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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35260
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I would say I specialize myself in first person short stories narrated in past tense where the narrator abruptly dies at the end. It's kind of specific, but oh well.

In my experience, most people don't expect this, although I am not sure if it is because of the narration style or because death comes to the narrator without foreshadowing. Another factor could be that my narrator is usually the protagonist, and people don't tend to expect the death of the main character because we are generally used to happy endings.

Logic would tell us that if it is being narrated in past tense, and not part of an "episodic" narration (think a journal), the narrator managed to survive to tell us their story, but there are three possible exceptions: the narrator is narrating just before expiring, in a surprisingly lucid last instant where time stops and they get to analyze the events that led to their demise; the narrator shifts to present tense right before the end, as if the story was one big flashback; or the narrator is indeed narrating their story post-mortem, whether it explicitly alludes to afterlife or not. I have written stories in the first and second cases, and the one I wrote using the first style is one of my favourites.

Tension almost always will arise not from the protagonist's life being at a stake, but from anything else. People often expect happy endings where the protagonist gets to live, unless we are clearly writing a tragedy or a horror story. Nobody expects the action hero to die, so you can use this to your advantage and let the reader get their guards down for the grand cruel finale.

Original score: 1