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Q&A How ordinary must my protagonist be if the book is written from his/her point of view?

You practically answered your own question. In these two cases, you should probably use a third party narrator. "very intelligent, like Sherlock Holmes (In the books, Dr. Watson is the point of v...

posted 9y ago by Tom Au‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T04:04:15Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/16327
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Tom Au‭ · 2019-12-08T04:04:15Z (almost 5 years ago)
You practically answered your own question.

In these two cases, you should probably use a third party narrator.

"very intelligent, like Sherlock Holmes (In the books, Dr. Watson is the point of view)   
very limited, some say stupid or mentally handicapped, like Hodor from A Song of Ice and Fire"

The first person shouldn't narrate, and the second person can't.

Most other people can narrate for themselves, even "above average" people, as long as they aren't "outliers." In the above, Holmes is an "outlier" who makes Dr. Watson look "average" by comparison (he's actually well above average).

Other than the above, you don't need to "limit" your characters, just so they can be (self) narrators.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2015-02-25T15:56:56Z (over 9 years ago)
Original score: 2