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Q&A Writing a full conversation in free indirect speech

Since free indirect speech relies on the narrator picking up the dialogue instead of relying on a lot of "John said that he thought that..." or similar, it's going to make it difficult (but not imp...

posted 7y ago by ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T07:19:56Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31406
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere‭ · 2019-12-08T07:19:56Z (about 5 years ago)
Since free indirect speech relies on the narrator picking up the dialogue instead of relying on a lot of "John said that he thought that..." or similar, it's going to make it difficult (but not impossible) to hold an argument with the narrator apparently putting forward opposing views.

Free indirect speech makes one question more important [my opinion] than any other : Who is the narrator?

If the narrator has a strong persona and a significant influence in the way the story is told, there might be cases where free indirect speech could confuse the reader and falling back to indirect / reported speech (or even direct quotation) would be best for the flow of the writing.

Good luck with this one. If it works it's a nice idea, but I'm not sure I could pull it off.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-11-11T12:38:26Z (about 7 years ago)
Original score: 1