Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/44236
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/44236
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In novels, when the PoV follows a particular character, is pretty common that we get to hear his/her thoughts. Sometimes, those thoughts take the form of questions that the character ask himself:

> _What does that mean?_ Jodie pondered.

Of course another way to do this is to cut the internal dialogue entirely and make the narrator report the question:

> She wondered what the meaning could be.

But there's another way: making the narrator ask the question directly. This comes pretty naturally when the PoV is a first-person one, e.g., Jodie:

> What was the meaning of that? Heck, I didn't know.

But I've seen it done before, and I tend to do it, even with third-person narrators, be they limited or not:

> What was the meaning of that? Was it ok to ask? Jodie held those questions in her mind, while her fingers surfed on the keyboard and the white light of Writing SE blazed on the screen.

The question is direct, but it's not a thought; we're not in a stream of consciousness, and the narrator is otherwise impersonal.

What's happening here, to my understanding, is that the third person narrator is borrowing the "voice" of a given character for a little while, making the question in his/her stead.

## Can this be done with a third-person narrator?

Maybe it makes no sense. It's pretty natural to do something like that in first person, but it might be a skill that has no right to exist when the narrator changes.

Original score: 4