Day 280: Writing Exercise 5, Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley's style was well-developed at a very early age. She was only eighteen years old when she wrote 'Frankenstein,' but had been an intense reader, writer, and editor for many years before then. With so much time invested in the craft, it's a shame that her achievements as an author went largely unnoticed during her lifetime, besides 'Frankenstein' of course. Her style is much older than the other authors I've explored this week, predating the earliest author by over a hundred years. Maybe I should've picked more authors that wrote in the intervening years, come to think of it ...

Anyway, ignoring the giant time gap, what's most prominent to me about her work is how Shelley has a deep understanding of how her characters feel. She uses that knowledge to build a rapport with the reader immediately, even putting off the events of the story for a paragraph or two to establish the reason a character is telling a story. Sometimes her characters' thoughts tend to wander during narration. When accounting the events of the story they often make side remarks, personal commentary, and exclamations about their terrible woes or greatest triumphs. All of them wear their hearts on their sleeves, at least when narrating that is. The characters will address the fact that they're telling a story, sometimes even speaking directly to the reader. Compare this to more modern books, and you'll find that narrators rarely acknowledge the fact that you're reading a book. Take this line from 'The Mortal Immortal,' where an immortal man has decided to put his tale to paper:

I will tell my story, and my reader shall judge for me. I will tell my story, and so contrive to pass some few hours of a long eternity, become so wearisome to me. For ever! Can it be? to live for ever!

Now you know why you're reading the story from the moment you pick it up. Modern narrative structure tends to put this off for a while. You can go an entire book and not really know what the point is until the climax or the resolution. Of course there's more to every story than it seems, but she tends to reveal a guiding motivator from the very start. Frankenstein is recording his thoughts largely because of the guilt he feels, and he says so in the beginning of the story. During the part of the book where Frankenstein's monster tells his tale, he immediately reveals how lonely he felt when Frankenstein abandoned him, an emotion that guides the rest of his decision making, including the reason for him tracking down Frankenstein and forcing him to hear the tragedy he caused.

Within these moments where the narrator seems to get off track, she's actually hiding crucial bits of exposition. Its really ingenious when you pause to think about the purpose of paragraphs like the one I mentioned above. Here's the rest of the paragraph by the way.

I have heard of enchantments, in which the victims were plunged into a deep sleep, to wake, after a hundred years, as fresh as ever: I have heard of the Seven Sleepers--thus to be immortal would not be so burthensome: but, oh! the weight of never-ending time--the tedious passage of the still-succeeding hours! How happy was the fabled Nourjahad!--But to my task.

By using this journal-like format, Shelley has completely disappeared behind the voice of her narrator to the point where even seemingly random asides become a way for the reader to get to know the character, and the world that he belongs to. He makes references in this paragraph, references that I assume would've been widely known in Shelley's time, but still reveal information about the setting. Of course it also tells you how he feels, and how he means to put himself to his 'task' of writing down his story. Easing the entry with paragraphs like these is something modern authors don't really do anymore. Pick up any book printed after the nineteenth century and you'll find the narrative has pretty much already begun the second you start reading. Instead of dedicating time to establishing the narrator and their place in the world, most modern authors will use context clues to establish that information instead. Often times this reads a lot smoother, but I've read some really cringy attempts even in best-selling books. *cough* 'The Fourth Wing' *cough*

Check out this first line too.

July 16, 1833.--This is a memorable anniversary for me; on it I complete my three hundred and twenty-third year!

The Wandering Jew?--certainly not. More than eighteen centuries have passed over his head. In comparison with him, I am a very young Immortal.

When he asks the question there, after you've read that he's more than three hundred years old, its as if the narrator has read your mind. This is a surprisingly advanced trick based on theory of mind, or the knowledge that others' beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and thoughts may be different from one's own. The narrator here has assumed that when you read the first line, you might wonder if this is a story about The Wandering Jew, a common folktale back then. When he informs the reader otherwise, they immediately buy into the idea that this is a real person. He can think far enough ahead to know what you'll be thinking when you read what he's written. How can this not be a thinking, feeling being on the other side of the paper if he knows what I'm thinking?

It makes the narrator a lot more believable when they say something like this:

All the world has heard of Cornelius Agrippa. His memory is as immortal as his arts have made me. All the world has also heard of his scholar, who, unawares, raised the foul fiend during his master's absence, and was destroyed by him. The report, true or false, of this accident, was attended with many inconveniences to the renowned philosopher. All his scholars at once deserted him--his servants disappeared. He had no one near him to put coals on his ever-burning fires while he slept, or to attend to the changeful colours of his medicines while he studied. Experiment after experiment failed, because one pair of hands was insufficient to complete them: the dark spirits laughed at him for not being able to retain a single mortal in his service.

I had not heard this about Cornelius Agrippa before, but I was willing to buy it for the sake of reading the story. Agrippa was a real person of course, but I wonder if this story about his scholar who raised a dark fiend was well known. I hadn't heard it, but I went with it anyway. It makes me wonder how far this technique could be stretched. Could I establish a narrator so when they mention a name that 'all the world knows' the reader would buy it, even if nobody actually knows the name?

Today I'm going to try to use this technique to establish a character in a different way than I'm accustomed to. Establishing a narrator like this is something I've never really done before, so it might be pretty rough. I haven't read many works that actually do this either. I'm steeped in more modern literature to the point where jumping right into a story feels more natural than taking some time to put my toes in. Also, in the true spirit of the author, I'm going to go for something with a sci-fi twist. Wish me luck!

January 1st, 2000 -- Happy New Year!

I'm typing this on my brand new Windows PC. I know what you're thinking though, didn't your computer crash this morning? No, not quite. Thankfully this machine was well prepared for the millennium. It was actually a bonus I got from the firm I work for, a little New Year's gift for saving their asses from a nasty computer virus that snuck into the system via some dork's skull implant. Oh man, IT is harder than ever these days. People just walk right into the office still linked up to the mobile net and log right in. Half of them still keep a plaintext password file in those memory implants. I mean its just ridiculous.

I suppose I should be thanking my lucky stars for idiots like him though. If they didn't exist, I'd probably be out of a job, not to mention this PC. I'll be interviewing for a promotion after New Years is over with too, and if preventing an intrusion like that isn't enough to get me on the advanced cybersec team then I don't know what will.

January 7th, 2000 -- I nailed the interview!

Despite those weirdos asking me to stage a dial up connection (who the hell uses those anymore?) I was able to get a record time in the CTF portion of the interview by getting root access to their testing server. Instead of returning the string of text they wanted me to find, I sent the interviewer his own password straight into his skull link! They told me that was good enough, and also to never do it again if I wanted to keep my head on my shoulders. They also taught me a new acronym, LMAO. It's kinda like LOL, but it means Laughing My Ass Off. Isn't that funny?

I have this job in the bag.

January 9th, 2000 -- They Fired Me!

I can't believe this. My little stunt went over well with the interview team, but one of the higher ups thought it was reckless and got me ousted. I don't know who, but when I find out there's gonna be hell to pay. They already removed my access, but that virus I stopped is still on my work computer. All I'd have to do is piggyback on someone's link, decrypt and run the file and the whole system would be mine ... I think this journal is going to be my villain origin story. LMAO, but, like, evily.

Well that was harder than I expected. It's far outside of how I normally write. The whole point of this was to stretch my usual limits though. Goal achieved!

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley