: Re: Is it bad writing or bad story telling if first person narrative contains more information than the narrator knows? Here are a few examples of the narrator knowing more than he should. (A)

@Debbie451

Vote Up Vote Down

(A) In a humourous short story about Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Bertie is talking about a situation involving two strangers and Jeeves suggests referring to them as A & B. When another stranger enters that situation, Jeeves suggests "We will call him C, sir" and Bertie says, "Caesar is a good name".

Bertie can write this because he's relaying a story after the fact. He can understand that he originally thought Jeeves was referring to the Roman leader, but subsequently realized his trusted valet was saying the letter C with the ol' feudal spirit. He's sharing the unintentional pun with the reader.

(B) In a Detective story, a criminal who is a habitual liar talks about a crime involving "Doyle" and the narrator uses this name throughout the novel but gets no matching record. He assumes the criminal is lying, until he checks with alternate spellings like "Doyel" & "Doile" and gets the matching records.

This is fine because the story stays consistent with what the narrator knows. But once the narrator learns the correct name, he should use the correct name.

(C) In too many movies, we see cases like the narrator explains how something happened, but the flashback scenes include scenes where the narrator is not around or cannot know.

This is wrong. As an editor, I would call this out immediately. If the story is first-person or third-person limited, then this is information that the narrator cannot know. The story would have to switch to third-person omniscient.

As an example, the Harry Potter series is set in third-person limited from Harry's POV with the exception of two first chapters, in books 1 and I think 5. Those are third-person omniscient. Rowling did it for effect, and it's fine because it's the first chapter and obviously for effect.

(0)

Login to post a comment!