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It would be difficult to pull off a first person murderer in a mystery format and still play fair with the audience. About the only way I can see to make it work is to present the entire narrati...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T07:59:05Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33335 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
Chris Sunami
·
2019-12-08T07:59:05Z (about 5 years ago)
It would be difficult to pull off a first person murderer in a mystery format and still play fair with the audience. About the only way I can see to make it work is to present the entire narrative as a fictionalized story (or perhaps notes for a story) that the narrator is writing about his own experience. With that as the framework, it makes sense that the narrator is deliberately concealing his own guilt --it lessens the presumption of transparent insight into the narrator's mind that we expect from a first person narrative. It also gives you a possible secondary motivation for your MC --he's doing primary research for his own writing (observing people's reactions, etc.). In essence, you'll be presenting two overlapping stories here --a murder mystery, as written by your MC, and a thriller (where it is not as important to conceal the murderer's identity), as presented by you, the real author. I think this also meets your larger goal of serving up a bit of (hopefully not too) relatable metafiction for an audience of writers.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-02-16T19:55:16Z (almost 7 years ago)
Original score: 1