Greetings fam!
I have an unusual question I’d like your advice on. I have a unique POV that I’m attempting to crack. It’s close 3rd person but bridges two characters. For context, imagine that a pair of identical twins have telepathy and are always together. The story establishes that they are both adding to the narrative. Say character A pays attention to emotional details while B notes physical reality, how would you establish that and differentiate between character A and B?
This relates to my contest entry so I’m being intentionally vague on the specifics. These details are more involved than I’m suggesting and relate to the plot. The story follows character A, where B realizes that A is narrating (non-spoken). This isn’t necessarily breaking the 4th wall either. Due to their telepathy, character B understands that A is causing a narrative to land on a page.
I’m adding an excerpt from a separate work to help illustrate what I’m describing. Just imagine that we’ve previously identified characters who are annotating their parts.
Excerpt:
Paragraph one focuses on internal details while paragraph two focuses on the environment. I’ve intentionally italicized the second paragraph because that’s how I originally formatted my story. Here, Grace would be made aware that a 2nd character is narrating what she is not. This creates a two-fold problem. First, it absconds with an inner monologue’s typical formatting, which would deny Grace this ability. Second, I don’t know that I like the italicized paragraphs, especially when character B contributes a lot.
So what are your thoughts? How do you think it should be formatted/delineated? If it was previously established, would partitioning emotions and reality into separate paragraphs be enough to clearly identify who is contributing what to the narrative?
I’ve considered omniscient narration, but it doesn’t quite fit the story. I’ve also considered writing character A in first person, where B’s is added in as 3rd. I think this option is too jarring, though.
Have you seen something similar done in another story? If so, how did they pull it off? What story/book do you think would serve as a good reference?
Thanks in advance!
JT
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Reference?
The Muppet show.
"Hahahahaha..."
Avenger penguins?
Anything else with two narrators.
Sport, hack, spot.
Wonderful life?
An interesting idea, likely easily spotted I feel. But good luck.
I've thought of this kind of thing before, making the writing alive of sorts.
Seperating it like you show could be problematic. Nauseating to read perhaps.
Mixing it line by line, italics for one, may work better and feel more real time, as opposed to turn based. More realistic arguments.
May be better to write it in a normal fashion, but allow the feeling and sight motifs be the difference.
Like:
She grabbed the coat, romancing about him. She grabbed the coat. She grabbed the coat WHILE romancing about him. She just grabbed the darn coat. She was a romantic. She was a blonde. And romantic. No, just a blonde.
But could look like bad dialogue writing.
RxLOTS
HMx1 (somewhere in the middle)
Personally, I'm OK with the way it's done. Once you get into the rhythm, you get it. Italics should be for off screen dialog and narration anyway.
I do agree that it will be tricky, but it seems an interesting way to tell a story.
Short story.
That's what I said.
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Thank you for the feedback! I believe I've found a workable solution. I was able to mitigate my italics concern. Ultimately, I'm trusting the reader to understand after an initial setup 😋 Thank you for sharing your thoughts! They were helpful!
F:0 / SF:0 / SHM:0 / HM:1 / RWC:2 / R:1
Previous Submissions: Q2V40, Q3V41, Q1V42, Q2V42, Q3V42
Q4V42 Window: In Development
www.sagaheim.net
