Persons and Tenses: Narrators

[Kriemedean]

All this thought about trends and no one has mentioned the most prominent one: third person perspective. Even past and present tenses duke it out once in a while, but third person is unopposed in role-play. It's not that I have a preference over one or the other and I write notes in third person, but it would be interesting to see some diversity. First person, according to teachers, is often easier than third and both are superseded in difficulty by second person perspective. What seems to make these things so rare is that role-play requires two or more authors, or rather characters. Yes, a narrator is a character.

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It's easy to overlook, since this is clearly fiction and everyone thinks that they are the omniscient, perfect godly computer telling the story, so it works well for two narcissists. (Yeah, I'm one of them; sue me.) However, they are indeed characters by the manner in which they tell the story, dialects and idiosyncrasies and all that. For instance, J. R. R. Tolkien presented himself as a character, the translator of A Hobbit's Tale and the Lord of the Rings, written by two hobbits in their own language of their own tales (notably still in third person but could have been in first). Still, in this, there were at least two characters to each story, each with his own point of view in describing the events, even the ones where neither hobbit was there, and Tolkien's own idiomatic translation.

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Admittedly, there is attitudes associated with first and second person, which make them desirable to some and less to others. However, while there are leanings towards personalities in these personal perspectives, that doesn't mean that they have to be that way. First person, has often been used for funny or mousy characters when they described things that relate to something else (red as Aunt Judy's hair or soft as downy or red as rage or soft as butter, each distinct in mood and history), and second for cynical or apologetic ones. However, there have been those that use reporters in first person and businessmen in second person with that same unerring, unadulterated tone that people love in third person. It really gives that last umph to story-telling when there is that intimate recalling, because it gives realism and brings sympathy out from the audience.

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Speaking of audience, the author is not the only character. Second person in particular brings this out, since the audience is now identified and in the forefront, but this is another layer of communication. What would the speaker say to the listener? In one story, it was a letter written by an adulterous wife to her husband, describing what he was doing while she was doing someone else. The apologetic nature and personal relationship between the two makes it feel as if you are sneaking a peek at the innermost secrets of someone's life in their diary, made even more shocking by the relationship they promised to one another. Others who could be the audience: yourself (you basketcase), a friend (which is good for practicing other perspectives), an imaginary friend (also good...nutjob), someone suffering from memory loss, a dead guy and even just someone who you are repeating their story to, to be sure that it is correct (with the added bonus of another unidentified character verbatim reporting/dictating your conversation!)

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Again, reliability is a concern for people, but the fun part about recognizing that your narrator is a character is that its reliability is questionable. Anyone who has ever watched How I Met Your Mother knows this and laughs at the obvious self-centered retelling of events. Maybe there is bias or history, such as an Ozzy (who's grammar and slang is slightly different) speaking to a Brit about a Yankee about a war recently had between them in the story. Culture and values become important to keep in mind should your storyteller be deceitful or confused, made even more exciting when you switch speakers. Increasingly this is seen on television shows, specifically comedy, like Scrubs where it might switch between its typical character's innermost thoughts and awareness of surroundings to that of another/others. I once read a fanfiction where two characters dodged back and forth as speakers, explaining their viewpoints and actions while conversely stumbling in confusion over the other's; such a great story!

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Knowing and all-knowledge also comes into play with these narrators. Have you heard something similar to, "He didn't know it yet, but (such-and-such) would come to eat his words," from the narrator? This is often described as Omniscience in Third Person Perspective. Why not this in first or second; who made these rules? (As a side protest to strict conformity, one author who is now considered classical (while current authors' writings are considered New Age stunts) would use black pages to describe a death and another wrote notes at the bottom of the page so as not to disturb the flow of the story, because after all it was a real story and you should know the happenings of that world, since ours does not exist.) What if the narrator is psychic or used a tool, magic, computer or otherwise, to draw the information out of other characters?

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This again brings up tense, since foresight, hindsight and current-sight (?) in deciding the vantage of the narrator and audience. If I am the Oracle, then I might speak in a future tense or in present tense as I experience the event in my mind's eye or in past tense as a dream I had last night. A cursed book might write in blood what end you will meet or what you are doing at this very moment or what you have done as evidenced against your murderous crime. I have no problem with these and, again, my preference is for past tense to signify that an action has ended, but for God's sake show a little spontaneity! Even if you were to switch tense in a story, give it a reason and it's legit. So, yeah, that's my rant, and I'd like to hear your thoughts, good or bad, OR ELSE.

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[rumxcoke]

Ha ha

[Kriemedean]

HOLY MOLEY, I almost missed this post. Short, but I'll take it!