This recognition in turn allows us to recognize the continuity between two
narrative techniques that the story/discourse distinction would put asunder:
character narration and dialogue. Indeed, recognizing the continuity allows us
to see scenes of dialogue as character narration on steroids. In each case, we
have a single text with at least two tellers, at least two occasions, multiple audi-
ences, and multiple purposes. Consequently, in both cases we are dealing with
an art of indirection. With character narration, the implied author needs to
motivate the telling according to the logic of the character narrator’s occasion,
audience, and purpose even as the implied author uses that motivated telling
for his or her own different communications to the narrative, authorial, and
actual audiences. With character-character dialogue, the implied author needs
to motivate the conversational disclosures according to the logic of the occa-
sion, the prior relationship between and among the characters, and the ongo-
ing interpersonal dynamics of the conversation itself—even as the implied
author uses the dialogue for his or her own different authorial disclosures to
the other audiences.
These points lead to an even more significant conclusion: we can’t revise
Chatman’s model simply by slotting characters into either or both of his dia-
grams. One or two diagrams won’t be sufficient because adding characters to
the model means that we now have at least two mediated channels (or tracks)
20 • CHAPTER 1
FIGURE 1.2. Duck or rabbit? Source: Jastrow, J. (1899). The mind’s eye. Popular Science
Monthly, 54, 299–312.