I know authors sometimes break the Fourth Wall, but what about a character in a novel? Just curious.
Tom raised his fist to knock on the door. “Wait. Reader, what do you think I should do? I could knock and see if Sue lets me in. Or, I could sneak around back and peak in a window, and see if she’s with Tom. Or, forget about her and go to a bar. Hmmm… decisions…”
It would be an incredibly strange way of writing and would probably hurt the story more than help.
Yeah, kids books do this.
One that my son has, for instance, stops at one point to ask the readers what flavour ice-cream one of the characters should eat.
Obviously he ends up with an enormous multi-layer confection 'cos, you know, everyone has a different suggestion…
Open me, I’m a dog is a good example of a book which enters into a fairly extensive “interaction” with the reader.
Oh, and of course in the grown-up books line I’m sure I’m not the only person here who’s a fan of John Dies At The End
How would the example in the OP be much different from Phillip Marlowe novels which were written in the first person?
Any book written in the first person, really.
Jane Eyre, for instance, has “Reader, I married him.”
Huckleberry Finn: “You don’t know me, without you have read the book by the name of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,’ but that ain’t no matter.”
Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael.”
Spoilers inevitable…
John Scalzi’s REDSHIRTS is about guys in a Starfleet-esque service who gradually realize they’re characters in a badly-written television series; as the end of the book approaches, one of them realizes – and another one confirms – that, no, they’re characters in a novel about characters in a badly-written television series.
Several Vonnegut novels have the main character meeting the author. I think Stephen King wrote himself into the Dark Tower series at one point. Pretty sure that counts as breaking the fourth wall.
To be honest, I never thought writing had a fourth wall. Writers often talk directly to their readers, though it is more rare in fiction.
Canterbury Tales: In the prologue the author states that he is telling stories that were told to him, at the end he states, “Here taketh the makere of this book his leve.”
Bored of the Rings:
“No,” agreed Bromosel, looking across the gray surface of the page to the thick half of the book still in the reader’s right hand. “We have a long way to go.”
…and of course the famous prophecy:
Five-eleven’s your height, one-ninety your weight
You cash in your chips around page eighty-eight.
The first nine (IIRC) Ellery Queen novels had a Challenge to the Reader in which Queen (who was the detective and also supposedly the person writing the books) tells the audience that they have all the clues and challenges them to solve the mystery before he does.
A Series of Unfortunate Events does this constantly, all through it.
It’s a very clever books series, I think…and although written for young adults/teens, I enjoyed them very much at thirty years old and know of other adults who have loved them too, so if you’re looking for those kind of books (that break the fourth wall) to read, I’d recommend that one very strongly.
Also the sequel, This Book is Full of Spiders. Which shares certain thematic similarities with There’s a Monster at the End of this Book.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being breaks the wall in a particularly interesting way - Kundera tells the reader about his difficulties as a writer, and how it’s ultimately impossible getting you to care about these characters that aren’t real, and interesting you in things that never happened. It’s just out of his control.
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler…*** is hyper-self-aware, too clever by half, and ultimately just annoying. There’s a book that tried to make the fourth-wall breaking the meat of the book. It fails, because after all, it’s just a gimmick.
Wilson & Shea’s The Illuminatus Trilogy! does it throughout the book.
That’s the first thing I thought of, possibly because it involves literal wall-breaking.
And of course the classic:
Jane Eyre at various points addresses the audience as “Dear Reader”.
Kundera does this in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, too. He frequently interrupts the third-person narration to talk to the reader (in first-person) about writing novels, or constructing a story, or just to make little interjections. Random example:
It’s been years since I’ve reread Vonnegut, but he does this in his novels, particularly with Kilgore Trout.
Jonathan Stroud does this with his Bartimaeus trilogy for certain. It seems like he may do it with his Lockwood & Co series as well, though I can’t remember absolutely.
