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First Person Narrative
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First Person Narrative
Two different ways of telling the story
Central
Narrator is usually the protagonist, story is a take on what the character sees. There is no divide between the prose and the character's thoughts.
Jim in "The Soul Molecule."
Peripheral
The peripheral narrator is more aware of how the protagonist
interacts with other characters and reacts to his or her environment. The peripheral character isn't the "shadow" of the protagonist.
Example:Narrator in the Great Gatsby
From Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace
“To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation, and sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played around her lips, expressed as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor could nor considered it necessary to correct.”
"A story told from the first-person POV is narrated by a character in the story, usually the story's protagonist. The narrator tells the story of what I did." From GWW
Cons
Pros of 1st Person Narrative
- Stuck within POV of character
- Reliabilty
- Keeping in character
- Harder to show rather than tell
- You can see only what he sees, and can know only what he knows
- Intimacy
- Energy
- Removes distance from reader in story
- good for beginning writer
Present tense as it happens
Reflective, removed from the events
Different narrators
Multiple vision
Allows the same event to be shown from several different character's POV. Usually in longer works of fiction.
Example: the movie Vantage Point
Advice
Unreliable
Geraldine Rizzoli in Vito Loves Geraldine.
Vito Venecio was after me. He'd wanted to get into my pants ever since tenth grade. but even though we hung around with the same crowd back at Evander Childs High School, I never gave him the time of day. I, Geraldine Rizzoli, was the most popular girl in the crowd, I had my pick of guys, you can ask anyone, Carmela or Pamela or Victoria, and they'll agree.
Don't
Do
- Have characters dwell on inner workings of the soul
- Forget the voice of your narrator
- Bring in information your narrator couldn't know
- Make your reader feel stupid.
- Go above the vocabulary or intelligence of your narrator
Writing Exercise
- Have a character look outside themselves.
- Stay true to your character
- Let the reader discover the world along with the character
- Have nuances in the narrator's voice
- Have layers of truth, maybe some deeper ones that the reader understands but the narrator doesn't - dramatic irony
- Give your narrator motives and desires