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Q&A To what extent can a first person narrative tell someone else's story?

There are some questions that you should consider before you write your piece. Why is this person telling this story? Is this narrator reliable? Will this narrator tell the whole truth objective...

posted 6y ago by Double U‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T09:18:53Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37439
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Double U‭ · 2019-12-08T09:18:53Z (over 4 years ago)
There are some questions that you should consider before you write your piece.

1. Why is this person telling this story?

2. Is this narrator reliable? Will this narrator tell the whole truth objectively, letting the readers to decide the morality of the characters, or will he be biased in some way, putting his own spin on the story? What are his motivations for bias?

3. How much does he really know of the protagonist? Is he really close to the protagonist in such a way that he and the protagonist share conversations but he purposefully omits the conversations from his story? Does he secretly read the protagonist's diary entries? If he does neither, then he can only report his own observations of the character's behaviors and conjectures of the character's thought process. He may also insert how the protagonist behaves around other people, including himself, but the protagonist's interactions with the narrator is limited to a few scenes, making the narrator a minor character. It is possible that the narrator gathers information from other people who know the protagonist, and that's how he can write about the protagonist. 

Once you answer these questions, you will know a little bit about your narrator.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-07-04T18:15:40Z (almost 6 years ago)
Original score: 2