Author: George Foreman
Date:   12-03-02 02:13

Is there any feasible and original way to write in the first person resulting in the protag's death? I mean, besides the slaughtered style of a journal?
I like the way Hesse did it in Steppenwolf, introducing the story from a narrator's POV discussing Harry Hallers manuscript, but I was wondering if anyone had come across any other cool ways to do this. If only the dead could write...

Author: akas deodenal
Date:   12-03-02 02:43

Dear George,
Depends on the FOR (frame of reference) of your beliefs. Those who beleieve it doesn't end here find it very easy.
warm regards,
Akas

Author: Keith Blount
Date:   12-03-02 04:53

In Winter of Our Discontent (though I can't remember if the character actually goes through with his planned suicide...), Steinbeck writes the first chapter (or section of a chapter) in third person and also the last. This way, you can switch to third person at the end to describe the protagonist's death, and the reader won't be jarred because he/she has already been jarred by the switch of viewpoint at the beginning and is therefore expecting the switch back for the ending as part of a "frame". The problem with this approach is that the jarring switch at the beginning is unavoidable.

Of course, you could also switch into third person several times throughout the book...

Another approach, which Kurt Vonnegut uses (though his readers are ready for odd endings so you probably have to consider your target audience), is to break the narrative off and have another narrator take over, explaining that the narrator is dead. I don't like this method as much, though, as it is still jarring, and it also loses some dramatic impact, because as soon as another narrator takes over, you *know* that the protagonist must be dead - at least with the third person switch, because of the frame, you can't be sure that he/she will die.

The final method I can think of, and probably less jarring than either, is to begin and end in present tense - the narrator telling the story in his dying moments (it may be odd that he's thinking the whole thing to himself if you pause to consider it, but it's an accepted literary convention so no-one's going to complain). Nick Cave's book "And the Ass Saw the Angel" starts with the narrator in quicksand, with crows wheeling above waiting for him to die, before he goes on to tell his life story, and it works very well. You can then describe his death in present tense at the end. The reader will be expecting him to die, though, so you might want to make it look like there is some hope.

Just some thoughts...
Cheers,
Keith

Author: Liz
Date:   12-03-02 08:00

Lovely Bones is told first person past tense from the afterlife. I thought it worked very well.

Author: Jason Saunders
Date:   12-03-02 08:44

I like the way it worked in a screenplay – Sixth Sense. But if I were trying to do it, I think I would write it in the first person all the way through. But at the end, I would reveal that I was telling the story to myself… my last thoughts before I passed over.

Now there’s a thought… Where did I put that notepad?

Author: Glen T. Brock
Date:   12-03-02 09:06

George,

Actually using the first person when the narrator is dead is more common than you would think. There are ghosts (or afterlife if you prefer). Remember THE HAUNTING: "Those of us who walk here walk alone."

My all time favorite is Phillip K. Dick, who warped pov to a point you couldn't tell reality from absolute fantasy. He acheived this by useing LSD (I cannot reccomend that)but the effect was fabulous.

Robert Bloch wrote from Norman Bate's mother's point of view. She was dead. Norman, however, was just crazy. Does that count?

Author: Picture Book
Date:   12-03-02 10:27

Liz...you beat me to it! Was just going to mention Lovely Bones.....

Author: Bob Kellogg
Date:   12-03-02 13:04

George, you need to decide what crisis in the protagonist's life will be driving the plot. If it's his death, then I like the idea of a first person (past tense -- present tense writing tends to be too cute and self-conscious, especially in this kind of situation.) narrative finished off by an epilogue-style ending from an outside view of the character.

That's if you don't want to deal with life-after-death issues; describing what heaven (or hell) is like and what the dead person's relationship to the living is. If you do, then the sky's the limit (in one sense).

If the main crisis is not the death of the protag, then you can present a quiet epilogue; an obituary, for example. Many novels have been written that present a journal kept by the main character as a plot thread, with outside narration insterpsersed. There are many possibilities.

Bob K.

Author: Gordon Mc Robbie
Date:   12-03-02 19:30

Moses did something similar and got published. But then, he had an Agent.

Gordon