Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A 1st person story, but the main character will die in the end and some of the story needs to be told after his death. How to solve this problem?

I see two problems. First, if the person died, how did the story come to be set down in writing? This is a problem whether the story continues after the narrator's death or not. Some readers wil...

posted 11y ago by Dale Hartley Emery‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:48:50Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7620
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Dale Hartley Emery‭ · 2019-12-08T02:48:50Z (over 4 years ago)
I see two problems. First, if the person died, how did the story come to be set down in writing? This is a problem whether the story continues after the narrator's death or not. Some readers will accept this; others will not.

The second problem is the use of _only_ an epilogue. Readers often feel swindled if a new POV suddenly appears after the MC dies. This can be a problem even for single-POV third person narrations.

One way way to reduce the second problem is to add not only an epilogue, but a _frame._ Open the story from a different character's POV, then close the story from within the same frame narrator's POV.

A frame can also help with the first problem, as long as the frame narrator has some reason to know the first person story. Not just the story, but the _first person_ story. Even better is if there is some strong relationship between the two narrators.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2013-04-09T19:12:16Z (about 11 years ago)
Original score: 3