I love going to the library. I love hunting through the stacks for that one, specific read a friend has recommended, and I love easing it off the shelf, its protective plastic cover crinkling in my palm. This past week, I picked up a pair of books a writer friend recommended in relation to a few plot challenges I’ve been having in my own work. The first of these was How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix.
I haven’t had the pleasure of reading a Hendrix book before, though I’ve heard lots of good things about his work, so this is my first venture into his nightmare funhouse. I’m not really writing this as a “review” of any kind, but suffice it to say that I very much enjoyed it, devoured it in about six days, and intend to pick up more of his books in the future. What I want this to be is processing my thoughts on his writing, and on the plot trick it was recommended for–the switch from limited 3rd to 1st of another character and back.
Background: my friend Lacey recommended this book to me as an example of switching POV in the middle of a book, not as a steady alternating viewpoint, but as a one-off, just for this reveal switch. It feels a bit like a story-within-a-story (something author Kelly Link is amazing at), an important telling of events at a peak moment (in this case, shortly after midpoint–maybe technically at midpoint) that inform and enlighten the main plot line. In HtSaHH, it does serve to change the first half of the plot from “reacting” to “acting”–the villain is made a little more plain, an understanding is reached, and the next steps of the characters change dramatically with the revelation(s?). There’s purpose, a plan, a focused effort after this point, though–of course–there are a lot more secrets left to root out.
It’s an interesting point to segway into another character’s POV–but it felt natural the way Hendrix managed it. It allowed for an immediacy that would have been lost in a simple telling of past events, and focuses on too much information to piecemeal together through a Q and A session. It focused on one specific period the main character wasn’t privy to, but had a lot of pre-conceived ideas about, which of course are routed by the explanation. It also serves as a key to unlocking a secret the main character hasn’t been able to release, giving her permission to tell the truth.
The best way this would work in a short story would be to have a vital secret tied to a short, clear event in another character’s life, something that gives the main character the key they need to battle whatever conflict they’re facing. It would need to change the main character’s understanding of something they thought they understood. If it comes at midpoint, it would need to change the “reacting” to “acting” by clarifying the problem/point-of-conflict/villain. If it came at the end of the second act, it would need to be–perhaps–more a moment of ultimate truth, a flaming out of emotion, a revelation the main character has been fighting to learn, a little proverbial death in some way, a win or a loss that isn’t quite what it seems, that leaves the main character baffled and resorting reality as they understand it.
The challenge, I think, in my story, is it’s almost a narrator story–the main character has a problem (ish), but the other character has a bigger one, and is the cause of the main character’s stress. It’s almost got a ghost-story structure, in which the surviving character is relating to someone else what happened to another person who became haunted. Sometimes those stories end by they, themselves, becoming haunted by the same ghost. Or perhaps it provides a kernel of wisdom about life that the character holds dear.
Beyond the main reason I read HtSaHH, I also adored Hendrix’s slick character development–each character is imminently themselves, clear and concise, while also feeling fleshed out and full of depth we don’t even get to see. He also did a fantastic job of using worldview as an obscuring lens, something each character had to stumble over before they could get to the reality behind it, often very different from what they thought they knew. The themes of generational trauma, secrets being kept, not talking about difficult things–it all resonated beautifully throughout every event. And oh my word, the amount of emotion Hendrix packs into this–particularly at the beginning when you’re meeting everyone and getting to know them–is absolutely skin-tingling. I had to stop reading this one before bed, first because the inter-family drama made me want to scream and rip my hair out (in a good way), and second because yeah. It’s a horror story, and I didn’t want to keep imaging dead mice crawling up my bedsheets. O_o
This was a fun, fast read, and I’m still processing some of the things I picked up from it, but if I think of anything else, I may come back and update this at that time, just to keep everything together.