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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28388
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28388
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Perhaps the most famous example of switching from an involved to external narrator is Dickens _Bleak House_. _No Country for Old Men_ by Cormac McCarthy is a more recent (and shorter) example. It is worth noting that in both these cases, there is far more than a change of narrator going on. The whole tone and mood and attitude shifts as well.

The effect, in both cases, is quite startling. It is not a small change, but a big one, one that forces you to sit up and take notice. I can't prove it, but I think this may be an essential part of making it work. I suspect this is a go big or go home kind of thing.

I think it is mistaken to think that reader's identification with the character is increased by the use of an involved narrator (I regard "first person" as a misnomer because most of what they write will actually be in the third person). As human beings, we relate to the people we meet, observing them from the outside, not the inside. Writing from within one person's head had an intensely introspective quality, but introspection is not particularly revealing of character. By their fruits ye shall know them. We get to understand people by their actions. And beware long thoughtful musings. It is the easiest thing to be self indulgent about, and the hardest thing to make interesting to others.

Plenty of people identify with Harry Potter, and those books are all written with an external narrator.

In short, the desire to have the reader identify with the character may be neither a necessary nor a sufficient reason for switching to an involved narrator in the middle of a book.

Original score: 4