Fair warning: this gives everything away, ending included. Then again, the prologue tells you how it ends, so the book spoiled itself first.
Miguel de Unamuno published Niebla (in English, Mist) in 1914, and in case anyone accused him of breaking the rules of the novel, he gave it a different name: a nivola. For writers, it’s the most fun book in this gallery: its hero does what all your characters dream of doing, which is show up at your house and demand an explanation.
The premise in one sentence
An idle rich young man, who lets a passing dog choose which street he walks down, falls for a piano teacher who already has a boyfriend, and has to win her over and, while he’s at it, prove he really exists, before her mockery and his own author’s pen decide for him.
Look at the key verb: decide. Augusto Pérez decides very little, and the one time he decides something for real, his author overrules him.
Augusto’s drawers
- He wants to win Eugenia. Later, something stranger: to know that he exists.
- He needs to get out of the mist: to take charge of his life instead of waiting for a woman, a friend or whoever is writing him to hand him one.
- He believes falling in love will make him real. If he loves, he exists.
- The wound: his mother lived only for him and died six months before page one. He’s left with two servants, a chessboard and no reason to leave the house.
Eugenia becomes that reason. And that’s the trouble: he doesn’t so much love her as need something to do.
Who’s the antagonist?
In our take-apart, Eugenia is the antagonist: she blocks what Augusto wants for most of the book, and she beats him. But the antagonist who shows up out of nowhere, the one nobody can beat, is the author.
A heads-up: Augusto and his friends say things about women that are very 1914, and he goes as far as running “experiments in female psychology” on Eugenia and on Rosario, the laundry girl. The good news is that the book laughs at him: Rosario kisses him before he knows what he was measuring, and Eugenia agrees to marry him only to run off with her boyfriend and live off the house Augusto gave her. The experimenter ends up as the lab frog.
Who tells it?
This is where it gets playful. It opens with a prologue by Víctor Goti, Augusto’s best friend, who insists Augusto killed himself. Then comes a post-prologue by Unamuno denying it, and warning Goti that if he gets too annoying, the same could happen to him.
After that, a quiet external narrator who chimes in now and then. In chapter 25 he drops the act and declares himself his characters’ God. In chapter 31 he welcomes Augusto into his study in Salamanca.
In Sunday Plot we treated it as a novel with several narrators. The “Narrator” field shows Augusto almost every time, Eugenia in the three scenes he’s not in, Unamuno whenever the author talks about himself, and Orfeo, the dog, in the closing funeral oration. Checks will ask whether it’s on purpose that Orfeo narrates a single scene. It is.
Wake the Dragon: where it fits and where it doesn’t
All fourteen pieces of Wake the Dragon show up in a novel written with no plan, and in order. Nothing to See Here (Yet) is Augusto at his front door with his umbrella, waiting for a dog to walk by so he’ll know where to go. All Hell Breaks Loose: a young woman walks by instead, he follows her, and the doorkeeper hands him her name. Somebody Else’s Job is Augusto in a nutshell: Eugenia has a boyfriend, so he asks his servants what to do, then his mother’s memory, then a newborn puppy. Someone Has Other Plans: Eugenia and Mauricio mean to live off him. And the author has plans for his character too. No piece has ever lived up to its name so well.
Upside Down is a textbook false victory: he proposes to Eugenia as an experiment, sure she’ll say no, and she says yes. Rock Bottom is the letter: Eugenia has run off with Mauricio. He loses exactly that yes. Now It All Makes Sense: he goes to Salamanca and Unamuno tells him he doesn’t exist, his lie turned inside out, word for word. Go Big or Go Home: he stands up to his author and, for the first time, wants something. And in Happily Ever After (or Not) he eats like never before and dies. He did get his dinner. A dog opened the picture and another one closes it: Orfeo, at his master’s feet.
Now, honestly, what doesn’t fit. Augusto doesn’t decide No Turning Back: a canary falls off a balcony, he carries it upstairs, and Eugenia’s aunt declares him a suitor. It happens to him. On the Offensive doesn’t fit either: the wedding plans carry him along, and he doesn’t act because he doesn’t know how. Both are flexible pieces, and here “not in this one,” or “someone else does it,” is the right answer. That no is the novel. If your protagonist keeps failing the same question, ask yourself whether it’s on purpose.
The timing doesn’t add up either. Now for the Fun Part eats more than half the book, and Upside Down lands around four-fifths of the way in, not in the middle. The pieces hold; the percentages don’t. Order is what counts. And Now It All Makes Sense gets explained to him, when usually your protagonist works it out alone. In a book about a character and his author, that’s the whole joke.
That Wasn’t in the Plan is Víctor, who changes Augusto’s question, not his character. Augusto tells himself that life is a mist; when Víctor calls him a “fictional being” in chapter 10, it’s a joke. By chapter 31 it’s literal.
One scene, taken apart
“You don’t exist,” chapter 31:
- Goal: Augusto has decided to kill himself and goes to Salamanca to run it past his author.
- Conflict: the author tells him he can’t kill himself because he isn’t alive. Augusto pulls himself together and hits back: maybe you’re the fictional one. He reminds Unamuno that even so-called fictional beings have their own inner logic.
- Outcome: no, and worse. Fed up, Unamuno decides Augusto will die. Augusto begs to live and, when that fails, tells him he’ll die too, and so will all his readers.
It starts badly and ends worse, but it’s the only scene where Augusto truly wants something: being told he doesn’t exist is what makes him want to live. That night he eats like a condemned man, writes out a telegram, “You got your way. I’m dead” (our translation), and dies.
What writers can learn from it today
That Augusto has a point: a character with a logic of their own resists being pushed around on a whim, and when you force it, it shows. Unamuno turned that into the plot.
And that a protagonist with no willpower works if that’s what the book is about and everyone around them wants plenty: Eugenia wants to owe him nothing, her aunt wants to marry her off, Mauricio wants someone to support him, Víctor wants to write.
For today
Picture your protagonist knocking on your door. What would they complain about? Which choice in your outline would they call your whim, not theirs?
In Sunday Plot, open their sheet in the Story bible and look at their drawers. If a scene forces them into something that goes against what they want, what they need and the lie they believe, Augusto might be right.