How can I convey an absolute truth from the author to the reader without a mentor character?
There are sometimes moments in works of fiction where the author needs to convey something to the reader without ambiguity. Let's say the situations around the characters get so weird that the author starts to worry that the reader will think it is all a dream. The author needs to convey an absolute truth to the reader saying it is not, getting past that hangup and moving further.
The way I see this most commonly done in fiction is with the mentor character. Gandalf always tells the absolute truth about the universe. Even if Bilbo Baggins meets Gandalf in a weird situation if Gandalf says this is not a dream, the reader will believe it's not a dream.
Another such devices I commonly see is using small children. If a small child likes a character they are not evil. It's that simple.
Now in my work I don't have a mentor or a small child available. What is another way I can signal the reader that something is absolutely true, and they do not need to worry about it?
You can tell the reader directly and that is how it is commonly done. > The world wasn't as bad as Jamie thought, but …
6y ago
If you want to say something to the reader, just say it. You are writing a novel, not a movie. You are narrating the who …
6y ago
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If you want to say something to the reader, just say it. You are writing a novel, not a movie. You are narrating the whole thing and everything in it is said by you to the reader.
In LOTR, Tolkien outright tells us all sorts of things. There are other things that we learn only when they are spoken by a character, usually because it is crucial to the development of a character that they learn about this thing at this time. The revelation is part of the moral development of the character arc, and so it is appropriate that we learn of it when the character does -- we are following their journey, after all and we learn as they learn.
But there is no absolute obligation to reveal all information in this way. There may be information that the character already knows that the reader does not, or information that the reader needs to know before the character or that the character never finds out. Thus there is all sorts of information about the Shire and the habits of hobbits that Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin would all be totally aware of. So Tolkien simply tells us that information directly.
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You can tell the reader directly
and that is how it is commonly done.
The world wasn't as bad as Jamie thought, but he didn't know it at the time.
That's why you call it an "omniscient narrator".
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35568. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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