January 5th, 2010 / 4:28 pm
Craft Notes

Writing/Editing Prompt: Kill Yr Narrator

Basic: Take a first person story, new or old—one that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Go to the bottom of the story. Press return twice after the final bit of punctuation on the final paragraph. Add a little section sign. This one:

(On a Mac, it’s Option+6.)

Hit return two more times. Let another narrator take over. Explain somehow that the first narrator is dead. Reassess the story from the second narrator’s perspective.

Advanced: Take a third person story, new or old—one that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Go to the bottom of the story. Press return twice after the final bit of punctuation on the final paragraph. Add a little section sign.

Hit return two more times. Let something else take over. Consider: if an omniscient narrator “dies,” what happens to the world of the story? Does another omniscient narrator fill the vacuum? Consider: God is dead. What now? Does the world end? Does the narrator’s creator decide to step out from behind the corpse and speak? Does the world remake itself?

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8 Comments

  1. El Dangerouso

      I like this a lot.

  2. El Dangerouso

      I like this a lot.

  3. Merzmensch

      I was always playing with this idea. Narrator is the only protagonist who use cowardly to survive in the most literary textes… Apropos literary textes… If I kill a narrator of an non-fiction text, what’s about this one?

  4. Merzmensch

      I was always playing with this idea. Narrator is the only protagonist who use cowardly to survive in the most literary textes… Apropos literary textes… If I kill a narrator of an non-fiction text, what’s about this one?

  5. Kyle Minor

      Some writers I’ve read who have one way or another done this: William Trevor, Alice Munro, Tim O’Brien, John L’Heureux, David Foster Wallace, Tobias Wolff, John Updike, Philip Roth, Louise Erdrich.

  6. Kyle Minor

      Some writers I’ve read who have one way or another done this: William Trevor, Alice Munro, Tim O’Brien, John L’Heureux, David Foster Wallace, Tobias Wolff, John Updike, Philip Roth, Louise Erdrich.

  7. Kyle Minor

      Also, Stephen Dixon.

  8. Kyle Minor

      Also, Stephen Dixon.