: 1st person story, but the main character will die in the end and some of the story needs to be told after his death. How to solve this problem? I personally like to read stories told by

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I struggled with this problem myself for a while until I came up with a few ideas to settle this issue. You can use the main characters death as a plot device to kickstart a second POV that leads into the next book in the timeline and can tie up loose ends in the story and it's timeline.

The way I did this is by starting the epilogue in the same way the prologue starts so the reader has a whoa, that is what happened at the beginning moment. Similar to the final paragraph of the outsiders. In my book it starts with a prologue of the main character having a nightmare. She she wakes up she does a reality check and starts listing some things about herself and the surroundings to make sure she isn't still dreaming.

In the epilogue after she dies I include a blank page after her last sentence as the first person POV. In the epilogue it continues with her best friend doing the same kind of reality check and lists things about himself and his surroundings.

He does this because he is in denial of her death this brings back the feeling from the beginning of the book as well as allows the new character to clear up and show what happened after the main characters death.

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You need not switch narrators or anything like that. You can still continue the story to give the impression that the main character is still a mute witness watching over incidents from above.

If I am correct, in the novel "A Stone for Danny Fisher" by Harold Robbins, the main protagonist dies in the end but starts the novel from beyond the grave, explaining to his family how he got there and the story of his life. Use the style which best suits you but keep in mind that the story and continuity of the novel should not be interrupted.

Cheers. :)

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I know it's two years later, but in case others have the same question...

Just end it. Write in the first person, try and tie up any loose ends before the death. Then, BANG, your narrator is dead. Last page. Last sentence. Bang. The narrator never gets to finish the book.

With this, you can get creative. Discuss chest pains, numbness in the left arm, nausea, all signs of a heart attack, and then the last sentence of the book ends mid-sentence signifying that your narrator died before they could finish the book.

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Another possibility is to write absolutely nothing more because your character is dead and consider what you would have wanted to add as the beginning of your next book.

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I had this question a while ago and I guess there are 2 good ways to do it.
1) In [insert very popular YA book here], the [number] book of the series is written in 2 POV's, unlike the rest of the series. So when [main character that I was actually glad died b/c I was trying to prove a point to my friend] died, the other character narrated.
2) Newspaper articles and emails.

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I see two problems. First, if the person died, how did the story come to be set down in writing? This is a problem whether the story continues after the narrator's death or not. Some readers will accept this; others will not.

The second problem is the use of only an epilogue. Readers often feel swindled if a new POV suddenly appears after the MC dies. This can be a problem even for single-POV third person narrations.

One way way to reduce the second problem is to add not only an epilogue, but a frame. Open the story from a different character's POV, then close the story from within the same frame narrator's POV.

A frame can also help with the first problem, as long as the frame narrator has some reason to know the first person story. Not just the story, but the first person story. Even better is if there is some strong relationship between the two narrators.

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There are a few ways to solve this:

1) Switch narrators.

Everything is told by your main character until his/her death, at which point some other character finishes the story.

2) Your narrator continues narrating from after death in some supernatural fashion.

Your narrator could become a ghost or spirit, wander disembodied, communicate through Ouija board/séance, etc.

This was done very subtly in the novel Song of Achilles, written from the first-person perspective of Achilles's partner Patroclus. Patroclus is killed by Hector. (I assume I'm not spoiling anyone for the Trojan War...) But for the Greeks, a person's soul couldn't enter Hades (the underworld) until s/he was given proper funeral rites and his/her grave marked. So Patroclus is able to stay on as a disembodied soul for the last 15% of the book, telling us what happened after his death. (I won't spoil the ending of that novel. Go read it. Moving, beautiful, amazing. I cried.)

3) Switch narrative styles.

If it's literally only a page and a half, change to a third-person narrative style, maybe even set it in italics, to make it clear it's an epilogue because your first-person narrator is dead.

Or have a series of newspaper articles, blog posts, emails, letters, etc. reporting/discussing what happened after your narrator's death.

ETA

4) See the answers to this question: Ways for main character to influence world following their death

I'd forgotten about this question earlier. It's not a duplicate by any means, since your story is not interactive, but you may find something useful in those answers.

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Perhaps your character can tell the story while being in heaven (or hell) like in The Lovely Bones? (This won't work of course if your character is an atheist).

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