posted
Call me crazy, but I'm reworking an old novel idea, and I have a first person narrator I really like. But I am also wanting to pump the plot with some third person chapters of what's going on without her knowledge. Do you know of any novels where this has been done - and worked?
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posted
Kurt Vonnegut used both first and third person in Breakfast of Champions, though Vonnegut in first person narrator is the omniscient character, and the clueless third person in the person of Kilgore Trout is the protagonist. Fresh from the popular success of Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast sold half as many copies, nearly half a million since release in 1973, 400,000 in the first decade.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited July 06, 2008).]
posted
gracias. I don't think I could pull off a "Breakfast of Champions," but I'll check out Eisler tomorrow at the library.
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posted
Tales of the Otori by Lian Hearn did one character in first and the other in third. While the first book did this ok, by the end, the character shifts were far too frequent and made the story far worse.
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Christine did that. First person, then third, back to first. Vonnegut has done it a few times. His last book, Timequake, used that technique. And our favorite author's Hart's Hope used 1st, 2nd, AND 3rd person narration.
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posted
Well deb, I'd say go for it. I've done it myself in a novel, though the first and third person narator was the same person, telling two different stories. One being the present, the other his telling of what happened in the past.
Not sure how you would handle it, did you complete the novel this way, but I'm wondering how would you write a query for this type of POV in a novel?
posted
query's the easy part, Darklight, as I don't need to write one. Already have had a publisher request a full. But I wanted to make some changes before I sent the manuscript, and I'm thinking a dash of third-person exposition would be just the thing. I just couldn't remember seeing anything done like that recently, and wanted to look at how some other folks handled it, first.
posted
Normally PoV isn't discussed in a query anyway so I don't think that would be an issue. Great on having a request for a full!
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Marion Zimmer Bradley, in her Darkover books about Regis Hastur and Lew Alton, would use third person for the Regis Hastur chapters and first person for the Lew Alton chapters, and it worked fine, as I recall.
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quote:Normally PoV isn't discussed in a query anyway so I don't think that would be an issue.
Yeh, I was getting confused because my story has two different story lines, and don't know how to query it, but not to hijack deb's thread: Great one getting a publisher to look at your entire novel!
posted
I remember a Spider Robinson novel which alternated first person with third-person-five-years-before. I liked the first person scenes better...but the third person stuff did play into, and very importantly, the way things developed.
(I tried mixing some short third-person dreams in with a long first-person narrative in my latest...it didn't really work out for me, even while I wrote it, so I'll rewrite those scenes when I come up to them...)
posted
Thanks deb It's a novel from last year. I did post in F and F but was never happy with the first two chapters so it sat for almost a year. Anyhow, had a breakthrough a couple of weeks ago, and know now how I want it to start, if I get time to put it down on the page.
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