Living With Lyle

A young woman runs into an old friend in a grocery store—at least she thinks he's an old friend. In fact the man Eleanor mistakes for "Lyle" is fresh out of prison, sent there for what crime we don't know. But rather than correct her, "Lyle" let's the mistake stand.

"I don't believe it," Eleanor responds. "After all these years . . . How insane is that?"

"More insane than you know," the narrator answers—and he means it.

This opening has a lot going for it, in fact it's hard to find fault with it. The first line thrusts us into the heart of the story, with the paragraph that follows setting the scene for the inciting incident—the unique event that wrests the character or characters out of their status quo and into something worthy of being called a story. Here, that unprecedented event is the meeting of not-Lyle and Eleanor, an encounter that turns on a case of mistaken identity. Not one but two lives are about to be derailed from their routines—or, in not-Lyle's case, from whatever passes for routine in the life of an ex-con fresh out of the slammer. The question now is what's going to happen with these two? It's the right question, the very question that will propel us through this narrative. Will he take advantage of her? Will she fall in love? Will she uncover his criminal past along with his deception? Is he a petty-thief, or a murderer? Will he love her in turn, or will he rob, beat, or kill her? Or combination of these things? The possibilities are, if not limitless, rich.

How would this story read from Eleanor's point of view? As a point-of-view character, pseudo-Lyle has his charms. But then he also knows he's an ex-con, just as he knows what sent him up the river in the first place. It will be much harder, and may require manipulation on the part of the author, to withhold his knowledge from the reader so as not to give a big part of the game away. If she manipulates too much, the author exposes herself to the charge of creating false suspense—suspense achieved artificially by withholding information from the reader that the character (or characters) are fully aware of. In that case it may be better to experience this relationship from the point-of-view of the character who's totally in the dark: Eleanor.

But in that case the author faces another challenge: namely, how to plausibly render a case of mistaken identity from the viewpoint of the person making the mistake. Will we be treated to Eleanore's perspective after she has already survived her experience—such that, as she begins the tale, she knows it is one of mistaken identity? If made such a choice would result in a great loss of tension and suspense. For a start we'll know she survives to tell the tale.

Hmm, maybe our author had the right idea: maybe it's better to stick to his viewpoint.

You see the sort of decisions writers wrestle with. There are no absolute or easy solutions. In the end, it may be best to rely on gut instincts. Here, so far at least, those instincts seem to be paying off.