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Weed Out Author Intrusion

December 13, 2011 by Fiction Editor Beth Hill
last modified December 13, 2011

A reader of The Editor’s Blog asked me to write about author intrusion, to give examples to make it easy to first identify and then weed out author intrusion.

At their most basic, author intrusions are story anomalies, oddities, where the writer has projected herself into the fictional world. These intrusions show up as events or knowledge or words that don’t fit the story.

Or, to look at intrusions in a slightly different way, consider them places where the writer hasn’t sufficiently covered her tracks.

In fiction, any time the reader sees a trace of the writer imposed upon the story world or bleeding through the fiction, that writer has intruded—stepped into a place she doesn’t belong.

Intrusion is distracting. It’s interruptive. It’s annoying.

Author intrusion upsets the rhythms of a story. It upsets the readers. Author intrusion upsets characters who must adapt to the anomaly.

If one character starts spouting off in favor of the writer’s pet crusade, other characters must respond—even if the topic has nothing to do with these characters or their plot. Or, if the writer knows characters shouldn’t respond because the first character shouldn’t be espousing such a viewpoint, she may have other characters ignore what Character One is saying. And this, of course, creates additional problems. Characters should have a response to what others do and say. When they don’t, story ties are loosened. The pattern of action/reaction is broken. The story loses cohesion.

A tip to remember about intruders is that they are not welcome. Would you rather your readers were moved by your story or ticked off because you plopped yourself into the middle of it?

Readers come to fiction for the characters’ stories, for the make-believe that they can imagine is real. They don’t come to novels for a writer’s opinions.

Of course, not all author intrusion is about a pet cause or the author’s stand on an issue

When a character suddenly sounds unlike himself for reasons having nothing to do with the plot . . .

When a character reveals knowledge he couldn’t or shouldn’t have—not necessarily about story events but general knowledge of the world— . . .

When a setting is burdened with details no one but a specialist (or a writer who overdid the research) would know . . .

When characters speak as though they all have MFA degrees . . .

When the plot is about a novice writer trying to pen a bestseller . . .

. . . the writer has intruded into the story and left her mark.

 _______________________________

Identify Author Intrusion

Author intrusion can be difficult for writers to see because we’re used to our own opinions and knowledge; it’s part of us and we don’t usually see anything wrong with it. Seeing our opinions in others would not jar us.

To clearly see and evaluate a story as something independent of us, we must separate ourselves from our stories. Step back and study them dispassionately. The ability to do this takes practice and the willingness to distance oneself from one’s creation, a task especially difficult for beginning writers. Experienced writers should be doing this distancing as a matter of course as they create.

 So, how can we identify author intrusion? Give yourself the distance I just mentioned by putting the manuscript aside for a time. When you get away from a manuscript—think about other tasks and/or work on other stories—you create the distance necessary to come back to a story as a reader would, to see it with fresh eyes. When you’ve been away long enough—and if you’re not writing to deadline, I’m talking weeks and not days here—author intrusion will be obvious when you come back to the story.

You can also listen to your beta readers. If they tell you they see your hand or hear your voice in a scene, believe them and cut out the author intrusion.

Another option is to do an editing pass solely to find examples of your opinions and your pet words in the manuscript. You know your social views and your favorite buzzwords. Look for them in your stories. If they don’t fit the character and the story, yank those words out. Your books will be stronger for being whole unto themselves, fiction adventures free of your real-world presence.

What to look for

Words that you, the writer, would use in places where readers should find only words the character would use

Knowledge that the writer rather than the character would possess—names of plants or flowers or animals or birds; names of body parts; sports trivia, history, and the workings of mechanical objects or technology; knowledge beyond what a person of the story era would logically have; knowledge beyond a character’s education or station or age or experience 

Characters of the opposite sex—relative to the writer—who sound like characters of the writer’s same sex

Phrasing and rhythms that the writer rather than the character would use

Sensibilities, mindset, or a worldview common to the writer’s era but which should be foreign or unknown to characters in the story

Those items that a character notices (visually or in the words or actions of other characters) should be things that the character—because of his background or history or training—would notice. If he wouldn’t notice something, no matter how cool that something is, but he does notice and goes on and on about it, that’s author intrusion. That’s a writer including some fact he discovered, because he found it fascinating, even when the inclusion doesn’t fit the story.

Author intrusion can be subtle or grossly obvious.

Author Opinion
If every character has the same political, religious, or social stand and those stands match those of the writer, the author has intruded into the story.

An author who gives all characters the same stance doesn’t yet know her characters as individuals, doesn’t care to make her characters independent of her, or doesn’t understand that story conflict arises from the differences between characters.

When most characters hold the same opinion and a writer makes a dissenting character look especially ignorant or clown-like because of his stance, the writer is revealing her own opinion and most likely using her story to pursue a personal agenda.

While the writer may be pitting the independent character against all others to show how strong he is and that he can prevail, the writer who makes a dissenting character look like a fool often wants to put down rather than champion the opinion put forth by that character, especially regarding political, religious, and social issues.

Author Research
Author intrusion comes in when a writer has so researched a topic or issue that she can’t resist adding some of her knowledge to a story, whether or not the characters would pursue or know the same information.

Keep in mind that familiarity and general knowledge are not equal to specialized knowledge. A character can own a car and not know how it runs. And a time-traveler going to the past might be able to talk about the wonders of the future but not be able to explain how those wonders work or how they were invented.

Author Word Choices
Author intrusion can come into a story with word choices. Some writers like to pretty up their prose, add a dash of the poetic or use fancy words in place of cheap, everyday words. Now, if your character uses the fancy words—all the time—that’s one thing. When he or she only waxes poetic once or twice over the course of a novel—and it’s not done for a plot reason (such as making another character laugh)—then the author’s hand is obvious.

Writers often add a flourish to a character when they think they’ve been too earthy or common or just plain normal with their words. But if your characters are earthy or common or normal, let their words reflect their personalities. Don’t introduce purple prose or fancy words or intricate sentence constructions when the common serves the character, the scene, the story, and the genre.

_______________________________

Any time a reader can see the writer—word choice, preaching or teaching, a character who doesn’t speak or act as he should, setting details that overwhelm (because the writer couldn’t hold back after researching for days)—then the author has stuck a toe, a finger, a fist, or even his mind into the fiction. This intrusion distracts, draws readers away from the fiction and toward the mechanics and/or the author.

Note:  Author intrusion is not an all-knowing narrator sharing his knowledge, knowledge that no one else in the story has. An omniscient narrator can know everything. But an omniscient narrator who sounds like the writer trying to teach a history lesson or preach a sermon is author intrusion.

Author intrusion is also not the skills, the special knowledge, and the personal style that a writer brings to story to give it richness and distinction. Author intrusion only becomes a problem when those skills, knowledge, and style point outside the story and toward the writer rather than drawing readers inward to the fiction.

Fixes for Author Intrusion

Remove traces of the author by replacing her words—your words—with words and phrases common to and appropriate for the characters, and by cutting out references to knowledge a character couldn’t possess.

Give characters their own personalities, personalities strong and independent enough to stand against the author’s will and interests.

Use setting details to color and enrich a scene, not drown it under facts—no matter how fascinating—that have no bearing on the story.

*******

Your personality, your skills—your heart and hands and mind—will be all over your writing projects. Just don’t let the reader see the evidence of your touch. No footsteps or fingerprints or stray hairs. Don’t let readers catch you running around the corner just ahead of them. Don’t let them feel you peering over their shoulders, nudging them into noticing your excellent phrasing or pithy remarks.

Do your work without leaving physical evidence of your passage through the adventure. Let a reader imagine he’s the first human outsider to walk through your settings and fiction, the first to love and fear and laugh with your characters.

Write fiction that reveals your characters and their world, not your personality and your world.

Write involving fiction.

Write good story.

***

 

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12 Responses to “Weed Out Author Intrusion”

  1. Wow. Wonderful post. Thanks for the insight.

  2. Linda, I’m glad you found the article useful.

  3. R L Pace says:

    As a writer primarily of historical fiction, I have to be particularly cognizant of this issue. To that end, I have a collection of dictionaries going back about a hundred years and whenever I have the temptation to have a character use a word that seems inappropriate to the time period I race to my references. I also use fiction (when available-hard to find for, say, 10,000 years BCE) from the era about which I am writing for reference. If characters in fiction contemporary to my timeline aren’t using words or sentence structures I would be inclined to use, I re-evaluate what I am writing. Some accommodation to modern taste is necessary, but the piquant spice of the era is essential. I suppose that is really where the art of fiction lies. Thanks for your insights, they are most valuable.

  4. I also think that balancing truth with the needs of the audience takes an artist’s eye and ear and skills, R L. We want accuracy, but we also need to please the audience or they won’t remain our audience for long. Just one more skill we need to add to our skill sets.

    Thanks for adding to the discussion.

  5. Metta says:

    Hi Beth
    This was truly a fantastic article about author intrusion. I now have a much better understanding of what author intrusion is. Thank you for writing that article.
    Metta

  6. Metta, I’m glad you found this one useful.

  7. Kim says:

    It was an interesting article and to be truthful it made me wonder on my own work if I intruded in my novels. I will definately have to check. It did bring to mind one of my favorite adventure novelist though, Clive Cussler.The author made himself a character in his adventure stories. He would usually meet the main character and his sidekick somewhere along the story and offer some kind of help or assistance like a cameo appearance. At first I when I read this I didn’t know what to think. But as I became familiar with his books, I found myself looking forward to when this author would show up as his fictional character. The article made me think of him. Talk about author intrusion. You can’t get more into your story than to make yourself a character. LOL

  8. Kim, as you said, that would be the ultimate author intrusion. I read a couple of the Dirk Pitt books, but that was some years ago. I don’t remember Cussler doing that. That’s one way to make your stories stand out.

  9. Kendy says:

    I am editing my first historical novel (Civil War). If I take a scene (one page) to describe the gathering forces of a battle, their strengths, weapons, and what directions they are coming from—and I do this in somewhat of an omniscient POV to set the stage for the battle—is this author intrusion?
    When I begin the action, I am in the main character’s POV and from there it is what he sees.

    • Kendy, do you do this same thing at other times, using the omniscient to set up scenes, show the big picture? If so, you’re probably fine. Historical novels often take advantage of an omniscient narrator to show a wide- or distant-scene view before zooming in to show details.

      Yet you wouldn’t want to do this just the one time. If you did, readers would wonder who was presenting the information.

      Also, if you tell the rest of the story through a close or deep POV that the rest of the time maintains a short narrative distance, the omniscient sections don’t really work. That would be like showing something from an omniscient narrator in a first-person story.

      But if your normal POV is a standard third-person one, with some narrative distance, you should be okay using the omniscient to open a scene. But you wouldn’t want to move in and out of omniscient and third person, not in the middle of scenes. At the top of a scene, to get that wide view, the omniscient works. Midscene, when readers are inside a character’s head, the sudden use of omniscient is jarring.

      Had you considered using a straight omniscient instead? As I said, that works for historicals. And with the omniscient, you can show readers what characters are thinking, even multiple characters in a scene, without head-hopping. But that would be a very different story from one in third-person subjective. Still, it’s an option.

      • Kendy says:

        This helps quite a lot. I’m still a novice, but it sounds like I may be okay. Basically I have the following (I hope it make sense)

        CHAPTER OPENS (time and place)—–overview of troops and their weapons and numbers snaking toward the battle site (omniscient)
        SCENE CHANGE (time and place)—–players introduced to Prot. in his POV (very narrative). Player explains using a map what will be happening during the battle
        SCENE CHANGE (time and place)—–The troops, weapons, and players are moving onto scene (omniscient)
        SCENE CHANGE—deep POV with Prot. in the thick of it all and observation narrative

        I believe the book is written entirely (except for this chapter)in “standard 3rd person with some narrative distance” as you’ve mentioned.

        • Yes, you should be good. But since you use the omniscient here, you can use it in other places in the story as well. In fact, it would make more sense to do so. So consider other chapters where you can open with that distance shot. You don’t want the omniscient to show up only a couple of times just because you need it then. You want to put it to work in the whole story. Otherwise it will stand out when it shows up only once or twice.

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