I found FREE INDIRECT STYLE section the most interesting!!!!:
When I did short story writing in my previous school, my teacher went over different types of narrative style. He once mentioned "free indirect style". I remember him defining this particular narration by stating it is "like" a combination of third person and first person narrations; he then moved on to explain in gibberish. I can also recall one example that he provided me, "How the hell am I supposed to leave the house when my mobile rings? He glanced at women outside his unit and thought." (not exactly this but somewhere along this line) But I did not fully comprehend this concept of fiction writing.
After reading "How Fiction Works", I can now understand what this "free indirect style" really means and how it can be used. Wood mentions that writers are trapped with first and third person narrations because the success of composing a story from second person and first person plural (we) is "rare". Wood describes what we know as unreliable narrator (first person- I) is actually more reliable, and what what we know as omniscient narrator (third person- he/she/it) is not omniscient- omniscience in writing is impossible. By taking an omniscient approach, the perception of narrative then changes to certain character's way/s of thinking and speaking. Thus, it forms a writing style called "free indirect style" by sharing secret.
Let's take some examples from The Road. "He'd brought the boy's book but the boy was too tired for reading. Can we leave the lamp on till I'm asleep? Yes. Of course we can." Notice how this mostly conforms to a third person narration. Because using dialogues in third person is often inappropriate, indirect speech is replaced here instead; it seems to combine some of the elements from first person such as "I" and "we" and speech to this third person narration. Such style is also evident in Wood's "How Fiction Works" when he talks about free indirect style. "He looked at his wife. Yes, she was tiresomely unhappy again, almost sick. What the hell should he say?" In addition to just simple combination of two styles, I can also observe how the responder can perceive the story from character's perspective and the author's perspective. It is as if the narrative byes away from the composer and possessed by characters. Another feature that can be included in this style of narrative is stream of consciousness. Let me fix my phrase here; it resembles so much of stream of consciousness. Similar to Joseph Conrad's colonialist novel, Heart of Darkness, McCarthy's style of narrative is very similar because the audience can see his break in thoughts, state of mind, psychological status, and actions by gathering one's constant thought processes- "I'm scared. I know. But I'll just be a little ways and I'll be able to hear you so if you get scared you call me and I'll right away. I'm really scared. The sooner I go the sooner I'll be back and we'll have a fire and then you wont be scared anymore. Dont lie down. If you lie down you'll fall asleep and then if I call you you wont answer and I wont be able to find you ... The boy didnt answer. He was close to losing his temper with him and then he realised that he was shaking his head in the dark. Okay, he said. Okay.
Though I have found the article below AFTER I posted my first draft of this post, it is interesting how Coates has similar interpretations towards Wood's "How Fiction Works".
Free Indirect ‘Ducklings’
By STEVE COATES
One of the best parts of James Wood’s stimulating little book “How Fiction Works” is its lucid explanation of one of the most powerful tools of novel-writing, the limber and elastic narrative technique known as “free indirect style.” Wood suggests that this style — in which a third-person narrator and the characters he describes intertwine in magical ways — arises naturally from storytelling: “As soon as someone tells a story about a character,” he writes, “narrative seems to want to bend itself around that character, wants to merge with that character, to take on his or her way of thinking and speaking.”
Wood — not only a New Yorker staff writer but a visiting lecturer at Harvard — uses children’s literature as an entree into his discussion. Along the way, he renders up a sentence that I hope he will quote as needed in dismissal of the notion that he is out of touch with “the common reader”:
There is a technical connection, for instance, between “Make Way for Ducklings” and James’s novel “What Maisie Knew.”
Here’s the whole context:
In Robert McCloskey’s “Make Way for Ducklings,” Mr. and Mrs. Mallard are trying out the Boston Public Garden for their new home, when a swan boat (a boat made to look like a swan but actually powered by a pedal-pushing human pilot) passes them. Mr. Mallard has never seen anything like this before. McCloskey falls naturally into free indirect style: “Just as they were getting ready to start on their way, a strange enormous bird came by. It was pushing a boat full of people, and there was a man sitting on its back. ‘Good morning,’ quacked Mr. Mallard, being polite. The big bird was too proud to answer.” Instead of telling us that Mr. Mallard could make no sense of the swan boat, McCloskey places us in Mr. Mallard’s confusion; yet the confusion is obvious enough that a broad ironic gap opens between Mr. Mallard and the reader (or author). We are not confused in the same way as Mr. Mallard; but we are also being made to inhabit Mr. Mallard’s confusion.
What happens, though, when a more serious writer wants to open a very small gap between character and author? What happens when a novelist wants us to inhabit a character’s confusion, but will not “correct” that confusion, refuses to make clear what a state of nonconfusion would look like? We can walk in a straight line from McCloskey to Henry James. There is a technical connection, for instance, between “Make Way for Ducklings” and James’s novel “What Maisie Knew.” Free indirect style helps us to inhabit juvenile confusion, this time a young girl’s rather than a duck’s.
Coates, Steve. "Free Indirect 'Ducklings'" Online posting. 8 Aug. 2008. New York Times. 10 Dec, www.2010 papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/free-indirect-ducklings/.
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