I find it interesting that author Celeste Ng read an article in the New Yorker and took it as a jumping-off point to write the article I’m using as a jumping-off point for today’s post. Here it is: “On Leaving Space for the Reader” from the Glimmer Train Press bulletin.
Both articles are are about ambiguity in fiction. The author of the first—and you should read it—concludes that ambiguity in fiction is OK. We are looking at the story through a keyhole, he says; we can only see what we can see. (That is, we can only see what the author tells us. But there may be a lot happening out of our field of vision.)
Ng takes the next logical step, reminding us there is a reader on the other side of that keyhole, and he or she has a place in the exchange between characters, author, and reader.
I loved this idea:
You need to leave a few unmapped places so the characters can step beyond the boundaries you’ve sketched, a few strings untied so that the puppets can move freely without your hand. In other words, you need a little ambiguity: a space, however small, for the reader to fit into the piece. A story needs a little room for the reader to interpret, to bring in his or her own perceptions and conceptions.
She tells of discussing her book with readers who wanted to know what happened in the places that were ambiguous … but they really just wanted her to confirm what they already believed. These readers had entered her story.
A good example of this, I think, would be Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, which provoked a lot of discussion among my friends. What? and Why—? led to intense analyzation of both husband and wife POV characters. (Movies are good for this too. How many times have you watched certain scenes in Inception, to confirm or refute what you believe happened?)
So read the article. Then remember to leave space for your reader.
Tweet: “You need a little ambiguity: a space, however small, for the reader to fit into the piece.”
Tweet: We can only see what the author tells us. But there may be a lot out of our field of vision.
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