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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40096
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40096
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

### All Narrators have photographic memories! Unless you tell us they don't.

Just write them as they happened. Readers are accustomed to narrators, first person or third, having effectively photographic memories of everything that happened. The narrator of most 3rd person novels is disembodied, but speaks in the past tense:

> They made their way down the hall, slowing as they approached the professor's door.
> 
> They heard the professor laugh from within. "She's on the phone," Lily whispered.

But the descriptions they give over the course of hundreds of pages are obviously beyond the capacity of any human's memory, and nobody notices that. The same goes for first person narrative.

**_Unless_** you specifically give the narrator a flawed memory of what happened, or who said what, but this should only be done if it is absolutely necessary to the plot; meaning the story won't work if the narrator **does** have a flawless memory.

but even if that is the case, it is better to make the missing memory selective and explicit:

> I realized I'd been shot. I heard Josh yell, "Gun!", and I thought _too late_, and that is the last thing I remember before waking up in the Sheffield ward. I don't even recall hitting the pavement, though I think this knot on my forehead proves I did.

Then your narrator can have total recall for the rest of the story.

This is just a permission slip readers give authors, how the narrator remembers everything (or knows what they know) so perfectly is not questioned and does not break reading immersion or reverie.

Original score: 3