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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28161
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28161
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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.

Original score: 6