Hi all, novice writer here. I'm writing a story where it's all from the perspective of the main character (you call that first person POV right?) and there are a few times when I want to talk about conversations between other people that the main character isn't present at. What's the best way to go about this please? I've tried doing it so that one of the people has a conversation with the main character about what was said but it seems very clunky. Does it even if these conversations are happening? I'm just thinking that the reader might think 'how do you know that was what was said if you weren't there?'. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.
My thoughts exactly. The only way to do it is by having some sort of link between the MC and the conversation (like how you first had it with someone else telling them what happened). or, you could have them over hear the conversation or over hear someone else talking about the conversation. Either way, you have to have the MC present at some point to make it believable.
I had sort of the same problem in a novel I wrote in first person. It was historical fiction so I was able to manoeuvre her to places that didn't agree with history. If the conversation is important to the story, then you probably should change POV. It's best done in a chapter, but I've seen it done at a paragraph change. It is important to identify the change into whomever the POV becomes. I remember reading a book not so long ago wheen the author put the first sentence in bold when he changed POV.
Some authors actually do have characters recount conversations almost word-for-word for the benefit of the POV character. I'm not the hugest fan, but Dostoevsky does it well. It depends on if you want to get a whole conversation across for the sake of using dialogue to express character, or you simply want some conclusions or details to reach the POV.
Some writers (ex: David Rosenfelt - Andy Carpenter series) write the MC in the first person (hilriously, I might add), and switches to third for other characters, usually a bad guy or two. Works well. Good luck!
