Would people, in general, kill me if I or anyone were to shift tenses for a section of a story for whatever reason? That is to say: if I were writing in 3rd person omniscient and switched to 1st person for a section, would you all kill me?
The reason I ask is I have a character who is telling a story, a story that people in the book haven't heard before. I plan on it being several pages long and don't want to have to deal with quotations and quotations in quotations for all of this. So is shifting to 1st person okay for this, which is essentially a flashback?
Posted by Troy (Member # 2640) on :
Yeah, I think it would be fine. In fact I just read a terrific story by Gene Wolfe called "The Friendship Light" that did exactly that, to great effect. Writers do it from time to time. I think you're safe.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Tense is verb conjugation for distinguishing time or duration. Grammatical person is a narrative posture. And no, not necessarily crucified for shifting narrative person. Switching from third-person omniscient to first-person, though, tricky to do well, and a consequence is that the narrator will likely be identified with the first-person passages. Kurt Vonnegut uses third-person subjective omniscient narrator as an auxilliary narrative posture in Breakfast of Champions, which is a first-person narrative.
Posted by Kitti (Member # 7277) on :
How long is the work itself? If we're talking novel-length, then I think you could just make the narration a chapter, which would give you an easy way to make the shift between tenses/narrative styles.
Posted by tchernabyelo (Member # 2651) on :
As extrinsic says; that's a POV shift, not a tense shift. The two MAY coincide, but certainly don't have to.
Stry-within-a-story - even first tense reportage - is not uncommon and so long as you make it clear who's telling the story then there should be no problem (IIRC, in one of the Amber novels, Zelazny has Random fill in some backstory and so the narrative shifts from Corwin to Random for a chapter or two).
Posted by Starweaver (Member # 8490) on :
Just make sure you have a solid reason for shifting PoV. There's a really cool example up at Clarkesworld now, by Jay Lake and Shannon Page. Very unusual, but also completely suited to the story they tell.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Shifting narrative point of view, like any tense or point of view character shift in a story should have a relevant, timely influence on plot and story.
The advantage of third-person objective, no psychic access, past tense narrative is that it's the story voice of greatest truth or at least fictional authenticity.
First person subjective, introspective psychic access, present tense has the advantage of being the least believable narrative voice. A passage intended to raise a question of the narrator's reliable portrayal of events is an ideal purpose of that voice.