How to be a Narrator

What is it to be a Narrator? It's hard work I'll tell you that much. You've got to grasp the little things that rattle even the most diligent observer. The dirty stuff. you need to find a meaning in the smallest action, a theme in the most mundane activity, then enlarge it, empower it, until it shades the whole. You need to snap your audience out of their trance and make them stare into that corner that they would really rather didn't exist. You need to help them. You need to lie to them.
That's not all. You need to know when to act, an how to.
Take the women at the little bar there. She is just minding her own business, doing what she does every day, to her it's Thursday. But, as a Narrator it needs to be more than that. I'll let you in on her secret that she doesn't know is a secret. She's an alcoholic, worse, she has addictive tendencies in everything she does. She comes to this tiny bar, so small it's not bigger than the bathroom of the restaurant that surrounds it, to play Keno. If she lived in Vegas she would be a prostitute by now. As a suburban wife, she basically is anyway.
Now, it being another Thursday, carries a lot more weight. Her bartender is a scarecrow of a man. He's doing his job. He doesn't see her actions as alarming because he's so close to the situation. He just serves the drinks and collects the tips.

Many of you see a problem here. You think we should solve it. Okay, let's give it a try.

Say her liver fails, right there, pook. She finishes her drink and it's just too much. Her skin and eyes gain that yellow quality, she starts to feel faint. Then after she passes out from the toxic build up, the Bartender calls an ambulance. She dies anyway.

That solved it! What? No, you don't like that solution. Okay, let's try again, this time we'll get into her life a bit and see if we can find a cause.

Starting over. The poor women at the bar has been living a lie for years. Her husband, the bastard, doesn't love her and never did. Her two beautiful children are the only things that keep her from divorcing the prick. She drinks and gambles in the vain search for a solution to a life, so broken, that she can't even begin to recognize what she wanted it to be. She is in a deep depression, a lonely one at that.
Her bartender is a scarecrow of a man who has worked this job for too many years not to notice the tell tale signs of addiction. He's been here too many months not to have conversed with her about the terrible nature of her horrible life, over her, over-poured, favorite drink. He still doesn't find it alarming, it's just the way of things. He talks to her, and serves her to excess because he is attracted to her, and in the back of his head would very much like to sleep with her.
All of that aside, what do you think the problem is now? How should we go about fixing it?
She finishes her drink in one last gulp, and it turns out to be too much. Her skin and eyes start to get all jaundicey, and she passes out on the bar.

Oops, forgot to pause the story.

Again, from the top.

It is a typical Thursday for the women.

Fine, I'll give her a name. Mary. You think that name is boring? I don't care, write your own story.

It is a typical Thursday for Mary. With her kids at school she can unwind playing Keno and drinking the fluid that's effects closely resemble the waters of the mythical river Lethe. Her regular bartender, Matt, is a scarecrow of a man who has become a good friend over the last few months. He is the reason she hasn't totally lost her mind as her life spirals down the toilet she flushed so many years ago. It's not just the drinks that save her, he listens. Matt is the kind of guy she should have married, an opened-minded, romantic. Sure he's broke, but money means nothing without happiness, without love.
She blushes at her own impure thoughts when Matt catches her smiling at him. He smiles back. The feeling behind that returned smile flows into her, he's smiling only because she is. It's the most wonderful thing she has felt in the last twelve years. Some part of her wakes up, stretches and yawns. Mary finishes her drink to hide her embarrassment, and the influx of alcohol is the proverbial straw on the over-packed camel.
Her liver fails, she dies.

Okay, okay. I'll stop killing her!

Is it maybe Mary's husband, is he the bad guy?

Twenty-Eight miles away, Mary's husband, Elliot, sits at his desk. He's working his ass off trying to catch up with a quota that doesn't seem to have a ceiling. As a sales representative for a major custom fabrication company, he has made a comfortable life for his family. Sure the hours are long, and it has been awhile since everything has been great in his home life, but the bills get payed on time. He makes sure to provide the kind of life his wife and kids deserve.
Mary has been getting on his nerves lately, she is hard to figure out. Unrealistic, that's the word that comes to mind. She has no concept of how the world works. He thinks she might have a drinking problem, and that really worries him. Not only because he cares about her, but it also provides a bad example for their children.
Suddenly, Elliot feels strange. He can't quite get his mind to wrap around what is going on, but something isn't right. He tries to make an uncomfortable face, but the muscles there won't respond. He tries to call for help, but his voice stays in his throat. He falls out of his chair and suffers a seizure. His body will be found hours from now. Doctors will find that he suffered a stroke.

Are you happy now? Mary can get on with her life, the kids don't have to go through a divorce, with money not an issue due to Elliot's life insurance. A few months down the road, Mary jumps Matt. Of course she's still drinking.

Apparently, Elliot wasn't causing the problem. It's those damn kids!

Five miles away a bus, containing Mary and Elliot's children, is driving down a winding road. As it crosses an intersection, an SUV runs the red light at fifty-three miles per hour. It smashes into the bus sending it rolling over several cars and into a tanker truck, which, in the manner of an action movie, promptly explodes. The two offending members of the story are consumed in a ball of combusting gasoline. Doctors will find that they burned to death.
With the kids gone, Mary and Elliot get a divorce. Mary takes half of Elliot's paycheck for the rest of his life and gets to bed the bartender. She continues drinking.

Okay, not the kids either.

What? You think it would be better if Mary and Elliot never got married. That's dangerous, going back all that time and changing things. Okay, fine, I'll show you.

Fourteen years ago: Elliot asked Mary to marry him. He was all cute about it.
"Mary, will you marry me..." He looked confused for a second, "Mary."
She said no.

With his direction shattered, Elliot loses all will to succeed. Three years later he had turned to a life of petty crime to support his rampant amphetamine habit. One night he ran into a scarecrow of a man on a dark street, tucked somewhere in the shady side of town. Matt was drunk himself, as bartenders tend to be on their night off. He was so drunk that he didn't understand that Elliot had a gun and wanted his money. Elliot, in a junkie rage shot Matt eight times in the chest. Later, with the money stolen from Matt, Elliot scores some pure crystal meth and, in an attempt to forget his desperate actions, overdoses.
Now, Mary sits at the tiny bar. Alone. She has no kids, no husband. She comes here to drink and gamble away the pain. But, she doesn't even know why she's here, as there is no bartender. She gets up and walks out. She is totally disoriented, due to the complete upheaval of her entire universe that happened so suddenly! She looks up at the sky in a vain attempt to find her bearings and accidentally wanders in to traffic.
A Volvo, driven by you, guy with the good idea to change the past, hits her at thirty-five miles per hour. She would've been okay, with proper medical attention, but unfortunately, the guy who would have called the ambulance died in a tragic shooting eleven years ago.

See what you did? What? You don't own a Volvo. Well, things changed!

Okay, I'm sorry, I'll calm down. I can't stand it when people think it's so easy to Narrate.

So, you don't want Mary to die, don't want Elliot to die, and don't want the kids to die either.

It's a typical Thursday for Mary. She just saw her two beautiful children, the light of her life, to the bus stop on their way to school, and now she was already on her third drink. it wasn't even noon, but who was counting. She had nowhere to be, nothing to do. What a wasted life this was. Her regular bartender, Matt, is more worth her time than any man she had ever met. He doesn't judge her, or ask her where she's been all day. Matter of fact, the only question he ever asks is: "Would you like another drink?" She looks down at her drink and realizes that he will be asking that very question, very soon.
Just then, a large grizzly bear bursts through the wall next to Matt. It pounces on the scarecrow of a man like a safe dropped from the third story of a cartoon building. It rakes it's claws and tears away skin and muscle. It's weight alone shatters bones. The oddly occurring ursine bites the bartenders head and, with one practiced shake, snaps his spine in the neckal region. With the struggle over, the bear drags Matt back through the wall and disappears into a cloud of drywall dust.
Mary doesn't finish her drink. She develops a neurotic aversion to bars and bar-like places, which expands to include restaurants, zoo's then deli's. Eventually, she becomes a full-fledged agoraphobic. She still drinks, and twice as much, she just does it at home.

Nope. I think I have killed everyone in this story, at least twice. Well technically the kids only died once.

Five miles away, on a school bus in transit, Mary's beautiful children sit. The older one, Robin, at the ripe age of ten, is just starting to experiment with dangerous narcotics. She has been doing her very best to get one of her classmates, Billy, a good Christian boy, to try out her latest batch of homemade ecstasy. Billy is intelligent, he tongues the pill. Not because drugs are bad, but because he would be an idiot to try X made by a fifth grader. Seeing that Billy didn't go into seizures, Robin tosses two back herself.
Shortly thereafter, Robin starts bleeding from the nose and eyes. The hemorrhaging is not merely external. She dies of a poison that causes the body to block the uptake of vitamin K. She obviously mixed in a pinch too much Decon.
The other of Mary's daughters, spontaneously combusts in math class.

Now I have, officially, killed everyone, twice.

What do you want?

How about an intervention?

It's a typical Thursday for Mary. She's at her favorite bar, with her favorite bartender, Matt. Today is slightly different though. The scarecrow of a man keeps looking at the door as if he is expecting someone, and he won't make direct eye contact with her. Furthermore, the first thing he poured for her was coffee! When Mary told him she'd like a cosmopolitan martini instead, he was so slow in making it that she was starting to wonder if he was sick.
Just as she goes to take that last sip, the bells on the door chime announcing the arrival of her husband, Elliot, and her two children. Behind them, her mother and sister. Even her long dead father shambles in, rotting flesh and all. She sets her drink back on the bar at the sight of them.
Her husband steps forward and states in no uncertain terms: "We want you to quit drinking and gambling."
"What?" It comes out as a laugh of disbelieving mirth.
"Honey, we love you and can't stand to watch you destroy your life. If you keep doing it, we'll have to stop watching," her mother states in no uncertain terms.
"Brains!" Calls Zombie Dad, causing his former wife to slap his shoulder.
"What," asks Mary again. It's called denial.
"Mary, this is an intervention," says Elliot.
At this point, Mary flies into Kubler-Ross' second stage, anger. "Fuck off!" She gets up and stumbles through her gathered family and out of the bar.
With her access to Elliot's bank account and credit cards, she buys a plane ticket to Vegas and is never seen again, except by her pimp, six john's a day, and a bartender.
Mary's husband never gets remarried, he spends the rest of his life in a deep depression that robs him of his job, his home and his daughters' love. Mary's kids never forgive their mother for abandoning them, nor anyone involved in the intervention. Robin grows up to be a weapon engineer, she produces horrible creations that mock the Geneva Convention and sells them to anyone willing to pay. The younger, and yet unnamed, one commits suicide at the age of sixteen, with a chainsaw.
Matt has to pay Mary's bill out of his own pocket, and has a really bad day.

Good work!

You see, there is something you're missing. Mary has free will, and complete control over her actions. Mary drinks because she likes to drink, she gambles for the same reason. Elliot stays with Mary because he likes it too. The kids don't have a problem with the way things have always been for them. The only problem with Mary's habits is you. Now I'm certainly not saying the alcoholism is a good thing, and I'm not advocating it in anyway, all I'm saying is that you need to have more insight if you intend to be a proper Narrator. Thinking for other people is hard to do, and it never works out right.

That's a good lesson for non-Narrator's too.