Killing Your Main Character in First Person

I don't think you really want to cater to those readers. Ultimately, what they have is a book or eReader in their hands with a made up story. Suspension of disbelief requires willingness by the reader to go along with what you're doing, within the confines of the fiction you're writing. That includes stylistic choices. Some readers might have suspension of disbelief so fragile that it can't accommodate this sort of thing, but writing down to the lowest common denominator is a mistake.

 

I just think you’re skipping over what’s actually happening in a first person story. You personally may not consider it as the recollection of a character, but that’s exactly what it is. And it does have to be written that way. If it’s not written that way, then it’s not first person. Think about it; first person will read as such – ‘I was eating my breakfast, when the phone rang. “Hello,” I said anxiously, expecting it to be just another scam caller…’ There is no way that this style can be anything other than the recollection of a character. I’m really curious to know how you are writing first person narrative, past or present tense, without it being from the POV of a character.

With third person, although you’re not writing as a specific character, you, the author, very much are narrator of those events. You are essentially taking a God-like role, presiding over each and every person in the world you’ve created. You are then narrating the story (i.e. telling the reader what’s happening, what people are thinking, how they are feeling…), either how it happened or how it is happening. You may not like to think about it that way, but that’s all that you are doing.

Again, I don’t mean to seem argumentative, I’m just trying to understand what it is you’re doing and if there is, perhaps, other styles of writing that I’m not familiar with.

I certainly agree with this though. You should never force yourself to write as if it were a character’s journal entries. That’s a stylistic choice you can make it you wish. But it doesn’t often work for me.

Also, you could never kill your first person character in a diary entry. How would they be able to write it?

 

This just isn't accurate, in my view. First person is a readily apparent point of view, and as such easy to identify. Saying it has to be a past recollection is a misunderstanding of what first person is. It can be a past recollection, but it certainly doesn't have to be. I don't know how you came to have such a narrow concept of what the POV represents, but representing your view as the only interpretations is a mistake. It's one interpretation, but not the only one, and certainly doesn't apply to all such works.

 

As an aside, @mad_hatter , do you consider a second person book to always mean the reader is the second person viewpoint character? That's what the POV implies, if you take it literally, and while you can write it that way, the fact is that most second person stories are clearly not meant to suggest that the reader is the viewpoint character. Usually, it is explicitly not the case. So I'm curious why you're putting this very narrow interpretation on first person, which could easily be applied to third and second. I don't think it makes sense as a necessary interpretation for any of them.

 

He would not write "and then I died", but he could write during the situation leading to his death. A last fevered entry on his deathbead, a suicide note, a letter written on death row, etc.

 

I don’t know either. But you still haven’t been able to explain to me what it is that you (or any other author, for that matter) do differently that makes my understanding of POV wrong. Seriously, I’m trying to learn here. If you’re somehow writing in first person, without it being from the perspective of a character, I’d love to know how you’re achieving this.

As far as I’m aware, first person, past tense has to be the past recollection of the narrator, who in all cases has to be a character in the story. How can it be anything different? First person, present tense is the narrator explaining events that happen to them, as they happen.

The above quote makes me think that you are misunderstanding what first person is.

Could you please give an example of any writing, written in first person, that doesn’t come from the perspective of a character? That would really help.

 

What I'm saying is that it applies to any first person writing. It doesn't have to be any different in how it is written. Unless the author makes it clear that it is a past recollection, I wouldn't assume it. Presentation of fiction is itself a fiction. There are novels that suddenly switch over to a play or poem to tell the story. It's all artistic license.

My first person story looks like any other first person writing, but were my protagonist to die I'd keep writing her first person POV right up to the moment of death. I think readers will be fine with it. I'm the one, as the writer, ultimately telling the story. I don't mean for my character to somehow be journalist the events.

 

So if you pick up a book that reads as 'I did this', 'I did that', 'I said this', 'I said that', you assume it's something other than the past recollection of the narrator? I don't understand how you can possibly come to this conclusion. What else could it possibly be?

I'd still love an example.

 

Brad Meltzer did exactly this in one of his novels. The beginning was in first person and then suddenly the guy is hit and killed. Then it switches vp to his friend attempting to solve the murder. It was definitely an effective way to shock his readers.

 

I don't know why you'd assume that it is a past recollection. What else could it possibly be? Easy. A piece of fiction that never happened with a stylistic choice by the author thereof.

 

Which, regardless of what said author may want to believe, has to be written as if it were the past recollection of a character.

I'm still waiting for an example of any writing which isn't written as such...

 

This is empirically false. Continuing to say it won't change that.

There are any number of examples. I hesitate to give spoilers, but let's go with an older novel - John Gardner's Grendel, where Grendel is the first-person narrator of the story and dies at the end. There's no suggestion that Grendel has somehow written the story down (or whether he could), and the last line as Grendel lays dying are the last words he utters (and his final action). He's laying there covered in blood and dying as he makes his final statement. There's no way to read that as the first-person narrator recounting past events.

The final sentence in the book is:

"Poor Grendel's had an accident," I whisper. "So may you all."

Then Grendel is dead. He never went and wrote it all down.

 

Apparently, another example is Phillipa Gregory's The Boleyn Inheritance, where the first person narrator continues right up until the time the axe falls on her head and she dies (so obviously she can't be recounting the execution as a past event, since she doesn't survive it).

As I said, above, there are a number of examples of this. I've read more than one book that uses this approach. Of course, if you take the position that it can't be done, then a single example is sufficient to prove that incorrect.

 

I think I now see where you've misunderstood a lot of what I've been saying (which, if you'd have given an example sooner, wouldn't have happened).

At no point did I ever say the character has to have written anything. It can be treated as verbal, or it could just be the characters thought. It can have happened a decade ago, or a second ago. I don't think you're really thinking about it. If I now think to myself "This morning, I wrote a post on Writing Forums," you'd read that as first-person, past-tense. If something is written as 'I said...' or 'I did...' it has to be the character recounting what they said or did. No other option.

 

And as far as dying goes, if I write '...the bullet tore through my spine. Then I died.' that is still a past recollection of the character. It can't be anything else.

 

I guess it really depends how you can write death or how you want to write it in this instance.

"A gunshot and everything went black can't work, because your character wouldn't know everything has gone black, or they wouldn't be able to say it because they're dead.

If you're going to try it you need to find a way for them to die with it still having some weight to it.

I opened the door, paranoia setting in as I ran to my room intent on grabbing everything I had and driving away into the sunset or whatever direction would get me out of here as quickly as fucking possible.

I burst into my room and stopped, eyes locking with the man, and then at the pistol in his hand.

(Switch to third person here because your character is dead.) The inhabitants of Palmer street were awoken to the sound of a gunshot.

 

@mad_hatter we'll just have to agree to disagree, because to me that makes even less sense than what I thought you were saying before. We're dealing with fiction, events that never happened, that may be set in an imaginary past, present, or future. We've already established that some stories can't possible be intended as past recollections, because it is impossible for the narrator to have recounted them as past recollections. What you're wanting to do is create an additional, abstract layer of artifice where you somehow suppose that despite the narrative being an artificial construct, and despite the fact that it can't be a past recollection within the logic of the story itself, the story is somehow still viewed as a past recollection. Makes no sense, but if it helps you frame a particular story in your own mind you're certainly free to view it that way. I find it illogical.

@Wynter except that the approach you say can't work can and does work in the example stories cited above, and in other stories. Your approach of having the narrator see the gun and switching to third person also works, and that's something I've seen done in published fiction. But you can also continue with the narrator right up through the point of death, and that has been done in published fiction, as noted above.

The important point is that there are multiple ways of making this work, and whether any given approach is successful for a given story depends on the author's skill in handling it. The idea that you have to do it one way, or that it can't work if you do it another way simply isn't true and is an overly narrow view of what you can do with fiction.

 

I think my main gripe with first person and dying in first person is that I've only ever seen it done in a way that largely feels wrong to me, hence why I prefer it in third person.

But I get your point and will definitely concede that it is possible to do it that way, it's only that I've yet to see someone do it in a way that I've ever liked which has given me a negative perception of it. But definitely there is no one way to do it, apologies there folks.

 

@Steerpike - I think you're right; we'll have to agree to disagree. Irrespective of logic, as I believe fiction writing can be as illogical as any writer or reader may want it to be, I still can't understand how you can perceive the written words 'I said...' as being anything other than that characters past recollection. Even the examples you've given, to my mind, support my argument.

I'd have no problem with a character dying in first person, then continuing to narrate the story as such: 'Then they buried my body in a shallow grave. My body laid there, rotting for nine years...' although I think I'd only accept that for a short while, perhaps as an epilogue. How's that for logical?

 

I have to agree with @mad_hatter. I always read first person past tense as if it's a recollection of the POV character. After all 'I' is the pronoun used to talk about yourself. For the most part that seems a more immersive way to view things than thinking of the narrator as the author who has made a stylistic choice to make 'I' mean 'he' when referring to a certain character.

It does get a bit weird if the character dies, but maybe it's being recounted in some way in an afterlife. It may not be directly stated to be the case, but I've not read any first person deaths that don't allow that possibility.

 

@plothog you're certainly entitled to read them that was, as a reader, but as I pointed out above there are books that it isn't logical to read that way. For some of them, there is no hint that an afterlife even exists, much less that it is being narrated from (historical novels, for example), so you're having to go through a range of mental fiction to create an artificial presumption that isn't even required by the story. It doesn't make much sense when it is easier to view the POV choice as what it really is - a stylistic choice.

One thing that surprises me most about writing forums is the fairly myopic approach so many writers take to what fiction does and can do.

 

Well admittedly I've not read many stories where first person narrators die, so maybe I'm missing something.
But it seems to me one of the principle effects of choosing first person is that it will create the illusion that the character is the one telling the story. It certainly will for me.
I realise that authors who do this don't necessarily feel the need to justify how the story reached the page. The afterlife is one explanation of many. If you prefer you can say that the author is the omniscient God of the world that they've created and thus can channel the recollections of a dead person at point of death onto the page.
If it's not even hinted at how the story came to be, then I'm probably not meant to worry about how the story got there, so I'll try not to.
But that doesn't stop me from reading the story as if the character is the narrator rather than the author.

Different people will see the same story in different ways. They say, noone will see things exactly the way the author imagined it. I'm not convinced that because someone sees a story in a different way that it makes them myopic.

 

Seeing it a different way isn't myopic. Saying that it has to be the way you see it is myopic.

Looking at the Phillipa Gregory novel, for example, it's a historical novel. There's no afterlife recollection at work. It's the real world, not a created one, so the idea that the author is the god of the world created doesn't hold up there, either. It seems to me the best way to look at it is simply a narrative choice, just like third person is a narrative choice. Do you apply these same criteria to third person? The story is still written down in words. Do you imagine there is some godlike narrator who has all this insight and exists separately from the author? If not, why do it for first person. A first person book may well be a past recollection - there are plenty that are written in exactly that way. But it doesn't have to be one. That's the point I'm making.

 

Couldn't agree more. Hopefully my comments haven't been interpreted that way. I was just trying to share how I see things.

Maybe he's not the god in the universe of the story, but he will have made up elements of the story. Maybe my choice of the word god was not the best, but the author is showing us thoughts of historical characters that no one could know to be true. If as authors we can show the innermost thoughts of our characters, why can we not show the recollections of a character on the point of death? Even if it could not logically have been written or spoken by the character, it can still be interpreted as that character's recollections.

The point I'm making is unless the contrary is made very clear, I'm going to end up reading a first person story as if it was the character's recollections. The character's death isn't going to be enough to convince me it wasn't. The use of the word 'I' makes it very hard for me to view it another way. Some authors might even have intended their stories that end in deaths to be seen as recollections.
I believe you that in some cases (Your own project for example) that the author might have intended something else.

 

Yes. Maybe this is more semantics than anything. To me, those aren't "recollections" of the character, since it isn't the character putting it down at some later date. It's just authorial license, projecting thoughts onto the character, which I think is a reasonable way of looking at it.