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rolanni"First person" narratives are sometimes called "I stories." This is because the story is told solely from the point of view of a single character, who refers to herhisoritself as "I."
A story told in "rotating first person" means that there are several characters involved in a work, each pursuing hisherorits own story, and each referring to themselves as "I."
"Third person" narratives are sometimes called "omniscient." This is because the narrator is someone other than the characters, who is nonetheless completely informed about the characters' world(s), past lives, current actions and present thoughts. Some people make the mistake of thinking that the omniscient narrative voice is the "actual" voice of the author of the book.
A subset of the third person viewpoint is "tight third" in which the all-knowing narrator chooses to stick with the perceptions/history/actions/thoughts of one character. It is easily distinguishable from a "first person" narrative in that the focal character is referred to by herhisorits name, rather than "I."
That is all.
A story told in "rotating first person" means that there are several characters involved in a work, each pursuing hisherorits own story, and each referring to themselves as "I."
"Third person" narratives are sometimes called "omniscient." This is because the narrator is someone other than the characters, who is nonetheless completely informed about the characters' world(s), past lives, current actions and present thoughts. Some people make the mistake of thinking that the omniscient narrative voice is the "actual" voice of the author of the book.
A subset of the third person viewpoint is "tight third" in which the all-knowing narrator chooses to stick with the perceptions/history/actions/thoughts of one character. It is easily distinguishable from a "first person" narrative in that the focal character is referred to by herhisorits name, rather than "I."
That is all.
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Date: 2004-08-14 08:15 am (UTC)I really, really like playing with each character's perceptions -- the things in a room one notices that the other doesn't. The situation that for one character is business as usual and for the other is incomprehensible, strange, or just irritating. The difference in language and thought process.
Writing the mysteries in first person was tough -- I don't think I could have borne it for much more than 60,000 words.
The Nameless Novella I just wrote while I should have been doing Something Else is told in a third so tight that it should maybe have been first, except the character is so, um... strange... I felt that I needed the distance. And, wouldn't you know it, I had to forcibly keep myself from jumping into the consciousness of the second player, because weaving that viewpoint into the story would have been so interesting. Incomprehensible, but interesting *g*