Footnotes in fiction: Good, bad, or indifferent?

Charlie Horse · Jan 8, 2008

Maybe worship is too strong a word, but I'll bet a lot of you greatly respect Terry Pratchett. One of the things I love in his work is his use of footnotes. They're almost as entertaining as the story itself. I found myself doing this in my current project just because it seemed right. It gave me a vehicle to explain certain things about the world I've created without putting a speedbump in the middle of the story.

I've posted (again) chapter 1 in the SYW forum if anyone cares to see what I'm talking about.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88602

I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on this.

WendyNYC · Jan 8, 2008

Junot Diaz uses them, too. I think if they are funny and somewhat brief, they are good. Too wordy--bad. I'll admit to skimming the long passages.

geardrops · Jan 8, 2008

There were footnotes in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Good Omens, and it worked fabulously for both of them.

Charlie Horse · Jan 8, 2008

dempsey said:
There were footnotes in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Good Omens, and it worked fabulously for both of them.

Two of my very favorite books (and 3 of my favorite authors).

JimmyB27 · Jan 8, 2008

The thing I remember most clearly about Good Omens is the footnote about the old English monetary system.

(That's a yes, I think they're great when done well)ß

FennelGiraffe · Jan 8, 2008

Footnotes in fiction break the fourth wall. Personally, I think it can work in some types of humor, but not so well in a serious story.

Hmm, a possible exception might be something very meta, where the footnotes function at an internal level.

geardrops · Jan 8, 2008

JimmyB27 said:
The thing I remember most clearly about Good Omens is the footnote about the old English monetary system.

(That's a yes, I think they're great when done well)ß

(Edited coz I found the actual quote. I paraphrased it fairly accurately.)

"The ends justify the means, thought Aziraphale. And the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. [Footnote: This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesmen. On weekends many of the younger demons go ice-skating down it.]"

NicoleMD · Jan 8, 2008

If a reader salivates when she comes to one of your astericks, then you're doing it right. If she's like, "Oh, no...not another one..." then maybe it's time to rethink them.

They're fun to write and include so it's easy to go over the top with them, (I'm reading Good Omens right now, and I'd say these are over the top, though I suspect that's the point) but a few judiciously placed ones I quite enjoy. Like chocolates.

Nicole

Dawnstorm · Jan 8, 2008

Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell comes to mind. The footnotes are huge. I think the longest runs for over a page. They help characterise the narrator. They references the Magical Literature of the fictional world, giving weight to the setting. In a strange way, they also serve as a parody of footnotes. I love the footnotes; I usually finished the paragraph, read the footnote, and sometimes then re-read the paragraph because to get back into the story. Not for everyone, perfect for me.

Another interesting footnote-function was Eleanor Aaranson's story "The Lovers". It's a tranlated alien document, and the footnotes give you translator's notes on untranslatable words. A very interesting take on the relation of aliens and language.

And, of course, I love Pratchett's footnotes.

Charlie Horse · Jan 8, 2008

dempsey said:
(Edited coz I found the actual quote. I paraphrased it fairly accurately.)

"The ends justify the means, thought Aziraphale. And the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. [Footnote: This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesmen. On weekends many of the younger demons go ice-skating down it.]"

Brilliant!

maddythemad · Jan 8, 2008

For YA, I love them in An Abundance of Katherines (John Green), and The Boyfriend List (E. Lockhart.) I say go for them!

Devil Ledbetter · Jan 8, 2008

FennelGiraffe said:
Footnotes in fiction break the fourth wall. Personally, I think it can work in some types of humor, but not so well in a serious story.

Hmm, a possible exception might be something very meta, where the footnotes function at an internal level.

Richard Adams used them in Watership Down, a serious story. It's not at all meta.

maxmordon · Jan 8, 2008

I think it works in fantasy or sci-fi stories or stories that otherwise has some hard things to explain. Just see the LoTRs. What's better? 40 pages preface or have all that information in simple footnotes when they are necessary?

HourglassMemory · Jan 8, 2008

Footnotes can work woderfully in stories that have a Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett'y sound to it.
It's like any stupid little fact is entertaining. Douglas Adams did that millions of times in his writings.

And this has actually got me thinking on whether I should consider footnotes for my stories or not. Because there's a lot of stuff in the world that I could very well put in footnotes, and yes, in a Terry Pratchett'y way.

Strongbear · Jan 8, 2008

Footnotes take me out of the story and begin to make the novel like an academic piece of work. As someone else mentioned, it does break the fourth wall. I want to be able to read a book as a whole and not have to refer back and forth to extra commentary.

geardrops · Jan 8, 2008

Oh, there were also footnotes in House of Leaves but that book is... well, it's a trip, to say the least.

Anyway, it worked fantastically for that book.

AnnieColleen · Jan 8, 2008

FennelGiraffe said:
Hmm, a possible exception might be something very meta, where the footnotes function at an internal level.

And then you have Jasper Fforde, where characters can communicate by footnoterphone, and in one book several scenes of the major confrontation take place entirely in footnotes (in the footnoterphone conduits).

I don't think that's a widely applicable technique, though!

DeadlyAccurate · Jan 8, 2008

Loved the footnotes in The Bartimaeus Trilogy.

kuwisdelu · Jan 8, 2008

As long as they're done well, I like them. They don't bother me, anyway. David Foster Wallace has a ton of endnotes in Infinite Jest and Tim O'Brien used them in In the Lake of the Woods to good effect.

But I'm a fan of postmodernism, so I like writing that's self-aware.

Shweta · Jan 8, 2008

I do think you need to have some sort of framing meta-narrative for them to work, though.

In the books we're talking about (that I know), there is a decided narrator (whether it's Bartimaeus himself, or Pratchett's narrative voice, or the academic voice in Strange and Norrell) who would put in footnotes.

In the Fforde, everything is playing with metanarrative, so I don't know how to specify.

When there's a framing narrative, footnotes pop us out of the inner story but into the framing story, so we're still in the book.

But I think that the "invisible" close-3rd-person narrator probably doesn't work well with footnotes, because then they would really pop us out of the book itself. There isn't an outer layer of the book to pop us *into* when they pop us out of the story proper.

Which is why we tend to see them in work that's either old, humorous, or weird.

...Does that make any sense?

kuwisdelu · Jan 8, 2008

Shweta said:
...Does that make any sense?

Mostly. I see what you mean. Footnotes and endnotes do require a certain kind of narrative voice to work, but I'm not sure I could classify exactly what kind of voice.

Shweta · Jan 8, 2008

I think it's just a narrative voice that's a little distant from the story itself. So that it can step back from the story proper and tell us other things.

The sort of narrative voice that can call us "gentle reader", y'know?

While narrative voices that are trying to be invisible can't really impose their presence on us that much.

It makes sense in my head. I'm just being bad at saying it. That and, of course, I might be entirely wrong. But it makes sense in my head...

David I · Jan 8, 2008

FennelGiraffe said:
Hmm, a possible exception might be something very meta, where the footnotes function at an internal level.

Yes indeed--David Foster Wallace case in point. Footnotes, endnotes, all manner of metafictional elaboration.

lfraser · Jan 8, 2008

I can't see footnotes working in a close third person POV, but they work well in an omniscient novel framework. I think they might also work in a first-person narrative, although I can't come up with any examples . The thing is, you have to know who is 'speaking' in the footnotes.

If they're done well, they add to a story without being a necessary part of it, so reading them is optional.

Enzo · Jan 9, 2008

I'm reading a translation of the Spanish thriller 'La Tabla de Flandes' by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Because it's about a painting and includes antiques dealers and art historians among its characters, there are loads of names of painters, musicians and historical figures in there, and each has a footnote explaining the background.
Maybe necessary there, but I wouldn't use footnotes in anything I was writing, unless it was a non-fiction book of course.

Footnotes in fiction: Good, bad, or indifferent?

Speaking in metaphors

fiddle-dee-dee

Good thing I like my day job

Speaking in metaphors

Hoopy frood

It's green they say

Good thing I like my day job

Onomatopotamus

punny user title, here

Speaking in metaphors

Come on you stranger, you legend,

Penúltimo

Good thing I like my day job

Invisible Writer

Absolutely Fazed

Revolutionize the World

gone

Revolutionize the World

gone

Bored and Frantic