Speculative fiction has a characteristic – in all genres of literature, it often provokes discussion, even controversy. Unlike other types of discussions such as romance, martial arts, and science fiction, which mostly focus on the technical aspects of novels such as character building and author writing, the discussion of speculative fiction is more focused on "reasoning", and almost every new book will bring new discussion points.
Is this trick feasible? What misleading tactics did the author use? Does this model borrow from another book? The same riddle, which of these two books is more subtle? ......
Such heated discussions are sometimes even more exciting than novels, and many speculative fiction is found to have hidden value because of the articles of book reviewers. However, this kind of discussion is difficult for others to intervene in, and can only be limited to a small range, even between three or two people, only for one reason - fear of leaking the bottom.
Due to the particularity of speculative fiction, if you want to discuss a book, you must first read it, otherwise the communication can only be limited to the novel category such as background settings and character settings, and the core tricks that really determine the quality of a speculative fiction cannot be touched.
The difficulty of writing speculative fiction book reviews also lies in this, either simply writing in the title "leaking the bottom and cautiously entering", or writing that every word is trembling, like walking on thin ice, or knocking on the side to talk about the type and style, there are Grandma's remains, the highest masterpiece of socialism.
Among them, there is a kind of speculative fiction, but I can't even say what type it is. Because as soon as you say it, you will directly leak the bottom.
This type of speculative fiction is explored below— narrative ruse.
Written by 丨Lu Yehua (Member of Shanghai Writers Association)
01
What is narrative trickery?
With regard to narrative ruse, the usual definition is that the author uses the structure of the article or the writing technique to deliberately conceal or mislead certain facts to the reader, until the truth is finally revealed, so that the reader has an indescribable sense of consternation.
We know that all mystery novels try to surprise the truth as much as possible. In order to achieve the final sense of consternation, the details laid out in the previous novels and the deliberate concealment are necessary.
- Yes, speculative fiction, while fair, places the detective and the reader in the same cognitive range in the book, but still needs to be "deliberately" concealed.
Most speculative fiction is narrated in the first person, such as Dr. Watson, who chronicled Holmes's crime-solving story, a narrative that has been used repeatedly since poe's Murder on Mog Street.
The advantages of this narrative method, most people will think that "Watson is the reader's feedback", when seeing the strange crime scene, Watson will help the reader to be shocked, when the detective is mysterious, Watson will ask some questions for the reader, and even he will make his own judgment and explanation for the case, and this part of the explanation is the most likely for the reader to think. The bridge between ordinary people and the thinking of divine detectives is the role of "Watsons".
Stills from Sherlock (2010).
But in fact, narrating a detective story in the first person has a more important purpose, that is, to conceal the truth.
The author is omniscient, and the truth of the case is already known by the time the first word of the novel is written, so it is best for the author not to write in the third person (God's perspective), because he cannot fully describe the key information involved, including the murder, and tell the reader. This is bound to lead to "deliberate concealment", and with the first point of view, this concealment is justified.
It can be said that until the truth is revealed, the author is completely on the side of the murderer. The murderer did a lot of things to hide himself, and all the author did was to be silent about it, until the detectives found out.
Therefore, concealing information and surprising the reader is a common feature of all novels that "have a perpetrator", and are not unique to narrative tricks. So, what is the most crucial point in distinguishing narrative trickery from other speculative fiction in the definition mentioned above? That is the first sentence - "the author uses the structure of the article or the writing technique".
First of all, who is lying to the reader? The answer is the author.
It is not the murderer who has created a complex ruse to deceive the rest of the book, but the author who is actively deceiving the reader. In this definition, what the murderer did can also be insignificant.
Second, how did he cheat? The answer is to use article structure or textual techniques.
It's not a fishing line, it's not a time difference, it's just a simple writing skill. Under this definition, the things that the author conceals become richer, and the truth of speculative fiction is no longer limited to "who is the murderer", "how to do it", "why kill", but anything can be used as an answer. Even small things.
In the narrative ruse of the murderer's abdication and the author standing in front of the stage, the reader may know at the beginning that A brutally killed B at 3 o'clock in the afternoon because of the pressure of survival, and this part is not hidden at all, but until the end, the reader discovers that both A and B are lions on the savannah.
Concealing small things that may not have much to do with the case, in order to complete the sense of surprise at the end of the novel, is the pleasure pursued by narrative trickery.
So, narrative tricks that can have nothing to do with the murderer, can have nothing to do with the detective, and can have nothing to do with criminal acts, are speculative fiction? Of course, because the most important pleasure of speculative fiction is to surprise the reader, and as for the means, it is not necessary to use the set of homicides.
Stills from Forbidden Island (2010).
02
The source of narrative ruse
Even today's readers react very differently when they see narrative ruse. Some people are intoxicated, and some people are deeply disgusted.
Imagine how people would react when the first work of narrative trickery was born.
In the usual sense, the first narrative trick recognized by the reasoning community was Agatha Christie's 1926 book The Doubts of Roger, which did cause great controversy after its publication, and now that we look back, this book is worthy of being a classic in the history of reasoning, but whether it is a narrative trick or not is again discussed.
In my personal definition of narrative trickery, "Roger's Doubt" is not a narrative trick, and the reason why it is regarded as the originator of narrative trickery is that I think the main reason is Agatha's speculative fiction writing.
As we have already said, narrative trickery lies in the author's narrative and not elsewhere. But Agatha's writing skills are excellent, misleading and psychological blind spots are her signature weapons, in her time, the common speculative fiction is "straight ball decisive", the author usually devotes his energy to the details of the crime scene, clues and the contradiction between the suspect's words, in order to solve the case, the author is still hidden behind the "detective-assistant" pair of partners. And Agatha's work, her personal style is extremely distinct, whether it is Poirot or Miss Marple, are only her spokespersons, in some works, not only readers, but even detectives have to deceive, the most representative of which is "Roger's Doubts".
Beginning with Agatha's work, the reader realizes for the first time that "the narrator is not credible," that the text itself is deceptive, that a letter, a picture, or even an entire book, is no longer irrefutable evidence, but ambiguous information.
And this narrative technique, obviously Agatha is not the only time in "Roger's Doubt", or even the first time to use it, the difference is only how much she uses, the sense of surprise brought by the truth is strong or not.
From this point of view, rather than saying that "The Doubts of Roger" is the originator of narrative ruse, I am more inclined to say that Agatha, the author, inspired the narrative ruse of later generations.
Like the proper noun "speculative fiction," "narrative trickery" derives from the Japanese definition, and since the publication of Roger's Doubts, this novel novel, known as "narrative トリック", has quickly become popular in Japan and has been played by a number of new Benguet writers.
Stills from "Heart Flower Road Release" (2014).
03
Classification of narrative tricks
Because the focus of narrative tricks is not limited to the behavior of the perpetrator, it is possible to contain the most important tricks in any part of the novel's written narrative, which makes the variety of narrative tricks very rich.
I divide common narrative tricks into two broad categories: "points" and "surfaces."
Points, i.e., a key piece of information in a novel that is misguided, including but not limited to place, time, and characters. This type can often be revealed in a single sentence.
The location trick is easy to understand, that is, through the development of the story, the words and deeds of the characters, so that the reader can misidentify the location of the story through the inertia of thinking or subconscious assumptions. For example, if I write a column for the Beijing News Book Review Weekly every other week, the delivery time is usually more than 11 o'clock the night before the publication, and the editor is very troubled by my delay. The text I use is Chinese, and I often share interesting things that have happened recently with my partners Xiao Zhang, Xiao Wang and others, but until the end, you may find that I have actually been in a certain European country, and Xiao Zhang and Xiao Wang are my international student classmates. In fact, I didn't mean to drag the manuscript, because of the jet lag. (The above is a fictional example, I am really dragging the manuscript.) ）
In the above example, there is also a little shadow of character trickery, but as a speculative novel, to achieve more unexpected effects, the truth may be "I am actually an eighty-year-old man".
I've written about Detective Conan (Detective Conan paid homage to half of the mystery world | suspense" in my column, and I've talked about a lot of hit movies and TV shows (from "The Beginning" to talk about what is set-up reasoning), including my narrative style—all of which mislead readers again and again, and the author is a young man.
But in fact, I have never revealed my age, and there is no rule that the elderly cannot watch "Detective Conan", cannot use the Internet skillfully, and cannot follow the drama. All misleading exploits the reader's social experience and stereotypes about something.
In addition to age, the character's tricks of course include gender, height, nationality, physical characteristics, species, and so on. The example of the two lions mentioned earlier is a kind of character trickery.
As for the time trick, it is as easy to understand as the place trick, the author does not explain the time when the story takes place, the reader himself will make up the whole world view, and finally the author will jump out to tell you that the story takes place in ancient times. A few years ago, there was a very popular animated movie "Your Name." " is the use of time tricks.
Your Name. (2016) Stills.
These tricks are harmless, but you must know that in the pen of a speculative novelist, any small concealment may evolve into a huge information gap and eventually achieve a big reversal of the whole story.
In addition to the "points" of time, place, and people, there is also a kind of "surface". It uses trickery in the layout of the article, the structure of the article, the paragraph chapters, etc.
Compared with the "point" narrative trick that pursues the ambiguity and pun of the text, the "face" narrative trick is more complex and more testing to the author. For example, at first glance, the whole story of a novel is linear forward, but in fact, the odd and even chapters belong to two different times and tell completely different stories. For example, in the multi-line narrative, two people who seem to have no relationship are actually the same person in the end.
One of my favorite narrative subterfuge novels is the use of structural narrative subterfuge. Before reading the last sentence of the book, it was a normal love story, and there were not even any crimes in it. But the appearance of the last sentence has subverted the entire story before, and the overall temperament and reversal of the characters have undergone earth-shaking changes.
The structure of this kind of novel is very exquisite, with both the charm of deception and the intriguing taste of the novel text itself, which not only broadens the scope of speculative fiction, but also has a certain improvement in literature. Palindromic, metafiction, mid-work, etc. are common patterns in this type of fiction that uses structural tricks.
This kind of play structure of the novel develops to the back, torturing not only the author, but also the editor. For example, the Japanese writer Patrick Oshaka, who was also a magician, was particularly adept at using this technique. In one of his novels, what is the beginning of each page and what the word is at the end, are strict requirements, which poses a huge problem for typesetting editors and translation teachers, but once published, such a novel is a unique work that is as magical as a magic prop.
Stills from The Sixth Sense (1999).
04
Narrative trickery in suspense movies
After talking about so many narrative tricks, according to common sense, we should finally recommend some excellent related works. However, because of the special nature of narrative tricks, once the reader is told in advance that the book uses narrative tricks, it is possible that the author's carefully choreographed magic will be wasted, so I hope that everyone will not leak the bottom in the comments, or disclose the title of the book. Only by reading a novel of narrative subterfuge without knowing anything about it is that the sense of surprise is strongest.
So, in this column, I wouldn't recommend any novel — other than the aforementioned "Roger's Doubts," sorry, Agatha — and since you can't recommend novels, recommend a few suspenseful films with elements of narrative trickery.
Look at this kind of deception in the subjective consciousness of the creator, what is the difference between the film and television presentation and the text presentation.
If you also like the following suspense movies, you should not reject narrative and devious novels.
"Forbidden Island", "Sixth Sense of Spirits", "Island Horror", "Heart Flower Road Release", "Chainsaw Horror 1", "Chainsaw Horror 2", "Your Name" 》。
If you've seen these movies, try to summarize, which genre does it fall into as mentioned in this article?