Is it plausible for a narrator to "hear" and describe sounds which would normally be out of earshot?
Found myself in a bit of a logical pickle in regard to the below piece:
The number nine growled sleepily from around the corner that morning, the night’s virgin snow crunching beneath its multitude of rubber feet.
Say the narrator is not omnipotent, telling the story as if he were a bystander on the bus stop.
There is only one line passing through that particular stop i.e. our narrator knowing the number of the bus while it is still behind the corner is believable enough.
The distance to the corner is close enough for everyone at the stop to be able to hear the bus's engine sounds, yet far enough for the crunching of the snow beneath the bus's wheels to be, normally, unintelligible to bystanders and the narrator alike.
What rules of logic and/or style would the narrator be breaking (if any) if he were to choose to describe the snow's sound, for the sake of extra detail, as depicted in the above quote? How would such a choice affect the description's plausibility?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/28707. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
for the sake of extra detail
There's your problem.
Don't add extra detail which your POV character can't perceive. Find someplace else to put the pretty phrase or leave it in your slush file.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads