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Q&A Dead as a point-of-view, how can you write first person narrative if that person is dead?

In short I'd like to write a story from the point-of-view of a character who ultimately dies within the narrative without the story being either A. a ghost story or B. a life/after-life retrospecti...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Ash‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T09:14:21Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/37246
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Ash‭ · 2019-12-08T09:14:21Z (over 4 years ago)
In short I'd like to write a story from the point-of-view of a character who ultimately dies within the narrative without the story being either A. a ghost story or B. a life/after-life retrospective narrated after the fact by the dead character. What techniques can I use to write a first person, present tense, narrative from the point of view of a character who is clearly dead. Is there a trick to doing this without creating a moment of frisson when the narrator dies or is there always going to be a jolt there? I'm trying to gauge, among other things, whether I can kill a character and still have them give a post-mortem, for them, wrap without changing the narrative into something I don't want it to be.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-06-26T15:38:21Z (almost 6 years ago)
Original score: 4