Speculation by the Protagonist

[BWFoster78]

Your protagonist is in a situation where he has incomplete information about what is happening. The other characters around him are going to have a lot of questions about what's going on, as is your reader.

I think it's best to address the questions to let the reader know that the author acknowledges that there are unknowns and to make the character's reactions more realistic.

Given the above scenario, I think there are two ways to handle it:

1. Have the protagonist speculate on what the answer is. This generates tension and conversation about the plot. The problem is: should your protagonist always be right? If he is, it seems unrealistic. If he isn't, I'm thinking it can cause confusion when the real answer is revealed. Reader: "Hey, you said earlier that..."

2. Have the protagonist shrug his shoulders.

What say you?

 

[Steerpike]

I'd go with number one. There's certainly no reason a reader should assume the protagonist will be right and I don't think this approach has much of an inherent risk of confusion. I never assume a protagonist is right, just that he is stating his view. Readers get that.

 

[BWFoster78]

I'd go with number one. There's certainly no reason a reader should assume the protagonist will be right and I don't think this approach has much of an inherent risk of confusion. I never assume a protagonist is right, just that he is stating his view. Readers get that.

Comforting to here since that how I'm addressing it in my book. I do still worry about creating confusion, though.

 

[Steerpike]

Comforting to here since that how I'm addressing it in my book. I do still worry about creating confusion, though.

My personal view is you worry to much about reader confusion. Readers are smart. Write as though you expect them to be. It's OK not to spell everything out for an adult audience.

 

[Chilari]

Go for 1. Play with expectations. People jump to conclusions when the information they have is incomplete - it's why crime/mystery novels work - but your character is a person so why shouldn't they see x evidence and y evidence and conclude z when the truth is w, which they'd know if they knew v. It's got a lot of potential for hyjinks, conflict and the protagonist becoming thoroughly embarrassed - or give you the change to have them deny evidence that conflicts with their conclusion and make things ten times worse. Always take the option to make things ten times worse when that option arises right up until almost at the end of the story. It's more fun that way.

 

[BWFoster78]

My personal view is you worry to much about reader confusion. Readers are smart. Write as though you expect them to be. It's OK not to spell everything out for an adult audience.

I usually take that view as well, but there has to be balance. I think I'll just go with my original concept for now and determine if it works after the 3rd draft.

 

[ShortHair]

There's always the Unreliable Narrator route. If the character's conclusions don't always match up with the reality you describe, it doesn't mean the character is insane or stupid, just human.

 

[Steerpike]

I usually take that view as well, but there has to be balance. I think I'll just go with my original concept for now and determine if it works after the 3rd draft.

Yes, I agree. I do like to err a bit the other way, I suppose. It's like the pronoun discussion - I don't look for any possible occurrence of something that might be ambiguous, I look at how a reasonable reader is going to read the work. You could pull any book off the shelf and, by analyzing it to death, find dozens of occurrences of wording that has the possibility of different meaning, or being confusing to the least capable of readers.

I write legal documents all day, and if I want to write something that eliminates ambiguity and misreading to the extent possible in language, I can do so. But the end result isn't something I'd want to read for pleasure. I think story, atmosphere, and the language you want to use to convey the story are all more important.

 

[Steerpike]

There's always the Unreliable Narrator route. If the character's conclusions don't always match up with the reality you describe, it doesn't mean the character is insane or stupid, just human.

Best unreliable narrator: Humbert Humbert in Lolita.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Yeah, you don't need to worry about confusing your readers (at least, not any more than you would with anything else). They can keep straight the difference between What Is Actually True and What Character X Thinks Is True.

It can be possible to confuse them if you do it poorly, but being able to show characters' uncertainty and thoughts (even if they don't match reality) is a cornerstone of fiction writing.

And definitely don't let them be right all the time. That gets boring. Problems that are too easily solved just drain all the tension out of things.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Umineko separates out its unconfirmed speculations by marking them in blue text (compared to red text for things that are guaranteed to be true.) You might not want to go that far, but you can still separate speculative paragraphs, e.g. "I wasn't sure, but I thought maybe . . ."

 

[gavintonks]

Very interesting question the stuff I have read
1 - the protagonist does not have an idea but there is a sense of action that leads you on - Stephan Donaldson -gap
2 - the protagonist runs away - knows there will be repercussions but severity surprises keeps the story going - Julian May

 

[The Dark One]

Dealt with something like this in my recently finished novel. An important character (not the 1st person narrator) discovers something that really unsettles her and starts to speculate. The reader already knows some of the truths she doesn't, but also THINKS he/she knows some other stuff that the reader has been manipulated into suspecting. So, the reader thinks he/she knows where the speculation is wrong and where it might be accurate. But the reader is wrong, because of what has been set up all through the story.

This is getting towards the end of the book and really helped with the rising tension and concealment of the major twists coming at the end.