Breaking the fourth wall

VoltShadow · Jul 10, 2008

Bad news, I went to sleep again and came up with another question. This one's about comic effect. I have one of my characters (He's the protagonist and at times the comic releif, he's just a goofy little kid.) that insists on breaking the fourth wall whenever something strange or horribly convenient happens. Such as when a guard approaches my hero and his team during a raid, stands right over them and then says "Hey, just as I thought... I do get a better cell signal standing next to these things over here" and then he whipes his forehead. His friends will say something like "That was close" and then he'll say something like "Yeah, the author's running a little slow on deploying the character shields here." He usually gets hit or yelled at for saying that they live in a book. I don't fully understand how he knows this to be honest and everytime I try to figure it out I just end up having to fill in a thousand more plot holes. He also makes constant jokes about questioning continuity. What I'm really asking is: Is that funny or just annoying?

dwellerofthedeep · Jul 10, 2008

If you are going to have character break the fourth wall I would expect the book to be primarily comedy or satire. If the story isn't one of those two I don't think you should do it. It would get irritating in my opinion.

In the right kind of satire or comedy it could come off well however.

Diana W. · Jul 10, 2008

I guess it could work if it was a comedy or something. Or at a pinch a fantasy. It was a straightforward horror or thriller or something like that I would find it very jarring. Unless it had some relevance to plot.
I know Mel Brooks used to that a lot in his movies, making aside comments to the viewer. I guess if it works in a movie it can work in a novel. If handled right.

Kitty Pryde · Jul 10, 2008

I'd say it has to be done really well for it work. Really well, and really funny. Otherwise, it's totally unbearable.

It's like the difference between Spaceballs and those "Epic Movie," "Superhero Movie" pathetic flicks. One is genius, the others are garbage, but both are SF/F spoofs mocking genre conventions/genre hits. If you break the 4th wall with jokes in order to intelligently say, "XYZ genre convention is absurd for the following reasons: ..." you can probably get away with it. On the other hand, if you're just doing it to say, "LOLZ Fantasy Quests are stoopid!!" you're not getting much out of it and readers won't be interested. It's hard to tell from your examples which one you are doing.

Bayley · Jul 10, 2008

It depends on:

a) Whether it is done well. Done badly and it will annoy the readers. Done well and it could just work.

b) The genre of the book. A serious romance won't work, but a humourous fantasy just might.

Calla Lily · Jul 10, 2008

I hate hate hate it when writers or actors break the fourth wall. Few things will get me to throw a book across the room faster.

Um... was that a little tense of me? I'll go take several calming breaths now.

Diana W. · Jul 10, 2008

callalily61 said:
I hate hate hate it when writers or actors break the fourth wall. Few things will get me to throw a book across the room faster.

Um... was that a little tense of me? I'll go take several calming breaths now.

Try counting to ten. It works for me

Thinking about it I don't think I've ever read a book that does that. Not that I remember anyway.

Calla Lily · Jul 10, 2008

I have, but I didn't keep them so fortunately my mind has been wiped.

Shadow_Ferret · Jul 10, 2008

callalily61 said:
I hate hate hate it when writers or actors break the fourth wall. Few things will get me to throw a book across the room faster.

Um... was that a little tense of me? I'll go take several calming breaths now.

Now see, when Burt Reynolds was in his heyday of Smokey and the Bandit and all those movies, he always broke the four wall with a look at the audience as if he was letting us in on something and that was part of the charm of those movies and why he was the biggest box office star of the day.

And I really enjoyed The Gary Shandling Show which broke the fourth wall all the time.

Still, I think its something that's very hard to do successfully.

AdamH · Jul 10, 2008

I'd be hesitant having the character break the 4th wall unless there's going to be a point to it. Like if he's aware he's in a book and he has to convince others to escape...or something. But if it's just for the sake of adding a character quirk, it could get annoying.

It's been done successfully in movies (mostly comedies) like Ferris Bueller. And there's even a movie about a character who discovers he's in stories called Stranger Than Fiction...but the 4th wall is never broken on that one.

Stew21 · Jul 10, 2008

Vonnegut did this by writing himself/the author into Breakfast of Champions.

If you can do it Vonnegut-good, then go right ahead.

Stew21 · Jul 10, 2008

AdamH said:
I'd be hesitant having the character break the 4th wall unless there's going to be a point to it. Like if he's aware he's in a book and he has to convince others to escape...or something. But if it's just for the sake of adding a character quirk, it could get annoying.

It's been done successfully in movies (mostly comedies) like Ferris Bueller. And there's even a movie about a character who discovers he's in stories called Stranger Than Fiction...but the 4th wall is never broken on that one.

Stranger than Fiction was a book first wasn't it?

Seif · Jul 10, 2008

VoltShadow said:
Bad news, I went to sleep again and came up with another question. This one's about comic effect. I have one of my characters (He's the protagonist and at times the comic releif, he's just a goofy little kid.) that insists on breaking the fourth wall whenever something strange or horribly convenient happens. Such as when a guard approaches my hero and his team during a raid, stands right over them and then says "Hey, just as I thought... I do get a better cell signal standing next to these things over here" and then he whipes his forehead. His friends will say something like "That was close" and then he'll say something like "Yeah, the author's running a little slow on deploying the character shields here." He usually gets hit or yelled at for saying that they live in a book. I don't fully understand how he knows this to be honest and everytime I try to figure it out I just end up having to fill in a thousand more plot holes. He also makes constant jokes about questioning continuity. What I'm really asking is: Is that funny or just annoying?

It appears as though you are going for the comedic effect and if so read Star Bores (parody of Star Wars) and see how it is done. The characters refer to themselves, the audience, the author and all six films that the book is based on. It is done sparsely and masterfully to serve its purpose as a comedic device. Just don't do it because YOU think it is funny, save that edition of the book for yourself.

I'm sure there are other examples out there.

All the best,

Phot's Moll · Jul 10, 2008

I'm not familiar with the phrase 'breaking the fourth wall' - is that the same thing as author intrusion?

lexxi · Jul 10, 2008

It could be author intrusion, but more commonly it would be characters being aware of the audience (reader, in the case of a written work).

The phrase comes from the theatre, in which many plays especially during the mid-19th to mid-20th century would be staged with sets depicting indoor scenes including three walls of a room, with the fourth wall, on the side between the audience and the stage, not be built but only established through the convention of the acting.

In a realistic play, the actors would act as though they were in a normal room with walls on all sides and relate only to what the characters would be able to see within the room.

In other plays, especially from earlier or later periods, the characters or actors would acknowledge the presence of the audience. I.e., they would "break" the convention of the fourth wall.

maestrowork · Jul 10, 2008

Phot's Moll said:
I'm not familiar with the phrase 'breaking the fourth wall' - is that the same thing as author intrusion?

Not really. In this example, the character directly addresses the readers or the author as in "I'm just a character in a story." In this case, he's reminding the audiences that they're reading a book.

Author intrusion could be a narrator addressing the readers or expressing his/her views, but the narrator is not part of the story:

Jack returned the book to the library. It always bugs the heck out of me when people don't return books. Why do they do that? Well, at least Jack did.

To me, either techniques have their place in fiction and it should be done to achieve a certain effect. And it should be done well. Otherwise, it yanks the readers out of the story and the "fictive dream" and reminds them that they're reading a book.

Phot's Moll · Jul 10, 2008

Ah - thank you.

In that case, I think that as with all devices, it could work if done well and sparingly. If done badly or overdone, I imagine it would be annoying.

Seif · Jul 10, 2008

maestrowork said:
And it should be done well. Otherwise, it yanks the readers out of the story and the "fictive dream" and reminds them that they're reading a book.

Yeah, a bit like that time when Dorothy, the scarecrow, the tin man and the cowardly lion find out that the Wizard of Oz is just some charlatan! What I mean is that don' reveal what's behind the curtain or who's directing the show and have the audience/readers lose their focus.

But the technique lends itself to comedy as it is a parody within parody or satire within satire.

Aristotle would use 'meta-theater' to address the audience in his comedies (e.g. The Frogs). It is a technique not just confined to books and has endured through the ages.

freezer burned · Jul 10, 2008

Would the breaking of the fourth wall, then, be a bad way to deal with themes of derealization/depersonalization? Can the breaking of the fourth wall be used to explore things like God, such as how the author is, in a sense, the god of his own little universe? Granted, I'm sure that's all rather unoriginal, but it's a thought.

tehuti88 · Jul 11, 2008

I too would expect such a book as that mentioned in the OP to be a comedy, especially since the MC's reactions and comments are stated to be primarily comedic. I wouldn't find it annoying in a comedy (if it's not overdone--it shouldn't be relied on as the sole source of comedy unless that's the entire point of the story, to point out that the character realizes they're in a story!), but in other work, it would probably irk me. I'm of the "Characters should have no clue they're not real" school, so perhaps this is why I don't read much comedy?

freezer burned said:
Would the breaking of the fourth wall, then, be a bad way to deal with themes of derealization/depersonalization? Can the breaking of the fourth wall be used to explore things like God, such as how the author is, in a sense, the god of his own little universe? Granted, I'm sure that's all rather unoriginal, but it's a thought.

Here, I think, is a GREAT example of how the fourth wall can be broken in a noncomedic context--if done right. I occasionally find myself wondering if I'm just a character in a novel, so it's not hard to believe that a character in a novel could imagine this, especially if they're suffering from mental problems such as those that come with depersonalization, or if the work is dealing with deeper philosophical and religious themes.

The thing is, the writer would have to be very good to pull this off without it sounding funny. And it would have to be written clearly enough so that the reader, who might not be familiar with the fourth wall concept or with dissociative states, could understand what's going on. The writer would also have to determine whether the character really is breaking the fourth wall, or if it's just a delusion or a guess on their part. But IMO it could work.

JimmyB27 · Jul 11, 2008

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoFourthWall

There's a section there on literature.

Robert Rankin does this from time to time. I remember in The Greatest Show Off Earth, which used a lot of running gags, there was a character called Inspector D'Eath. About two thirds of the way through a PC referred to him as Inspector Death. The Inspector then berates the PC for trying to introduce a running gag so far into the book.
Worked well there, imho.

inkkognito · Jul 11, 2008

I think this device can work when it's done comedically and is a little "wink" to the reader. Denny Crane does it occasionally, and it works in the context of his irreverant character. Malcolm did it in "Malcolm in the Middle," and it was okay but I don't think it worked quite as well there as in "Boston Legal." It's all about the context and the tone of your book. The way you describe it, I think it could indeed be workable if not overdone.

Phaeal · Jul 11, 2008

The second you do this in a book I'm reading, I'm going to stop taking your book seriously. So be sure you don't want me to take it seriously before you try it.

VoltShadow · Jul 11, 2008

... I didn't expect so many responses. I hope I learned a lesson about sleeping on an idea (J/K).
Overall it's a fairly light hearted YA sci-fi/fantasy esq quasi-martial arts novel... I think that's what you call it anyway. If that makes a diffrence at all. I want it to have its seriousness, but I don't want it to take itself too seriously (The whole notion of how the planet works is absolutly poposterous, children shooting fire? Boulderdash!) because I always thought that works that took themselves too seriously (as a reader, not an author) just end up being overdramatic and incredibly cliched. That's just me.

freezer burned · Jul 11, 2008

VoltShadow said:
I want it to have its seriousness, but I don't want it to take itself too seriously (The whole notion of how the planet works is absolutly poposterous, children shooting fire? Boulderdash!) because I always thought that works that took themselves too seriously (as a reader, not an author) just end up being overdramatic and incredibly cliched.

I have this problem as well. I want to write serious stuff, but when I look at it, I wonder who in the world wrote all that pretentious poppycock. So I slash, slash, slash, until when I look at my work again, I'm left with two words: "Oh, bother."

Breaking the fourth wall

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