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Q&A How can one character narrate past events to another character?

It can be a nice way to show the past from a different point of view. As long as it's not only a long exposition of things that the other character should already know this can be very interesting ...

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

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-12T23:01:21Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33959
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T08:12:33Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33959
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T08:12:33Z (about 5 years ago)
It can be a nice way to show the past from a different point of view. As long as it's not only a long exposition of things that the other character should already know this can be very interesting for the reader. Imagine for example two friends talking about _the good old times_ and remembering funny or interesting character traits of the other - how these changed, which of these persisted. How their present knowledge would have helped them and how they interacted with each other.

You should make sure that character 1 doesn't tell character 2 how they felt or what they should already know, like the fact that they have lived somewhere for the first ten years of their life. Character 1 should talk about how they perceived an event and tell character 2 about remarkable things they _told them_. For example character 2 could have said something encouraging while the two of them were exploring an old cavern - maybe character 2 has already forgotten all about this little remark, but it stayed with character throughout their life. Showing the impact of one character on the other one is a good way to give the reader the feeling of a real conversation and helps to show important character traits and the relationship of the two characters.

Depending on your style and your goal with the interaction you could also inform the reader about how reliable one of the characters is. Humans have the tendency to mix some of their past memories, so showing that a character can be fallible is one possibility by letting them state something and the other character correcting them. This should not be something big, like whether the event really happened if you don't have some topic about mind-altering drugs, time-travel or similar things - it should be something like whether the sun was still high in the sky or already on its way down. Whether the tree was 5 meters high or 6. Things that could easily be slightly misremembered.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-03-04T10:22:29Z (almost 7 years ago)
Original score: 1