: Re: Pulling the reader out of the narrative: When it's too much? Example (excerpt from a story I'm writing): To make things worse, my schoolmates started calling me “Hanging Pup” from

@Kevin153

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The bits you put in parentheses don't (necessarily) take me out of the narrative. They are the character's opinions of people and events. That takes me deeper into the character, which is a big part of where the story is.

One test for such parentheticals is: Do these opinions characterize the character in a way that serves the story?

As Lauren points out, the bolded bit may be showing a side of the character that you did not intend. If it serves your story to show the character as having a creepy, sexualized view of his mother, leave that in. If not, change it. Or drop it.

In this passage, it seems to me that the parentheses themselves call attention to the parenthetical statements. The parentheses announce that the narrator thinks of the statements as side comments, and chooses to include them anyway. Again, this characterizes the narrator. So the question is: Does that characterization serve the story? If so, leave the parentheses in. If not, take them out, and just put the statements into the flow of the paragraph.

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