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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31158
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31158
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I suspect that most reader expect the narrator is not going to die. But you should not look on the device of the involved narrator as requiring the maintenance of strict logic about when the story was written down.

Using an involved narrator is a literary device. It is not intended to imply that the narrator at some point after the end of the story sat down at a keyboard and started typing. In most cases it is just a storytelling device, and you should not take it as anything other than that.

There are cases, of course, in which we are explicitly told that the story we are reading is a manuscript written by the person the tale it told to. This kind of "found manuscript" story was quite popular in 19th century adventure novels.

For an example, look at Kipling's story _The Man Who Would be King_. It is related by the author (as in the text tells you that this is the author speaking) and tells how he was visited by the protagonist both before and after his adventure, and how the protagonist told the tale on his second visit.

But this too is a device, a kind of frame that allows the author to introduce additional information. There is no need at all to allow for the possibility of the narrator actually writing down the story at any point. That would make no sense for many novels that use this technique. If your involved narrator dies, no reasonable or sophisticated reader is going to say, "wait, this is implausible, if he died when did he tell this story?"

Original score: 10