Is it bad style if the personal first person narrator of a story dies during said story?
Right now I'm writing a novel in which I use the changing perspectives of two main characters with limited information each to slowly unveil the whole plot to the reader. Both use the past tense and first person (i.e. "When I woke up that morning, rain was pouring down the sky"), as if they were telling pieces of the story after they've experienced it themselves. This concept in itself works quite nicely from a narrative standpoint in my opinion.
I do have a problem, though: One of the two personal narrators needs to die throughout the course of the story.
Now, this leads to a kind of inconsistent situation: If he was dead, he wouldn't be able to tell the story of what happened up to this point afterwards. It destroys the illusion of actually getting the story told by himself.
My question is, now: Is this bad style? Do readers care about something like this or does it fall under "suspension of disbelief"? If it's a problem, what can I do to fix that?
Edit: To add a bit more context: Main character 1 gets killed by main character 2. She doesn't want to kill him, but does it anyways because she's pretending to be part of the "evil state" both were fighting before to smash it from within. He dies thinking that she's bad person, has only taken advantage of him and is cooperating with the state both hated intensely before to save her own life. She has to live with the moral burden of having killed him. I therefore think having him die is a very strong story element and I'd really like to keep it.
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1 answer
If you're internally consistent this can work.
A variety of books are first person, or a third person style that shows the character's thoughts enough that it has the intimacy of first person, but the character doesn't survive the book (or series).
There are countless examples. I just finished a trilogy told in first person, past tense, where the main character dies then is later resurrected.
Major spoiler:
The Binti trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor.
While she's dead, the narrator shifts to third person. Later, it shifts back. These alternate narrator sections are set off in their own chapters (aside from a single first person line at the very end to indicate the main character has returned).
It's not necessary for a character that dies to only use present tense. Past tense is a technique that most of us use when explaining things. It doesn't matter if the events occurred 20 years or 20 seconds ago. Or even if the character's last line is something like: "Her hand twitched and I saw a flash."
Since you're not using ghosts or necromancy, the character's story must stop no later than the moment of death. And you can not tell the story from the framework of the future (like a elder telling his grandchildren about the time he fought the evil people).
These things are not the same as using past tense as a narrative device. Allow your character to die and for his story to stop. Anything to do with him will need to be narrated by someone else.
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