[Free Indirect Speech--is it for everyone?]

I'm an idiot.

What brought that on rusticmonk?

You are far too cute to be an idiot.

Anyway I enjoy your dissent from the staus quo.

We need all the dissent we can get in today's world.

[First Person or Third]

...because you're experience the story and the drama from a distance, like watching a movie.

Movies can be experienced in two ways.

1. As an an object to look at.

or

2. As a participant in the action.

Most movies have elements of both these ways.

In a cinema it is easier to become part of the action in comparison to watching a small TV on the otherside of the room.

Television requires us to work harder at suspending our suroundings and entering into the world of the movie.

The film-maker may also deliberately choose a format to assist or even force us into the picture. (Pun inteneded, sorry).

Examples would include CinemaScope and 70mm formats, but these need to be seen in a cinema to work or at least on a large home cinema screen.

Sometimes the fim-maker will choose to alienate the audience into being aware that they are watching a movie rather than being part of it.

This can be done in a variety of ways.

As I said above most films do have elements of both forms.

The point of interest for writers is that tense in this cinematic world is suspended and the POV becomes whatever the director wants for the audience to experience the movie.

Consider the flashback for a moment.

Whilst we watch the flashback as it is occurring we may feel to be part of the action as if it is in the present, even though we know it is in the character's past.

However if the character is simply telling another actor in the film about the action then we are looking at the character talking about the past event.

Courtroom dramas, for example, often utilise both of these tactics.

So as a member of the audience our experience is relative to the moment of the action and not necessarily the moment the characters are discussing. Of course that discussion then may become the action or something for the audience to simply observe.

Now POV in a written story can and does change within that story depending on the author's intentions.

Traditionally, it is usual to keep the perspective from a single character, but even this can be made to flip between the character and the reader's own awareness. Additionally, there is the author's POV which may become obvious at times.

Whether any of these things is important to a particular story probably depends on how deliberately they are used by the author.

I think the most interesting point about all this is not so much the POV but how the tense of that POV is utilised.

As a reader, when a work is in first person present tense, I can feel like I am the character. At other times I am aware that the author seems to be writing as I read and that makes me feel like I am privy to his thoughts as they being written. That too is an illusion, albeit an interesting one.

These can provide quite different experiences even if they are both first person present tense.

As with the movies the trick is to be able to suspend disbelief.

I think that movies have challenged the writer to seek new ways of telling stories from different POVs, but perhaps we should look at these alternatives with a degree of suspicion or at least with awareness of their origins.

Tense offers ways around the awkward stuations of first and third person for the author.

Tense in the second person nearly always seems to be the assertive tool of an authoritarian.

[First Person or Third]

I was actually referencing POV not tense in my "cliff" example, even though it was in present tense.

I think you are right about it being second person.

It was the form of telling the reader what to do that I don't particularly like.

Anyway I was just trying to show that tense is somewhat dependant on how the author wanted the reader to be involved with his words and that a story can be relayed as an account of past events or that the story can be given the illusion of occurring as it is being read.

One method is not better than the other. But overall the second is not always acknowledged or appreciated, perhaps because it is not easy.

Have a beer for me Graeme, I am stuck with the coffee, even if it makes me a bit tense. :)

[First Person or Third]

First' date=' welcome DesDownunder. It's good to see another Australian here :D

HOW is the first person narration occuring in present tense? The only way is if the reader is sitting inside the head of the narrator as things occur. This worked really well in [i']Solitary Night[/i], but as soon as you try to bring in dialogue, it becomes very difficult.

Thank you for the welcome Graeme. I didn't realise you were Aussie too, but that's good isn't it? lol :D

As to "How is the first person narration....etc." possible, I believe we can examine the reader - written word relationship in a similar way to audience - film relationship.

We can either be a voyeur looking at the work or we can be immersed in it. That "immersion" or diegesis replaces the words we are reading with the experience the words conjur for the reader in an illusion of the present.

In other words the reader enters into the world of the narrator through the written word and hopefully it is sufficiently well written to allow reality to be suspended and replaced by the world of the book or film etc.

In this (present tense) case the written word is not an "account" to be considered objectively as written , but a device, to allow the reader to enter the world of the story as a participant or at least permit the reader that choice.

It is somewhat amusing, even intriguing to realise that the character can also be observed by the reader, and author.

From this stand point the first person present tense allows real-time dialogue to be read by the reader as if he were hearing it. The trick hear is for the author to lead the reader in a logical progression of thought, through the dialogue to whatever experience the author desires for the reader.

This approach becomes similar to that used in writing a play, where the dramatic action may be in a fictional time frame with an audience participating with the staged action as if it were occurring in the here and now.

And yes it is not easy. lol.

I have indeed found it necessary to use both dialogue and thought to aid this deception or illusion.

The trick here is realise that the written word can be used as an account or record of past events. This is easy for us to understand because it has happened and we as readers relate to that with an easy logic.

However words can also be used to place the reader in another dimension as if it is only just occurring as we read. The written word in this case is not an "account" as such but a "device" to transport the reader to that dimension/experience so the reader is able to feel he has a degree of active participation.

First person present tense is ONE way to allow this to happen.

My least favourite approach is where the author "tells" the reader what to do.

For example,

"You stand and walk to the edge of the cliff and just before you jump you realise this is not right."

This is too alienating for my taste in general writing.

Tense of course is always open for change and many stories can and do mix tenses in a variety of ways.

'The Good Doctor" by taarob (on Nifty) is an example of a story that began in past tense and has developed (over 49 episodes) into present tense with a few dalliances in change of POV.

Tense-wise it is all over the place, but it really does work as an entertaining story sharing both participation and voyeurism.

I better stop this waffling now. :roll:

[First Person or Third]

maybe it is first-person present-tense stories that writers are finding limiting?

At present I am writing my first story. It started as an idea for a short story and I quickly discovered that it wasn't going to be that easy. It also wasn't going to be short either.

I began in third person past tense.

It wasn't working.

The structure demanded present tense first person. So I changed it.

This brought to light that the whole difficulty of first person was indeed how to allow the reader access to the other characters as entities in their own right.

Part of my answer was to afford them an interactive dialogue in real time (present tense) that revealed more than the first person would initially see, but which the readers might recognise as a perception in either their own minds or that of the character.

Either way I hoped that this would enhance the readers assimilation of the lead characters persona to place the reader in the reality of the moment as the story is read. This is quite necessary if my plot line is to succeed.

This reads a lot more complicated than it is but the stumbling block was the present tense, until I adopted descriptive memory recall exposition.

(Now there's a mouthful).

Overdone this could prove fatal to the writing. So it must be kept relevent and above all entertaining.

As one of the commentators has so accurately said, this is a lot of work and effort.

I think tense is so very important. Past tense can lead to a dull "Dear Diary" narative whilst present tense can lead to recipes of the day. On the otherhand past tense fills in the background of characters that allow the author to build either a future or a present that excites the reader with possibilities that he would not otherwise have experienced, let alone conclusions that are hidden until revealed.

Present tense then, can offer a number of challenges that disciplines the writer in ways that multiple POVs cannot. Indeed the lack of success of multiple POVs may well be because they offer an easy out for both author and reader. This does not make them wrong or any less interesting. (I have read and been entertained by some quite good multiple POV stories.)

But they do avoid the above challenges even if they present knew ones of their own making.

Third person past tense commands the postion of knowing that the author has something in mind to share with us.

First person present tense however, can offer an experience of seeming discovery for both author and reader at the same time.

Which of these is best depends entirely on the choice and preferred style of the author. But then we can all learn from trying something different.