What vicious children we once were
What’s the worst thing you ever did?
Maybe it was something you didn’t even know was wrong, because at the time everyone was doing it. A cruel joke. Or using a bad word you didn’t even understand.
If you’re anything like me, it probably still haunts you more than any failure or disappointment you’ve ever experienced as an adult. Especially if you weren’t properly punished.
Two books I read lately touched on this theme–the careless cruelty of children who don’t understand privilege or consequences. Their actions stemmed from insecurity. Wanting belonging, feeling alternately justified in their anger at being unjustly treated and guilty about how they acted (or overreacted) on that anger.
The first was Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, which was exactly as depressing as I thought it would be (and why I waited so long to read it). In it the protagonist says outright, “I wished he’d give me the punishment I craved, so maybe I’d finally sleep at night.”
Do I recommend The Kite Runner? Not for readers. But for writers? Absolutely. Because what Hosseini does is a masterclass in psychological intimacy. Anyone who has had a sibling knows exactly what it’s like to love someone and be jealous of them in the same breath and with equal desperation. Which one of us hasn’t said or done something harsh to their sibling in a fit of pique and then been surprised and horrified that it drew blood?
Guilt is a terrifying thing in general, and especially in an age of social media, when everyone pays immediately for their sins, whether or not they should. This takes me to the second book, Before we were innocent, by Ella Berman. This time it’s a story about girls who are more than fierce friends and less than sisters. With lines like “We loved each other more than anything, but the flip side of love isn’t hate—it’s the power to destroy,” and “Maybe I was always destined to climb over the bodies of those I once loved to get where I needed to go,” we’re back to exploring the same trope–at what point does what you want matter enough that you’d hurt someone you love to get it?
We all have that line we don’t cross. Most of us just haven’t been forced to know where it is. Maybe this is why I find redemption arcs more compelling than romance. Because the hard part comes after you’ve done that horrible, unforgivable, selfish thing. Being forgiven, forgiving ourselves, and learning to forgive others–that’s love made real. Isn’t that what we all want?
Hope whatever childhood foibles you got up to, they ended only in cringe, rather than catastrophe.
How the writing’s been going:
Narrative intimacy has been on my mind. I’ve had several rejections of the vague “great writing, but not hooked” variety and someone finally helped make sense of it. When I first wrote Driving by Starlight it was in the third person. When I switched it to first person, I was forced to stop trying to describe Leena’s feelings and experience them instead. The results were immediate. The writing got sharper, more personal.
But narrative intimacy isn’t just about writing in the first or third person. In fact, as most readers will attest, it’s easier to sink into a third-person story than a first-person one. The latter can become grating (especially in young, shouty characters) or confronting when it comes to traumatic moments (think Elena Ferrante).
This thread is a useful primer on common mistakes that result in low narrative intimacy. But getting high narrative intimacy—well, that’s the whole point of stories, isn’t it? To feel something so intensely that you become this other person, at least for a little while? There’s no tears for the reader if there’s no tears for the writer. Usually, a lack of narrative intimacy means one simple thing.
The writer’s scared.
A lack of narrative intimacy means there’s something about this character’s perspective that’s a wound begging to be cleansed of pus, but damn is it going to hurt. Maybe if we just talk around it, use descriptive words for the emotions like “she felt angry” or “her ears burned” we won’t have to go deep. Readers would just get it, right? Nope. In fact that’s how they know you took the easy way out.
Great. Problem diagnosed. Now what?
I’m working on identifying the ways in which my brain finds ways to avoid narrative intimacy, and untangling them. Example 1: Giving a view into the character’s mind, rather than giving a view from the character’s eyes.
Bad: Carol saw the email from her boss—titled “Feedback.” Immediately she felt exhausted. No matter what she did, it would never be enough.
Better: Carol took one look at the title of the email—Feedback—and turned her phone off. It was nearly midnight. She’d put on her growth-mindset pants tomorrow. Maybe. After a lot of coffee.
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