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· Dec 15, 2021

thanks for the input everyone, gonna start with the lion. i will try imagining c.s. lewis reading this to me in a kindly grandfatherly voice

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closely related is that the narrator is an actual character - he says "i" at several points, says to the reader that he will not be telling the reader certain things, stuff like that - and i feel like modern fiction mostly doesn't do this and is worse for it

9:39 PM · Dec 18, 2021Twitter Web App

(with the notable exception, off the top of my head, of n.k. jemisin's the hundred thousand kingdoms, where the narrator is a specific character in the story and it's a major reveal who)

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the narrator character is written in such a way as to establish a relationship between him and the reader, and it's a wholesome relationship - the narrator is obviously trying to teach and parent the reader, it really shines through

modern fiction with a third-person omniscient narrator has a narrator who is basically a camera. not a person, doesn't have a personality or a point of view on events. there's something subtly weird about this imo. it's a kind of pretending to an objective pov that doesn't exist

this specific paragraph where aslan’s name is spoken aloud for the first time really, really sticks out to me also

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the princess bride & lemony snicket are modernish examples too

was going to plug pb

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game of thrones is written with chapters alternating from different chars’ points of view. still technically 3rd person, but framed from their perspective, experience. GRRM does some v clever things with this that doesn’t quite come thru in the tv show. Medium constraints