Can one get away with more"telling" (rather than only "showing") if one is writing in first person POV?

admin 212 0

So here’s my problem with this question, and with story telling theory in general……..

I have no idea what most of it means.

I never understood where the term “protagonist” came from. Why “heroes” stopped being “heroes” and started being “protagonists”. And where the term “anti-hero” comes from.

In my world — and in most of my stories — there are four basic character types.

Heroes — people who do good things.

Villains — people who do bad things.

NPCs — people who appear in the story but don’t really do good or bad, or they do do good or bad but not to a degree that matters.

Furniture — people who appear in the story but really don’t matter. They are either there to further the story or to be murdered or to be mentioned once then never seen again.

That’s it. That is my entire storytelling lexicon.

And I tell stories in three ways —

First Person (“I came out of the bedroom and saw Lucy beating Edmund to death. Which was a bit of a shock, but to be honest he had it coming”)

Second Person (“You see your younger sister beating your younger brother to death. At first you move to interfere, but your older brother waves you off, and you watch as the life drains out of Edmund, and he falls to the floor”)

or Third Person (“Susan watched with a slight smile on her face as Lucy beat Edmund to death, then turned to Peter and handed him the cricket bat”)

But as for which of these is show, which is tell, and which is both? I couldn’t really tell you. I could have a guess (based on language and common sense) but that’s just a guess.

I tell stories the way I want to tell them, not because of any theories or literary stuff. And I understand there are rules, or theories, as to how to write a good story, and a good novel, but that’s not how I work.

I also understand that I have possibly not answered the question.

But……… maybe I have?

Post comment 0Comments)

  • Refresh code

No comments yet, come on and post~