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The subject of your sentence can be something other than the MC when you're writing in first person. For example: My phone rang or Footsteps were coming down the alley behind me You don...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T21:57:26Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38722 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T09:45:22Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38722 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
The subject of your sentence can be something other than the MC when you're writing in first person. For example: > My phone rang or > Footsteps were coming down the alley behind me You don't need to always narrate in the active: "I saw", "I heard", "I conquered". You don't even need to specify your character's presence - it's assumed. My first example could just as easily have been "the phone rang". **There is, however, a crucial difference between my second example, and your example.** When you say "were heard", there's the immediate question "by whom". Since the story is told in first person, this question should never arise. The answer is always "I - the narrator - heard". On this account, your instinct was right. But if the footsteps "were coming", then it's implied that the narrator heard them, there's no need to specify "I heard footsteps coming."
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-09-05T21:41:36Z (about 6 years ago)
Original score: 8