Need some suggestions

[Arch9CivilReactor]

I feel like I struck gold while I was writing my novel ‘Formerly A Villainous Academy Noble’ in that I think it’d work better if I changed the narrator to someone else. I need some suggestions on a character that could do that.

In the sequel I made the narrator a God who has omniscience and a whacky personality. He’s able to feel for the ‘main character’ of his story and narrate in a way that suits a storyteller. It lets me focus on telling a story through his eyes.

I’m finding writing difficult because despite writing 40 chapters of the first arc, I realised that I just can’t get away from this style of narration no matter how hard I try. This meta, 4th wall breaking narration where the storytelling could inexplicably focus on a different character and it would be in line with their personality.

To create the perfect narrator for me, all I know is that they would’ve had to become omniscient by the end of the story and want to tell the story to someone else. Maybe a twist on the sequel would be an omniscient mortal talking to a god, but that doesn’t really make sense to me.

I thought of an omniscient god talking to an amnesiac, but that’s too passive. A one-sided learning of information. There has to be some level of conflict between the storyteller and the listener, but I’m unsure what to make.

Need some suggestions on what kind of conflicts a storyteller could have with their listener (Example: The sequel is about Loki, the God of Mischief, trying to explain to a being known as ‘The One Above All’ not to kill him. He annoys the God of Gods despite that simply because he doesn’t like his lack of empathy).

 

[naosu]

Well you've made it hard for people to respond because very few people have thought about a point of view of what if a god was narrating a story. LOL. So it might take a few minutes for people to think about how to respond and work with that. But that doesn't mean that people won't try and reply. I think people will try to help you. Maybe hang on a bit till more people come on.

Sometimes it helps to ...switch around the perspective a bit to keep it fresh. So you could try other point of views.

However... there's some point of views I don't like how they did it. For example, there's a TV show called Black Summer where they switch around the point of views a lot. And its actually a BAD EXAMPLE, because they switch around the point of views so much that it blocks the story from progressing. That ended up ruining the series because you literally find out that a whole ton of the episode views are just chasing a full circle around like 1 episode of story.

Another problem with other points of views is that maybe some of the POVs might be bias. But the readers might accept the other POVs as 'fact' when they are bias.

Thinking about this can help you work out how to make sure you get the story and ending to go the way you want to.

 

[Arch9CivilReactor]

Well you've made it hard for people to respond because very few people have thought about a point of view of what if a god was narrating a story. LOL. So it might take a few minutes for people to think about how to respond and work with that. But that doesn't mean that people won't try and reply. I think people will try to help you. Maybe hang on a bit till more people come on.

Sometimes it helps to ...switch around the perspective a bit to keep it fresh. So you could try other point of views.

However... there's some point of views I don't like how they did it. For example, there's a TV show called Black Summer where they switch around the point of views a lot. And its actually a BAD EXAMPLE, because they switch around the point of views so much that it blocks the story from progressing. That ended up ruining the series because you literally find out that a whole ton of the episode views are just chasing a full circle around like 1 episode of story.

Another problem with other points of views is that maybe some of the POVs might be bias. But the readers might accept the other POVs as 'fact' when they are bias.

Thinking about this can help you work out how to make sure you get the story and ending to go the way you want to.

Thank you for giving your two cents. I’ll keep that in mind and will make sure that doesn’t happen. I will try to have a clear understanding of what’s a side story and what’s main story content:

 

[HisDivineShadow]

It doesn’t matter whose point of view you’re writing from what really matters is that you get the character. You need to understand how they think, what motivates them, what they’re after. What drives them, what they care about. Are they emotional? Empathetic? What’s their personality like? Once you know all that, you can start seeing the story through their eyes.
Give them a backstory a heartbreak, a win, something that shaped them. This kind of deep dive works no matter what you’re writing. And if you’re writing from a narrator’s POV with a dialogue partner - even better. Flesh them both out. Give them filler words, unique ways of speaking. Once they start talking in your head like real people, writing them gets so much easier.
Then the conflict will naturally come up in the process. It works for me it might work for you too. Or not

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Unless you're writing in First (or, God Forbid, Second) Person, it doesn't really make that much difference to MOST readers, as long as you are consistent.

I read a book once where the author shifted from First Person for the two main characters (switching off between them - they were sisters, and, I think one was a psychic and the other a private detective or something like that) to third person for scenes the sisters were not involved in. The author was really good with the 3p stuff, but not so much with the 1p parts. The first five chapters were set up reasonably, with a 3p opening chapter, then a chapter from one sister's POV (I believe it was the psychic), the next from the other sister, and then back to 3p. Then the next chapter kept switching between the two sisters so much I got whiplash. Stuck it out for two more chapters and then bailed (it was a "free" book in a bundle from Amazon - when I first got a Kindle I grabbed about ten of those bundles and most of them had exactly one really good story, three "sales brochures with excerpts" from two others that might be good but I'd have to pay to find out, and another five or so stories that made me wish I'd paid something so I could demand my money back).

So just be consistent with your "voice" and don't worry about the rest.

Unless you're doing something really experimental, like a horror novel I wish I hadn't lost that I was working on: each chapter was in 1p, but told from a character different than the previous one, bouncing between the various characters, and often including the death scenes for the current narrator...

 

[Arch9CivilReactor]

Unless you're writing in First (or, God Forbid, Second) Person, it doesn't really make that much difference to MOST readers, as long as you are consistent.

I read a book once where the author shifted from First Person for the two main characters (switching off between them - they were sisters, and, I think one was a psychic and the other a private detective or something like that) to third person for scenes the sisters were not involved in. The author was really good with the 3p stuff, but not so much with the 1p parts. The first five chapters were set up reasonably, with a 3p opening chapter, then a chapter from one sister's POV (I believe it was the psychic), the next from the other sister, and then back to 3p. Then the next chapter kept switching between the two sisters so much I got whiplash. Stuck it out for two more chapters and then bailed (it was a "free" book in a bundle from Amazon - when I first got a Kindle I grabbed about ten of those bundles and most of them had exactly one really good story, three "sales brochures with excerpts" from two others that might be good but I'd have to pay to find out, and another five or so stories that made me wish I'd paid something so I could demand my money back).

So just be consistent with your "voice" and don't worry about the rest.

Unless you're doing something really experimental, like a horror novel I wish I hadn't lost that I was working on: each chapter was in 1p, but told from a character different than the previous one, bouncing between the various characters, and often including the death scenes for the current narrator...

You’d be right about the experimental part. I like it when the narrator is being openly bias in his telling of the story. Sometimes going dramatic and other times skipping details or even discussing them with the audience.

My two other novels do that to some extent without compromising its integrity. You get a lot more character from the characters when you yourself are comfortable with your tool for narration (which is my current problem). I got the characters but the narration that breathes life into them needs some tweaking.

I realised I’ve gotten bad at 1st Person over time so the omniscient narrator trope is what I use to go back and forth between 3rd and 1st POV. The narrator in question is talking to someone else in 1st person, but narrating the story they’re telling in the 3rd person.

I just don’t want to repeat what I did in the sequel so finding a good narrator is the same as finding a main character in my opinion (since it’s their voice and biases that colour the narrative).

 

[CharlesEBrown]

You’d be right about the experimental part. I like it when the narrator is being openly bias in his telling of the story. Sometimes going dramatic and other times skipping details or even discussing them with the audience.

Heh. I have one story I keep starting and then setting aside where the MC is the most unreliable narrator ever - I think he even lies to ME while I'm writing and definitely is never open with the rest of the cast...

 

[Aurimaz]

The 3rd person narration, that breaks the 4th wall?
That's a bit intrusive. Usually, the narrator stays invisible to a reader for a good reason. To be less distracting. If you break 4th wall too often, it becomes annoying. Narrator interacts with a reader - that's a big annoyance, too. At this point, I'm not thinking about the narrator, but the Author himself and what kind of shrooms he took before writing.

That style is good for satires and parodies, but bad for anything else.

If you write from the 1st person perspective, that's an entirely different deal. You can break 4th wall however you want; there's not much damage you could do. Of course, this style has its limitations. 1st person can't be omniscient, and jumping between 1st person POVs is a serious hassle for writer and reader both.

I'd suggest a silent 3rd person perspective. The usual one. Leave all the jokes to your MC.