Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

What makes first person plural a tricky narrative voice?

+1
−0

I absolutely loved Joshua Ferris's debut novel Then We Came to the End. Critics highly praised his use for the first person plural as a narrator. The work is set in an office and the "we" used represents the group of employees.

I can think of several ideas that seem like they would be candidates for a first person plural narrator - a group of neighbors, students in a high school class, soldiers in a battle unit, any sort of cohesive group you can think of.

What are the pitfalls that I have to look out for when writing in the first person plural? What will jolt the reader out of his or her enjoyment of my story and characters and make him or her focus too much on the narrative voice? What can the first person plural voice not realistically convey? If I were to use the first person plural to write about a group of characters, when should I consider breaking out of it?

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/997. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »