Self-Reference
By Dave King | March 19, 2024 |
“If this were a Sherlock Holmes case, he would discover ash [at the crime scene] that came from a tobacco sold by only one tobacconist in London, who has only one customer.” G. K. Chesterton
I’ve written before about how I will reflexively edit out anything in your writing that calls your readers’ attention to the fact that they’re reading a book — foreshadowing, asides to the reader, heavy-handed narrative voice that is the same for all characters. Everything must go.
And yet, I’ve always had a soft spot for self-reference – those little observations where the writer uses characters in their stories to make comments about the stories themselves, or other stories, or the genre as a whole. The quote above delighted me enough that it’s been lodged in my memory for decades, though I can no longer remember where it came from and couldn’t find it on the internet. I remember it as being from G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown series, but I’m not sure. Maybe readers can help. [Thanks to Christine Robinson for tracking this down — it was Chesterton.]
Self-referential asides often act as inside jokes – a nod and a wink to readers, inviting them to compare the story they’re reading to other stories. It’s tricky to do this without reminding them they’re reading a story. This is why self referential asides work best in lighter novels. And as I’ve written before, readers are more willing to hold onto suspension of disbelief when the entire novel is being played for fun. This is why The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can get away with the book-within-the-book commenting on the action of the book.
Subtler self-reference comments on the action can often be blended into the story if they come from the characters themselves, as in the Chesterton (?) quote. After all, Chesterton’s characters had also read Sherlock Holmes. The point of that quote was to show how real police work wasn’t like fictional detective work because real policemen relied on hard, investigative effort rather than special knowledge and luck. That’s something a real detective might feel. And this makes readers less likely to notice that the speaker isn’t a real detective but is as fictional as Sherlock Holmes. The character is comparing the case he’s currently working on to Conan Doyle’s work, and that all happens within the context of the story. And, if I remember correctly, the Chesterton (?) story has the added twist that the case is eventually solved by specialized knowledge and luck.
Ruth is currently reading Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Allyn books and finding a lot of examples of this sort of in-world self-referential commentary. (Incidentally, Ruth often contributes enough to these articles to deserve co-author credit.) For instance, there’s this from The Nursing Home Murders. Inspector Allyn and his friend Nigel Bathgate are reviewing the possible suspects, whom Nigel refers to as the “dramatis personae.” Then Allyn asks whom Nigel would pick.
“For a win,” Nigel pronounces at last, “the special nurse. For a place the funny little man.”
“Why?”
“On the crime-fiction line of reasoning. The two outsiders. The nurse looks very fishy. And funny little men are rather a favorite line in villains nowadays. He may turn out to be Sir Derek’s illegitimate brother and that’s why he’s so interested in heredity. I’m thinking of writing detective fiction.”
“You should do well at it.”
“Of course,” said Nigel slowly, “there’s the other school in which the obvious man is always the murderer. That’s the one you favour at the Yard, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” agreed Alleyn.
“Do you read crime fiction?”
“I dote on it. It’s such a relief to escape from one’s work into an entirely different atmosphere.”
If you really want to step up self-reference, you can write yourself into your novel as a character. When Agatha Christie introduces her thinly veiled alter-ego Ariadne Oliver into the Poirot books, it gave her a chance to comment on both the mystery at hand (and sometimes help solve it) and the mystery genre itself. It also gave her a chance to lampoon Poirot, whom Christie once referred to as a “detestable, bombastic, ego-centric little creep,” through Ariadne’s principal detective, the Finn Sven Hjerson. (“Of course he’s idiotic,” Ariadne said of him, “but people like him.”)
If you’d like an example of how self-reference can go terribly wrong, there’s the end of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. Vonnegut already had his own fictional avatar – his Ariadne Oliver – woven into the plot in the person of Kilgore Trout. But at the end, he writes himself literally into the story, simply to make larger points about fiction writing that, in the process, undermine anything that’s left of suspension of disbelief, destroying readers’ involvement in the story and insulting them in the process. The book ends with Trout running after Fictional Vonnegut begging to be made young again.
Maybe I have such a soft spot for writers who comment on their own writing because I comment on writing for a living. But while there’s a risk of driving readers out of the story, a good self-referential passage can also invite readers further in. Marsh’s readers were probably going over the same possibilities that Nigel was, and seeing him share their thoughts takes those thoughts and weaves them into the narrative. And Allyn’s skepticism can warn them that things may be more complicated than they think.
You have to use self-reference sparingly. But in its place, it gives you a new and deep way to connect with your readers.
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
[coffee]
And then there is Nabokov’s Pale Fire, a masterpiece that constantly alerts the reader they are reading a book. Sorry I couldn’t resist referencing the exception. But your post points out, for me, just how masterful Nabokov was with that.
In a mere mortal way, I winked at the reader when I had the hero in a romance novel bring the sick heroine, not only flowers and ice cream, but also a romance novel by her fave author. Who better, I thought, to understand his kindness than readers of a romance novel.
In my WIP I try to play deeper, with a first person POV that speaks directly to the reader at the opening. His chapters are short and few, sprinkled in the novel, so not to be overwhelming. Can I pull it off? I feel like I’m tugging strings on a reader puppet, bringing them into the story, releasing them, and bringing them back before they get to the end of the slack and get jerked out of the suspension.
Thanks for the notes of caution, today. I know I need it.
Lovely example of having your hero deliver a romance novel because your readers will know what that means.
I haven’t read the Nabokov, but I know that self-reference can be a powerful tool in the right hands. And it sounds like you’re aware of the skills needed.
Good luck with your WIP.
This is fascinating, Dave, and is making me ponder. In my WIP I use many nursing details that apply to maternity, because I know this stuff. It makes me credible, nursing being one of my careers. And in general, wouldn’t readers simply see that as the writer has done his or her research, or the writer reads widely? I have read other novels where the research was poor…and the medical stuff way off. I guess I’m always looking for that! Just a question. Thanks.
I think it would get into self-reference if your nurse protagonist mentioned that she often read novels where the medical stuff was way off. I think you could get away with that, and it might be fun.
My favorite example of this comes from a favorite author’s insertion of his previous book onto a main character’s bedside table; I think he even self-deprecatingly suggested it put him to sleep! Agreed this has to be very deftly under-done so as not to distract. Thanks for the suggestions!
Now that is audacious. And fun.
The closest I come is to have gifted one of the main characters with a disease – and its limitations – that I know well because I’ve lived with it for over thirty-four years. People who know me may catch those grace notes – the character argues with herself about using the handicapped parking spot – and risk the ire one of the yahoos who demand people with invisible illnesses prove they are sick (random policing by the general public).
Several reviewers have commented on the depth – and how she tries to hide it as much as possible, as those I know do, so as not to demand excessive sympathy.
But I’ve also give her a medical profession I know as much about as the typical adult.
Actual self-reference is, as you’ve noted, more appropriate for a light novel, not mainstream fiction.
I’m not certain this is self-reference, though it is related. Instead of using your fiction to comment on your genre, you’re using your fiction to comment on real life.
Agreed. Not even to comment on real life, so much as to make readers aware of it who might not have realized it existed or whose knowledge is lacking.
If they like the character, it builds empathy. And because there’s no narrator, the deep third pov allows a reader to come very close to experiencing it by their identification with her. Without having to actually get sick.
Oh man, I am so glad you wrote this post. My WIP is built around the burning of a library, and why that had to be done by the novel’s debutant central character. It’s set in 1953 and I reference novels of that time throughout.
Early readers have been puzzled by certain period references that I, in draft, did not contextualize. For instance, some did not know who Grace Kelly was or what she looked like. (I know, right?) However, no one needed a tip off for references to Fahrenheit 451, The Bridge Over the River Kwai, or Waiting for Godot.
Readers feel smart when the get the reference. It also shows how some stories endure far beyond the lifetime of their authors. Literature has a life if its own, and in a way your suggestion today to be comfortable with self-reference speaks to that and urges us to celebrate it in our own work.
Terrific and practical post, Dave.
I cannot wait to read this!
I’m with Ada. This sounds like a good novel. And a good use of self-reference, I think. Are you threading in references to the literature of the day without actually identifying it — characters with names drawn from Bradbury or Beckett? Or do your characters discuss the works directly? I’d be interested in learning more about the mechanics of how you do what you’re doing.
Dave, Microsoft Copilot is worth the time. You get answers immediately. And can build on the original question to find out more. Christine
Fahrenheit 451 and Kwai are mentioned by title because characters are reading them. I have the focal character, the debutant, go to an avant-garde play in Paris about two hobos waiting for someone they don’t seem to know well and who never arrives, without naming the play. It’s all to build a literary mood because a library is later going to be burned down.
Nice. And I can see how references to 451 can go self-referential, given that the library is slated for arson. And Kwai is there for the bridge blowing up, I assume?
But Simon and Garfunkel prior?
For writing? Most outlets and many publishers do not allow direct Ai assistance at any point of the writing.
For research, it’s often unfactual. It’s just another version of what Gaiman said a long time ago:
Dave, Microsoft Copilot answered the quote question for me. You were correct. I use AI frequently to get answers for specific questions about history in the 1960 for the sequel, in progress. It’s so much easier and complete than internet sources.
Copilot:
The quote you mentioned is from G.K. Chesterton’s “The Complete Father Brown” series. In this intriguing detective collection, Father Brown, a priest with a keen mind, solves mysteries with his unique insights and understanding of human nature. The specific book containing this quote is “The Complete Father Brown”1. Father Brown’s astute observation about the tobacco ash is reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes’s meticulous attention to detail in solving cases.
Now, you have given me new ideas how to reference Kristen Hannah’s new book, THE WOMEN, which has scenes set in the Vietnam War. The experienced nurse protagonist in my sequel goes to Vietnam to be at the bedside of her civilian husband who was injured in a “Charlie” ambush attack on his rescue mission, in a small village near the Da Nang Hospital. He is part of the Volunteer Physician’s Program from the US. In Hannah’s book, an inexperienced nurse protagonist joins the Army Nurse Corp and is sent to Vietnam. Her experiences are filled with one horror, after another. I could make a comparison between experienced and inexperienced nurses, and how my protagonist fits in and is a welcomed help. Not only to monitor her husbands treatment at the bedside, but help out with other soldier and civilian patients, and in the OR. She has expertise in suturing procedures like a surgeon. Maybe don’t have to directly reference THE WOMEN. Only my protagonist could sympathize with the inexperienced nurse (Frankie) and take her under her wing. Thanks so much for giving me a possible great idea. 📚Christine
Happy to help, Christine. And thanks for tracking down the Chesterton reference for me. I’ll edit it into the article.
I hadn’t thought about using AI to find the answer. I just dug through the attic looking for my Complete Father Brown and couldn’t find it.
Obligatory link to our dialog on just this.
Unsure what else I have to add to the topic (other than a more academic thesis, which isn’t helpful here), but it is definitely an entire genre done well, done poorly, everything in between.
I am not averse to academic theses — it’s always a pleasure to read someone who thinks deeply about writing. Thank you so much for the link. I thought of you when I was writing about Vonnegut.Incidentally, one of my favorite Vonnegut critiques — and also a good example of self-reference — appears in Larry Niven’s Inferno. In it Niven retells Dante’s story, with some updates. He’s given his tour of the seamy underside of the afterlife by Mussolini rather than Virgil. And the sins he sees punished are updated.
Prominent atheists, for instance, who thought there was no life after death, were forced to spend eternity in gaudy graves with saccharine music playing in the background. Vonnegut’s grave was a huge mausoleum with a neon sign on top that keeps flashing “So it goes,” over and over again.
Oh I didn’t think you were averse personally, I just tend to get in trouble here for what’s considered a more academic tone, though I don’t really consider myself an academic at all, just someone who’s trying to pursue the life of the mind in its own right. I tend to side with David Bentley Hart on English prose over Strunk and White at many points, link to his article contra Strunk and White.
Even Hart’s article would be considered academic on this site, which is fine, I just see it as a popular piece written by a person with a continental style. It’s a style thing, I think.
Anyways, my pleasure.
Why the strike through?
Good post, Dave. I encountered a case of light self-reference in a historical novel told from the POV of the wife of a diplomat/spy during the Cold War. The author, a former officer in the foreign service, includes an author’s note summarizing the political situation between the two countries at that time. Then, a few chapters into what has been a gripping, engaging narrative, he inserts a multi-page, detailed, this-is-your-author-speaking explanation of the same: controlled, objective, and totally removed from the characters themselves. It’s especially disappointing because he’s been handling the story so skillfully, it seems he could have worked the same background information in a less clumsy, less obtrusive way.
Oh, dear. That does sound like a serious mishandling of information. I’m not certain it qualifies as self-reference, but it certainly throws readers out of the reading experience.
Dave, this was such a fun post. Would these be considered Easter Eggs? I’ve written a children’s short story where characters from other stories appear–they’re all mice (and there are a lot of mice in children’s books!) My hope is that the child-reader will want to explore the other books after reading my story. And for the child who’s read them, a jolt of recognition. My novel also has music and books that my characters enjoy and now I think it makes them so much more interesting. I didn’t necessarily plan it but it’s what they were doing so in it went.
I hadn’t thought of the connection, but I think they would be considered Easter eggs. I can’t think of any literary examples of Easter Eggs offhand, but I’m familiar with a lot of cinematic ones. (For instance, C3PO and R2D2 appear in carved hieroglyphs in the background of a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
And the mice story sounds delightful.
Dave, thanks for highlighting something I may be guilty of without realizing it. I have a question: am I being self-referential when I abruptly shift tone? My central character has an epiphany in a supermarket. The experience is marked by elevated diction, but in the next chapter, the seriousness is replaced by the character’s return to his usual self, which is ironic/comedic. In general terms (based on your wide and deep experience), what do you think?
Hey, Barry,
My sense is that you’re using the shift in language to capture your character’s state of mind. It sounds like an effective technique, but it’s not quite the kind of self-reference I’m talking about here.
Okay, thanks for replying.
Thank you so much for this. I love mysteries and detective stories, and I always wanted to write one. Until I did; now I want to get the first one published. And write another one.
My detective compares himself constantly with Holmes and a number of his other, as he calls them, fictional colleagues, always to his discredit. It keeps him humble and trying hard. One of my writing group, who wasn’t fond of the trope, suggested he was always behind the greats because they had better writers.
Of course, it matters how it’s done, but I like the idea.
I’m with Anmarie, here. This sounds like an effective use of self-reference.
As to the critter who said the others had better writers, well . . .
https://staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud/2023/03/21/critter-danger/
I recently enjoyed reading Anthony Trollope’s reassurance to his fictional reader Kitty in Barchester Towers:
“And then, how grievous a thing it is to have the pleasure of your novel destroyed by the ill-considered triumph of a previous reader.
‘Oh, you needn’t be alarmed for Augusta, of course she accepts Gustavus in the end.’
‘How very ill-natured you are, Susan,’ says Kitty, with tears in her eyes; ‘I don’t care a bit about it now.’
Dear Kitty, if you will read my book, you may defy the ill-nature of your sister. There shall be no secret that she can tell you. Nay, take the third volume if you please – learn from the last pages all the results of our troubled story, and the story shall have lost none of its interest, if indeed there be any interest in it to lose.”
Now that’s self reference. Thank you for that.
You know, to play devil’s advocate against my own project, a lot of what passes for “metafiction,” if that’s the term we should use (Stephen King has his doubts), these days is really just writers who feel insecure about their own work. A lot of Joss Whedonisms and the Marvel films that all followed in their footsteps really merely employ cheap irony instead of resting in the sincerity of the story.
Most of what you’re describing fits into those categories:
Sort of begs the question: when is it okay to write about writers and how do you do it without drawing attention to the work? Ignore my project, just novelists, journalists, screenwriters, poets? Readers? Critics? Agents? Editors? Designers? Distribtors? Booksellers?
Because they’re people too.
This has me thinking for sure. It often seems a sign of weak writing.
Fair points, Lance. And in the wrong hands, it can be a cheap shortcut. As I say, it often fits better with lighter fiction, where readers’ suspension of disbelief is a little more robust.
One form of this shortcut I often see is writers describing their characters in terms of well-known celebrity. (“He looked just like Bradley Cooper, but with a unibrow.”) Dave Barry once parodied this nicely in a spoof on spy fiction. “He looked exactly like Tom Cruise. Or Harrison Ford, depending on who’s available.”
Why would their suspension of disbelief be more robust in “lighter” fiction? And what do you mean by lighter?
I was thinking of works where parody is kind of built into the worlds. Douglas Adams, Piers Anthony, Terry Pratchett and like that.
Lighter tonally, I gotcha