Ye old Storyteller...

[Steerpike]

In that case, I'd suggest starting with a story that utilizes the deep 1st person POV to full effect.

Lolita​ is a great example of this.

 

[HellionHeloise]

I think a narrative voice with personality & presence is a vital part about what makes reading compelling. Anything that is meta & draws your attention to the writing itself has always been something I find exciting as a reader. It's very postmodern, whereas a lot of fantasy today is strongly influenced by our image/movie-obsessed society & focused on "show not tell". That's not all bad, but I think variety is important.

I find it difficult to execute this in my own writing because I am writing in 1st person POV right now & have been wondering if I need to make a change. It's hard to build out the world & describes things without seeming heavy-handed.

Do any of you have tricks that keep you in the correct narrator role when you're writing/editing? I seem to wander between different narrative categories as I go.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Do any of you have tricks that keep you in the correct narrator role when you're writing/editing? I seem to wander between different narrative categories as I go.

I used a few tricks to help me stay "in character" when I wrote the fairy-tale style narration for Emma's Story:
- Avoid using the definitive article, the (that's definitive article, right?)
- Do not use names for any characters. Instead of Emma, the fairy tale voice says a young woman.
- Use present tense.
- Use repetition.

For example, if I wanted to say something along the lines of Emma left the inn the fairy tale voice would say that as a young woman leaves a village inn.

Actual example from the story:

The morning is still dark when a young woman’s expedition leaves the village between the hills. Eight voices, four horses, and two sleds cross a bridge lit by lanterns, over a river black with cold. Past the river, where the forest stands tall and silent, waits a day on the road. Past the river, in the east, waits the rising sun.

Instead of saying something to the effect of there being eight people split across two sleds drawn by two horses each, I'm using the Eight voices... thing, which achieves the same thing, but requires a tiny bit more of the reader.

What's important to note is that these weren't rules that I set up from the start. Rather these were "rules" that I derived from what I'd already written and which I broke as often as not throughout the story.

EDIT: The full first draft of the story is available here: Emma’s Story – s v r t n s s e
I'm currently on the third draft and while the main story is the same, it contains an extra chapter and most of the first chapter is different.

EDIT2: Don't be afraid if you end up writing in rhymes or in verse from time to time, just don't overdo it. Now and then, here and there, it can be quite powerful.

EDIT3: Take all advice with a pinch of salt and apply them as you wish.

 

[vaiyt]

1st person POV is best when the POV character can spin a decent yarn themself. Someone with personality, a view of the world that's worth delving into or at least an entertaining voice. That's my opinion at least. You can also use 1st person POV to hide information from the reader, but 3rd person non-omniscient works for that too.

 

[AElisabet]

1st person POV is best when the POV character can spin a decent yarn themself. Someone with personality, a view of the world that's worth delving into or at least an entertaining voice. That's my opinion at least. You can also use 1st person POV to hide information from the reader, but 3rd person non-omniscient works for that too.

Yes - to me this kind of personality is what makes a first person narration. A person is telling you their story because their story is important, at least to them, and they are enough of a character to grab you by the collar and make you want to hear it.

I'm also just heartened from reading this thread that I am not the only person out there who misses the storyteller voice and omni POV. I don't care much for 3rd limited most of the time - I actually find it more distancing and claustrophobic.

And some of the "rules" that are given for 3rd limited are so constraining that much of it ends up sounding nothing at all like the intimate consciousness of most people - in real life people do think about their appearance, they imagine and interpret events that they haven't witnessed, they think about, assume, or even sometimes know what other people are thinking without consciously filtering those assumptions, etc. The only writer I've read who really *did* 3rd limited in a way that felt like reading the inner life of a character was Hilary Mantel in Wolf Hall. And she broke pretty much every rule of the POV and did it with flair.

I love omniscient narration and would love to see it make more of a comeback in genre writing. Omni and storyteller voice is far more common and acceptable in "literary" fiction right now. I'm hoping as the lines between "genre" and "literary" blur (which I think is happening with writers like Chabon, Gaiman, and Ishiguro) omni and the storyteller voice will become more acceptable in fantasy writing again.

I've noticed in just the past eight years since I started taking writing seriously - reading forums and blogs and books on craft - that there has been a trend from a rigid "omni is dated, don't do it" mentality to a more accepting "omni is a hard, but valid, POV."