Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Detached Author (“Fly on the Wall,” “Camera Eye,” “Objective Narrator”) There is no viewpoint character. The narrator is not one of the characters and can say of the characters only what a totally neutral observer (an intelligent fly on the wall) might infer of them from behavior and speech. The author never enters a character’s mind. People and places may be exactly described, but values and judgments can only be implied indirectly. A popular voice around 1900 and in “minimalist” and “brand-name” fiction, it is the least overtly, most covertly manipulative of the points of view. It’s excellent practice for writers who expect codependent readers. When we’re new at writing, we may expect our readers to respond just as we respond to what we’re writing about—to cry because we’re crying. But this is a childish, not a writerly, relation to the reader. If you can move a reader while using this cool voice, you’ve got something really moving going on.