This isn't really a question, more of a point worthy of debate. The major difference between one author and another is narrative voice. First person narrative involves a character relaying a story to the reader. But what if the narrator is a child, or poorly educated, or has English as a second language. Surely, the writer's language should be limited to the narrator's word pool and grammar? Is it a mistake to, armed with thesaurus, seek the best, most precise words to produce our best prose when it is beyond the narrator's ability. When we remove words in an effort to be more succinct are we destroying the rhythm of an authentic voice? I was looking for an example of weaving in character on character description when I retrieved this: [excerpt deleted by moderator]
I generally agree that if you are writing in first person, you need to be true to your narrator as a character (unless you, yourself are personally the narrator). It's a bit tricky because, in addition to needing to build up the narrator as a character as you would any other, you also have to filter everything else about the story--the setting, the other characters, events, etc.--through that character's way of looking at things. When it comes to diction, word choice, voice etc. I think there are several ways that it could make sense. If the narrator is relaying events as they happen or relatively shortly afterward, probably they as a character haven't changed much between the events themselves and their recollection of them. In other instances--the few paragraphs you cite about the stepmom--perhaps the narrator is relaying something that happened a long time ago. They are now old, but they are recalling something from their childhood. In that case, their voice will match their current way of speaking, but the story they are relaying is essentially about a different character who may have a different voice. I also think about this a lot in fantasy/sci-fi settings, where one can assume that the characters aren't speaking English and therefore we are reading not what they are actually saying and doing, but a translation of it. Consider the case of LOTR. The narrative voice seems to be that of an educated 20th century Englishman, but that's because JRR Tolkien presented it as his translation of an older document in another language, so there's an extradiegetic reason for it to read that way. I guess overall I'd say that the voice of first person narration really should be used to reveal something of the story or even backstory, and therefore has to be constructed carefully as you would the rest of the story. If you don't want to do that I'd say you don't really want to write in first-person, might as well just go with third-person.
@Surtsey yes of course you are right. This is where a bad copy editor will ruin a story. @Robert Musil another good example of a “translated” work is Book of the New Sun. But unlike LoTR, Book of the New Sun feels like the narrators voice is kept intact (it is first person)
Good point...that's the thing about translation (or "translation", since we're talking about a literary conceit here), you can translate the same document any number of ways.
I see why you said dialogue, because it's as if the narrator is telling the reader the story, or as if they wrote it in a diary or journal or something, in their own voice and using their own idiom and dialect etc. So yes, in that sense I would agree first person POV is a form of dialogue. Though I usually think of it more as character voice. Maybe monologue is a slightly better term than dialogue, since it's a one-person performance and the reader doesn't get to say anything. Some first-person stories lean way harder toward the character's actual dialect and idioms than others. For instance the one you quoted above, or Tom Sawyer/ Huckleberry Finn, Oil! (book turned into There Will Be Blood) or True Grit. This works exceptionally well with a character with a very strong regional dialect rife with colorful idioms, like someone from the American South or the inner city, or those idiomatic Yankee speakers ranged along the Pacific North East such as Boston, New Jersey, or Brooklyn or Queens. New York Jews with their strong sense of irony and extremely colorful sense of language are great examples, and it's why so many of them have been featured in sitcoms and Vaudeville shows as comedians. If you're going to try to write like that though, it's best if you're intimately familiar with the region and the people who talk that way. You don't necessarily need to speak that way yourself, but hopefully you've spent a significant chunk of your life listening to people who do. I don't think it's possible to fake it and be able to make it work really well. Mark Twain grew up in the rural south listening to kids who spoke just like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (he probably did speak that way himself). But of course it doesn't always need to be a strong regional accent/dialect. It can work with a less severe one. Though it does work best if there's at least some flavor of region and dialect involved—you can choose between original and extra spicy.
Thanks. I've always been aware of this and have tried to cover it in the back-story. I am British but much of my work is set in the US. I'll give my character an English mother or a couple of years at a UK University to cover any slips I may make. I don't think enough writers consider the subtle effects of back-story on character, motivations, even descriptions. e.g. "Corrine attended UCLA on a basketball scholarship." From this we are able to believe that Corrine likely tall. It comes as no surprise that her bestie is a black girl. And when accosted in bar by an African-American man using a dry 'cultural' line she can kneecap him using a similar 'lingo'.
@Surtsey I think you inadvertently proved Xoic's point. I'm pretty sure bestie is, like, a term a 15 year old white-suburban girl would use, certainly not your stereotypical inner city black girl. I know you didn't say inner city, but you seem to be trying to go for archetypal African-American culture. And kneecap means to shoot someone in the knees and permanently cripple them. Edit: Corrine is also such a white girl name Edit edit: I'm pretty sure there are black posters who will come around shortly and correct both you and I.
And yet she knows the lingo to kneecap black dudes? She didn’t learn that in Greenwich, CT whatever her race is. Bestie is out for me
You are over-stereotyping. Corrine actually was a suburban white girl. But beyond that, modern language is affected by modern media. "Bestie" is used almost everybody but its very tongue-in-cheek. Everyday language is very much driven by the younger generation (everybody wants to appear and sound younger). Sidebar: Hyperbole was originally part of every US salesman's language. The young adopted the style in a p1ss-taking way. "Bestie" = BFF (something that is highly unlikely) and it is possible to several besties (which makes no sense). One of the greatest examples is this phenomenon is the word "awesome". Everybody uses it but it was made popular by the film "Clueless". Sidebar 2: An entire generation of British Blacks had no role models on British TV or within British music. They were weaned on the Fresh Prince, My Wife and Kids, Hip-Hop, and Jamaican reggae. The amount assimilated into their dialect. and breadth of comprehension of same would astound many. My point is: specific regional dialogue is a very rare thing. e.g. A California born woman l who spent 2 years at UK University may well add the expression "Different gravy" to her vocabulary, use the c-word with disappointing frequency, and after living and working in New York for a time constantly insults folk by referring to them as a$$holes.
"Technically, is first person narration all dialogue?" Short answer, no. Dialogue would be if you were speaking to the reader. Sometimes that is how stories are narrated in first person. Narration doesn't have to be dialogue. If you think about it, first and third person narration are only different in who is telling the story. My first person novel is mostly past tense narration, but present tense dialogue and monologue when needed are told to the reader by the narrator.
I think the point was that her bestie is black, so she knows the lingo and has been hearing it for a long time.
"Hi, this is Dave. Dave likes donuts and long walks in the park. Dave doesn't like disco much, but is down to Boogie, so play that funky music." There, now I just made it Third person, and it sounds weird, and would be interesting if someone wrote a book where everyone expressed themselves in dialogue in the third person. Probably make it tricky to take it cereal, but you take the good with the bac.
No. That's first person, talking about himself in the third. Hi, I'm Donald Trump. The mainstream media didn't like Trump so the sabotaged him. They stole an election Trump won by a landslide. Sound familiar?
Do you as the author have enough familiarity with that kind of talking? Have you spent enough time hanging out with people who talk like that so you can do it justice? If not then you'd just be stringing together stereotypes and nobody will accept it.
Yes, monologue. A story told by a first person narrator is, first and foremost, a monologue. Within that, however, obviously the narrator can report conversations.
Please allow me to direct you to Richard Matheson's classic science-fiction story "Born of Man and Woman" https://epdf.pub/born-of-man-and-woman.html It's the poorly educated voice of the child that makes the story. Elsewhere, I've pointed out that Little Big Man uses the first person, both in the main body and in the introduction and epilog. But they are two different voices of two very different characters. The latter bits are in the voice of the collector of the story, a supercilious, over-educated fellow who could have come from a P. G. Wodehouse novel. The main body of the story is narrated by a frontiersman of limited formal education whose command of the language is shaky but effective. It's the contrast in these characters and their voices that make the book such an amusing read.
Technically (IMHO), all stories narrated in the first person are by definition monologues. That doesn't maan that the narrator can't report dialogue. The Edgar Rice Burroughs books about the center of the Earth are written in the first person from the perspective of one of the protagonists. In his narrative, he quotes other characters, so he reports dialogue -- but the overall story is a monologue. Recently, I've been watching DryBar comics on YouTube. A stand-up comics entire routine is a monologue -- by definition. But, within the monologue, they can include bits of dialogue. One I watched last night or the night before was by a black comedian, telling the story of his trying to take a bus from somewhere to home. In the story, he quotes both himself and several other characters who respond to him. Then he reports on talking to his mother on the telephone. "My mama told me, 'Son, you need to go to church.' " 'But, Mama, I don't go to church." " 'I SAID, you NEED to go to church.' "When a black woman says you NEED to go to church in that tone of voice -- you go to church." Dialogue within a monologue. The important thing about using first person to narrate a story is that the narrator can't be omniscient. The story can only include what's happening to the narrator at that time, or what he is told later by others. You can't have a story that has one chapter telling what's happening to MC #1 in New York City and another chapter telling what's happening to MC #2 at the same time in London. There is no "Meanwhile, back at the ranch ..."
