What is the reason for the narrative voice?

There’s something that has always bugged me about first person narration. Until recently, I couldn’t articulate what it was. Something just seemed slightly unnatural, at times, when I was writing in first person and I didn’t know why. But the other day my seminar leader voiced my worry and articulated it perfectly:

There needs to be a reason for the narrative voice. 

Usually with third person, this doesn’t matter so much. Nobody questions the reason for the narration in a third person story because that’s the normal way to tell a story. But first person stories, especially those in the present tense, can sometimes sound unnatural. Who are they telling this story to? Why are they apparently telling all these things to themselves when, assumedly, they already know them?

There are some very easy ways around this.

The first one is to make it very clear that the narrator is consciously telling somebody else this story. This means giving the narrator a ‘present’. It needs to be clear that they are going back over something that has already happened to them. Slip in the present tense every now and then. ‘I got into the car and drove over to see my mother. She’s an unpleasant woman but tradition and family duty dictate weekly visits every Saturday. Or at least, they did back then’. In these kinds of stories, the narrator seems to be talking directly to the reader so it doesn’t seem odd for them to be relaying events they’ve already experienced.

The second is to make the narration an interior monologue. This can be tricky. It makes exposition especially hard because the narrator isn’t going tell themselves something they already know. They’re not going to look at their cousin and say ‘hey look, it’s my cousin’. It can also make physical descriptions difficult to write because your narrator is going to take notice of something that’s always there, that they see every day. But it is possible to write a story (usually short stories work better in this kind of style) where the entire narration is in the character’s head and not being told to anybody.

The third way is to give the narrator a prop like a diary or a video camera so they have a physical reason for telling their story. This is probably the easiest method of all which is why it can come across as lazy or cheesy. But I think, if it’s done well, this kind of writing can be really effective. I don’t think writing as a diary should be seen as a cop out just because it’s an easy way to make your story make sense.

So there’s my advice for first person stories. Find the reason that the narrator is talking and it’ll make the rest much easier to write.

Thanks for reading.