As I mentioned earlier, I got off to a good start on my short novel Circus but about 3,000 words in I ran into a problem. I realized that my plan to use a first-person narrator wasn’t going to work, because I needed scenes that my narrator couldn’t possibly have known about.
This was discouraging, since I’d already discovered a voice for the narrator that I was comfortable with. I tried to fudge my way out of it, by suggesting that my narrator was telling us about things he learned of later, but it felt false.
So I started revising what I’d written as a third-person narrative. It wasn’t as difficult as I’d imagined and I’m now forging ahead from where I left off.
And so it goes . . .
Ciick on the images to enlarge.
Switch narrators or in another place after the fact (courtroom document).
I thought about that, but using a third-person narrator solves the problem and is working out o. k. The character and attitude of the first-person narrator just weren’t that illuminating or essential to the tale.