When you write prose, you're telling a story. It may be a factual story, a fictional story, an excuse for why your kid missed school (which may be either of the above), your CV, whatever, but it's a story. It's a narrative. We don't do well without narratives. We need to know where we're going, who's doing the going, and hopefully, where we plan to end up. That's why sentences have subjects and verbs and like that.

The thing is: when you write about the doings of people who are not you – whether they're real or you made them up – you need to keep something in mind. What they think they're doing may not be what you think they're doing. Or the reader will think they're doing.

Here's an example:

It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter's Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did…

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Now, you have to stop and think, as Dickens' readers did: why are these people walking up a hill, when they're described as passengers? So Dickens explains:

…not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath.

That clears it up: back then (1775), road conditions were pretty bad, and the coaches didn't have the off-road capabilities of your average Land Rover. Dickens wasn't writing for an audience that necessarily knew this, so he explained. He also knew that his readers may not really know what travelling to Dover in the mail coach in the 1770s was like, so he sets the scene some more:

In those days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in 'the Captain's' pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter's Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass.


The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey.

It will be awhile before Dickens lets us in on who those passengers are and what they're all up to (they've got some different agendas), but at least we've figured out the difference between what they think they're doing and what it might look like to us.

When we write people's stories, we need to keep this dual focus in mind: what they think they're up to, and what it looks like to the audience. Sometimes, we can play this difference for humour or irony. At other times, dawning understanding can bring revelation.

On the evening that the material allegation of facts begins, Hedges was bidding dull care begone in the company of five or six good fellows – acquaintances and friends who had gathered in his wake.

Among them were two younger men – Ralph Merriam, a broker, and Wade, his friend.


Two deep-sea cabmen were chartered. At Columbus Circle they hove to long enough to revile the statue of the great navigator, unpatriotically rebuking him for having voyaged in search of land instead of liquids. Midnight overtook the party marooned in the rear of a cheap café far uptown.


Hedges was arrogant, overriding and quarrelsome. He was burly and tough, iron-gray but vigorous, "good" for the rest of the night. There was a dispute – about nothing that matters – and the five-fingered words were passed – the words that represent the glove cast into the lists. Merriam played the rôle of the verbal Hotspur.


Hedges rose quickly, seized his chair, swung it once and smashed wildly down at Merriam's head. Merriam dodged, drew a small revolver and shot Hedges in the chest. The leading roysterer stumbled, fell in a wry heap, and lay still.


Wade, a commuter, had formed that habit of promptness. He juggled Merriam out a side door, walked him to the corner, ran him a block and caught a hansom. They rode five minutes and then got out on a dark corner and dismissed the cab. Across the street the lights of a small saloon betrayed its hectic hospitality.


"Go in the back room of that saloon," said Wade, "and wait. I'll go find out what's doing and let you know. You may take two drinks while I am gone – no more."


At ten minutes to one o'clock Wade returned. "Brace up, old chap," he said. "The ambulance got there just as I did. The doctor says he's dead. You may have one more drink. You let me run this thing for you. You've got to skip. I don't believe a chair is legally a deadly weapon. You've got to make tracks, that's all there is to it."


Merriam complained of the cold querulously, and asked for another drink. "Did you notice what big veins he had on the back of his hands?" he said. "I never could stand – I never could – "


"Take one more," said Wade, "and then come on. I'll see you through."


Wade kept his promise so well that at eleven o'clock the next morning Merriam, with a new suit case full of new clothes and hair-brushes, stepped quietly on board a little 500-ton fruit steamer at an East River pier. The vessel had brought the season's first cargo of limes from Port Limon, and was homeward bound. Merriam had his bank balance of $2,800 in his pocket in large bills, and brief instructions to pile up as much water as he could between himself and New York. There was no time for anything more.

O Henry, 'The World and the Door'

O Henry's matter-of-fact telling of this story at first conceals the seriousness of the events. Once we realise that manslaughter has taken place, we also realise that the men in the story have a different take on things than the one we're used to. Their motivations for their actions might surprise us. The rest of the story hinges a lot on our realising that these people don't think like us at all. It's full of surprises and twists. I recommend you read it.

When you tell a story, keep in mind the difference between the characters' viewpoint, yours, and your audience's. It'll help you, especially if you want to get your point across with a change in the frame of reference.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

13.05.19 Front Page

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