: Re: How to Write about Events the 1st-person Protagonist Hasn't Witnessed? Iâ€™ve written a few stories now just at home, however I havenâ€™t seemed to crack one thing. I always write in 1st person

You have several choices.

1) Write a side-story chapter. It could be in third person or first person in the POV of another character that witnessed the event. Third person conveys the detachment from the main character and avoids confusing the casual and distracted reader from confusing the POV holders.

2) Just don't. If the event does not affect the protagonist, it is largely irrelevant. If it is important and when it comes to bite the MC in the proverbial rear guard, the reader will learn about it at the same time as the protagonist. Maybe he discovered letters, a journal (credits to @DPT for this), or someone told him. Opportunity to show how the protagonist reacts to that.

One benefit of #2 is that you gain a lot of time to foreshadow the event's disclosure. It already happened, and ripples begin to hit the MC. Maybe a dragon destroyed a neighbor kingdom. MC finds refugees more and more often, commodities' prices spike, dragonslayer quests are being posted. And then he finds some old guy or a past acquaintance that lost a limb during the dragon's attack. Now the MC is invested in the branching plot. Now the reader is already salivating at the reason for all those strange hints.

You miss on the worldbuilding with postponing however. I am guilty of writing several side chapters on my 1st person web novel.

There is a problem with presenting the side event without the 1st person POV holder being aware, it is almost like a new story. You need to get the reader invested in your side story at a moment it is largely irrelevant to your intimate 1st person story.

On several web novels I just skip these side chapters until they are mentioned on the main plot, a moment when I come back and read them. For most of them I miss nothing by not reading them before they affect the main character (and some times not even after).

So you either write it as a side story in third person or with another 1st person POV, or postpone the presentation of the event until the MC learns about it.

If you are going for the intimate feel, I recommend to keep the immersion and let the reader find out with the MC but either way works.

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