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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23868
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23868
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

To be honest, I couldn't even follow it in the question. I wonder if you may just be trying too hard not to have a narrator. I realize everyone wants to do first person narration these days, but that is a highly restrictive form and often results in false notes even when the protagonist stays conscious.

Even with a first person narrator, though, it is possible, and even common, to introduce some narrative distance. The first person narrator does not have to always narrate in the immediate present. They can report to the reader things that they were not present/conscious for.

Trying to maintain stream of consciousness narrative when the narrator is unconscious just does not seem like the best narrative choice. However you do it, it is going to feel like a gimmick, and the last thing you want is for the reader to be taken out of the story by the gimmicky way the story is told.

I fear an exaggerated reading of "show, don't tell" has got writers shunning any kind of narrative distance. Yet narrative distance is one of the best tools in the writer's toolbox and is used to great affect by many of today's most prominent authors, and by virtually all authors of the past.

Original score: 2