obviously, I could see an author failing to reveal what is necessary, and in that case, you’d end up with a broken storyform. (I think of this mostly with postmodern novels that never clarify which truth is the truth of the narrative.)

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#14

Maybe I misunderstood it; I thought the MC test that Jim has mentioned implies that MC stuff shouldn’t be hidden from the Audience even as the story unfolds. In Captain America Civil War, you do find out that Cap knew Bucky had killed Ironman’s parents, but since you don’t find out until late (and it was obviously relevant earlier), Cap’s probably not the MC.

Or, probably a better example, in Eat Drink Man Woman it’s a bit tricky to determine who’s the MC vs. IC between the father and the middle daughter (the airline exec). But at the very end you realize the father’s been hiding this whole romance he’s been having with another character for most of the film – so according to the test he can’t be the MC. Even though you still know the whole story by the end…

Okay wait, that Eat Drink example made me think. Maybe the difference is what you do know by the end. I can’t remember exactly, but I definitely don’t think you find out the whole story of his romance, how it started, how it progressed etc. from a first-person kind of view. So maybe you and @Gregolas are saying that if you did experience all that stuff first-person-like, even if it wasn’t until the end of the film (say in a big flashback), then the father could be the MC.

So it’s not about whether something was hidden for some time during the telling of the story, but more about how clear of an “I” perspective picture you get by the end? Is that what you’re saying?

That would make sense according to Dramatica first principles (storyweaving and storytelling vs. structure / storyform).

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#15

@mlucas , I love this thread because it’s got me thinking of the MC and Storymind, both in ways I haven’t before. I love that. Anyway…

I suspect the MC test is a lot like the Litmus Test for determining Domains and Throughlines in that it doesn’t present you with a definitive answer but it does offer you a “maybe”.

I think the issue with the MC test is that by comparing what and when the characters know something with what and when the audience knows something, it ends up inadvertently tying the audience mind to Storymind. But the Storymind is separate from the audience mind. I think it’s even been discovered to be separate from the authors mind (couldn’t find the thread where this happened, i think most of you know the one I mean though). The Storymind is a metaphorical human mind, but is individual from either the author or audience and unique unto itself just as I am from you.

To see what I’m trying to say, let’s look at the CA:CW example (really glad you used that one. It’s the exact scene I was thinking of all afternoon but wasn’t sure I wanted to bring up again). The MC test is a good way to see if Tony might be the MC, but Tony isn’t the MC because we find out about his parents at the same time he does thus allowing him to pass the MC test. He’s the MC because it is through his character that the Storymind personally experiences what it’s like when I find out that Bucky killed MY parents. It’s just the nature of this personal experience that we the audience get that information at the same time.

Steve, then, isn’t the IC because he already knows about Bucky’s involvement in the death of Tony’s parents and we don’t. He’s the IC because it is at him that the Storymind looks (from the viewpoint of Tony) to ask “What did you know?” And “Why didn’t you tell me?” Again, it’s just the nature of the YOU perspective that means we the audience didn’t know that yet.

Just for fun, let’s flip the MC and IC. If Steve were the MC, that scene would have been about the Storymind’s experience of what it’s like when I’M present as my good friend Tony learns that hisparents were killed by my best friend Bucky. And if Tony were the IC, it would be at him the Storymind looks (from the viewpoint of Steve) to ask “How are you going to handle this information? What are you going to do about it?” I’m sure an argument could be made that this is what’s happening, but I don’t think that’s what that scene was about.

So back to the original topic, I think the audience is reading/watching the Storymind’s experience of the I perspective. So if your MC is an unreliable narrator, I think that changes the flavor of the experience. Instead of the experience of a reliable narrator saying “this is what I did to cover my tracks after committing a crime, and here’s all the steps I took”, the experience of an unreliable narrator might be “this was the lie I told or the secret I kept to myself about the crime I committed” or whatever. So if the MC is keeping a secret, I think we the audience may not find out until the end, but I think it should be clear by the end that the Storymind was aware of the secret all along.

But I’m pretty much guessing at all that. :joy:

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#16

yeah, i think that’s pretty much what I was saying. I kind of jumped into the middle of a conversation, though. So i’d still hope to see what Mr. Wollaeger has to say

#17

This brought to mind The Usual Suspects.

#18

Yes, this is what I’m saying. Mind you, I’m kind of flying by the seat of my pants, which is why I would prefer to work off an example. :unamused:

But, I think the important things to remember here are this:
What’s important is that the ‘I’ perspective is clear by the end. I can only think of one example where it became clear at the end, and not earlier – though, like I said above, I can’t even remember what movie it is. This means Jim’s test is going to work 99% of the time, if not more.

The model, in theory, captures how we think about problems in an instant. That’s why it can work by only having the information at the end, because our brain is able to recalibrate everything at that point. It’s as though we got all that information at the same time. (I think this may parallel something like the reveals at the end of The 6th Sense or The Prestige, where we have to rejigger our thoughts quickly to make things make sense.)

I’m going to go back to my earlier point, too, which is that there are limits to how unreliable a narrator can be. (This is why I would have preferred to work off an example.) If I am narrating a story about how I got out of a problem by sweet talking everyone, when in reality I was punching people, at some point, that information has to be made clear to the audience at some point.

Then again, Fight Club is a broken story.

This also makes me wonder – when narrators are unreliable, which thread are they unreliable about?

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#19

Not sure what you mean by thread.

Most (if not all) unreliable narrators have a mind or psychological thing going on (not sure where this falls in Dramatica): inexperience (the child, newcomer, outsider), impairment (mentally ill, drunk, drugged), or outright lying (to themselves or the audience).

#20

Sorry, I meant throughline.

As to where an unreliable narrator’s off-mind goes, that depends entirely on what is the source of their problem.

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