First-person narrative: Does it make more sense to focus on internal thoughts than external gestures?

I'll go out on a limb here and argue the second example is objectively better.

The problem with the first is that it changes perspectives in the same paragraph. The first sentence is something that only an outside observer could notice, while the second is completely first-person. As a reader trying to get into your head, I feel like I'm being jerked around.

You could salvage the first by rephrasing it to something your first-person observer might notice. For example:

I felt my head shake in disbelief. Could someone I barely knew know so much about me?

This could probably be cleaned up more, but the idea is there. This version reports only things your first-person observer would have noticed.

posted over 7 years ago

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T.E.D.‭

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There is a third, and, to me, preferable alternative. The two alternatives you have given are both attempts at what we might call invisible narration. The reader is not listening to a narrator but somehow eavesdropping on a scene.

No, impossible. Could someone I barely knew know so much about me?

This is the reader essentially eavesdropping on the POV character's internal monologue. It is rather awkward position from which to observe a scene long term.

I shook my head unavailingly. Could someone I barely knew know so much about me?

This is a mixture. The first sentence is kind of fly on the wall. It is third party observation narrated in the first person, which is kind of weird. The second sentence is eavesdropping on internal monologue like the first.

A much simpler and more natural approach is actual first person narration. That is, you write it as a person would say it if they were telling the story to the reader:

I shook my head, wondering who someone I barely knew could know so much about me.

or,

I wondered how someone I had barely met could know so much about me.

or,

I was surprised that someone I had barely met could know so much about me.

This is the most natural and straightforward form of first person narrative. It is the easiest for the reader to follow and the easiest to write. It will largely avoid the need to ask yourself exactly these kinds of questions. Unless there is a really good reason for them, exotic narrative modes generally just get in the way of telling a good story, which should be any author's main concern.

posted over 7 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Mark Baker‭

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