September 2024 newsletter: I was working on my new urban fantasy novel yesterday when the fourth wall snapped on me. It was odd enough I was writing in first person present; to have my main character start talking directly to the reader absolutely floored me. If you’re fan of the Deadpool movies like I am, you’ll already be familiar with the narrative technique. Either the character(s) and/or the narrator/author can break the wall.
Apparently, the term ‘fourth wall’ originated in the late 1800s when theatre critic Vincent Canby defined it as ‘that invisible scrim that forever separates the audience from the stage’. Okay, three walls of the theatre stage, fourth wall between the actors and the audience. Why hadn’t I looked that up the first time I ran into the term?
I was curious what speculative fiction that I’ve read that does this, so I did some investigating.
The Nevernight Chronicle(s) by Jay Kristoff! I loved this series, but managed not to even notice the footnotes in the ebook where the fourth wall gets shattered over and over. It wasn’t until the second book when the author jokes about the footnotes in the first that I went back to check. Oh yeah, there they were. His books are definitely on my re-read list. Also, I’m blown away by the covers.
Here are two others fourth-wall breaking novels so popular you likely have them already: Redshirts by John Scalzi and Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.
If you appreciate this technique, let me know what books you’ve found that uses it and I’ll post them next newsletter,