When can You Pause the Story and Speak Directly to the Reader?

Question

Note: This question was previously about breaking the fourth wall. I discovered that my interpretation of that phrase was wrong. I have therefore rewritten the question.

(The above is in place to explain the number of answers and comments about the fourth wall)

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This question deals with an author pausing the story to speak directly to the reader. An example follows:

It is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up. The days until the first task seemed to slip by [...] Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The first sentence is the pause in the story/narration. In the second sentence, the narration resumes. In my experience, this sort of thing is generally frowned upon by writers. The reader is there for the story, not your commentary.

That being said, I believe there are cases where this practice is fine. C.S. Lewis and E. Nesbit did it frequently in their books, and I was never bothered by it. On the contrary, I found it to only add to the story being told. I do believe that continuing to speak directly to the reader does hurt the novel, but in my experience, I've found short, to-the-point lines directly from the author to the reader only help the story. I myself have done this briefly, and my readers never mentioned it. Even J.K. Rowling does it occasionally.

All of this has led me to conclude that an author can pause the story and speak directly to the reader, as long as the passages are short, to the point, and do not overwhelm the story, but add to it.

Is this an accurate conclusion? If not, why? Please provide evidence of shared opinion.

Answer 1

All of this has led me to conclude that an author can pause the story and speak directly to the reader, as long as the passages are short, to the point, and do not overwhelm the story, but add to it.

Is this an accurate conclusion?

I'd say that, yes, it is.

Although with the slight caveat that you should do what works best for the story. It is better to show, not tell. So if you have to tell, then don't do too much of it.

On the other hand, if you feel like you really need to explain something critical to the readers, and you can't come up with a 'natural' feeling way to show the readers, then you'll need a passage of longer exposition to get your point across.

I read a lot of SciFi and this happens often in that genre. You have to explain the technical details of how the magical technology works. With too much exposition, it can begin to feel like you are reading a technical manual from college. Other times, the authors will try to shoehorn the exposition into the story. If done inelegantly, this can be worse: why is the super genius Admiral asking about how basic technology works?

tl;dr While it is better to show than to tell, what's best is what works best for your story.

Answer 2

I think your premise is a little flawed here. The convention of the novel since its inception is that the narrative is addressed by the narrator to the reader, and that the narrator is free to relate events or to comment on them as they see fit. There is no fourth wall in the novel; there are no walls at all. That, indeed, is it greatest artistic virtue.

The tendency of the narrator to withdraw into the shadows is a quite recent phenomenon that seems to date from the time when the cinema began to be a significant cultural force and writers like Graham Greene started to experiment with cinematic techniques in their novels.

Some people like to make this into an absolute doctrine of the novel form today, and "show don't tell" has become a shorthand and rather unthinking form of dismissal for all kind of lazy writing, to the point where it has been inflated by some into an iron law of literature.

And yet is it easy enough to demonstrate that popular modern novelists continue to use the narrative voice that has been with us since Cervantes, and arguably since the Gospels or even Homer. Yes, there is more use of cinematic techniques in contemporary novels, as the cinema has become perhaps the dominant cultural form of our day. But it has not extinguished the narrator's voice, and nor should it. The novel form would lose much of its artistic power and distinctive cultural role without it. (There is a reason the book is almost always better than the movie!)

There are no walls for the novelist and you are free to use the narrative voice appropriately in your work. Just don't let it become an excuse for lazy writing.

Answer 3

When breaking it is fun.

Narrators don't so much break the fourth wall as sit on it and give you the play by play. It's characters that break the fourth wall because they aren't expected to be self aware. Unless a character is a narrator. "Call me Ishmael".

Truly breaking the fourth wall is an act that subverts the suspension of disbelief and ends up reinforcing it by shining a light on it.

It most certainly exists in novels. I remember a fantasy novel that talked about a powerful wizard with the power to perceive all that is hidden. When the narrator took us to his chambers and started describing the scene, the wizard looked up and asked his companion if he heard someone describing their clothing. The narrator quickly took us elsewhere and acted unnerved by the experience.

Answer 4

There are two concepts being conflated here. One the one hand, there is the separation between the narrator and the reader, and the other the separation between the characters and the reader.

Many modern books are written from the perspective of a single character, but not as if they are telling the story, rather as if they are narrating their experiences in realtime. This makes it easy to mix them up, but the two types of separate are different, and the difference is important.

You seem to be asking about cases where the narrator addresses the reader. Whether this is a break of the fourth wall, depends on whether the narrator is also a character. For instance, C.S. Lewis writes as if the story is being told after the fact - and therefore, addressing the reader is not a fourth wall break. Neither is making comments on the current situation as they are being thought by a character. It's only a break if one of the characters shows recognition that they are fictional.

For example, writing (as a first person narrator) "You probably think this is very strange. Well, so did I, but then..." is not a break - the character is conversationally recording their thoughts. On the other hand, writing "I know this scene is going a bit long, but don't worry, we'll be back into it in a couple of pages" very much is.

Hopefully that makes sense...

Answer 5

Authors often indulge in narrative departures from the plot, sometimes quite extensively. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo is infamous for its digressions:

More than a quarter of the novel—by one count 955 of 2,783 pages—is devoted to essays that argue a moral point or display Hugo's encyclopedic knowledge, but do not advance the plot, nor even a subplot, a method Hugo used in such other works as The Hunchback of Notre Dame.... The topics Hugo addresses include cloistered religious orders, the construction of the Paris sewers, argot, and the street urchins of Paris. The one about convents he titles “Parenthesis” to alert the reader to its irrelevance to the story line.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville likewise contains many digressions and stories-within-a-story, notoriously including an extended discussion of the etymology and pronunciation of the word whale.

Novels often feature a discussion of the authors’ (or narrators’) interests along with plot, characterization, and imagery. This commentary is less popular in contemporary novels than it was in 19th-century serialized novels, but it’s a long-established part of the form, and the examples need not be short or to-the-point. For some authors, like Hugo and Melville, they often seem to be the point of the novel.

Answer 6

All of this has led me to conclude that an author can pause the story and speak directly to the reader

But the passage you quote doesn't actually show Rowling doing that. She's not talking to you, she's describing a general concept/situation which is being experienced by the character.

Suppose you had something like

After rain, a Yorkshire moorland smells of damp earth and heather. Jem picked up his stick, stood up from the rock where he had sat for a moment to catch his breath, and followed the impatient dog up the hillside.

(I just wrote that, so don't be looking for a citation!)

The first sentence is describing a situation which is currently being experienced by Jem. It's phrased in a way which makes it a general statement, so it may be applicable to the reader too. The author has no intention to talk directly to you though, and it certainly is not breaking the fourth wall in any way whatsoever.

Answer 7

Break the fourth wall, particularly if it is funny and done in an original way. Consult with Cervantes, he will give you courage for your assault!

Answer 8

No, your conclusion does not appear correct to me.

From what I have gathered, fourth wall breaks are just like any other trick of the trade: They need to be done well. If you know how to do them, it does not matter how extensive, clear or fun the break is. Those are not the critical points, they are just the methods that some authors use to make it work.

Yes, the fourth wall can be broken - we have enough examples of it to understand that yes it can, and yes it can work.

Answer 9

I completely understand what you're trying to do here, I love it. Continue doing this, as I know what you mean when the author adds to the story by commentating on the story as it goes.

Yes- too much can make the reader disinterested, but just the right amount will make the reader fall in love with the story even more.

Good luck to you, my good sir.