want to write a story with an omniscient 3rd person narrator who's aware they're an omniscient 3d person narrator and is annoyed they can't share anything they know with the protagonists
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HELL YEAH im working my way through the 2nd game right now it’s very fun and the right amount of freaky
Saga Anderson is also gorgeous and seemingly a normal well rounded adult which is a great contrast to Anxious and Traumatized Alan and Old Grump Alex Casey
As someone who watched and enjoyed the first season of Marvel's What If... I would love to see more stories of omniscient narrators expressing their grievous about the stories they are narrating (Also this feels like it would have tons of potential for fun satire shenanigans lol)
question!!! wouldn't it be a first person narration then since the narrator is kind of a character telling the reader's what happening? or do i just not understand 1st, 2nd and 3rd person narration anymore-
I think a cool way to do it is have it sort of be a Never Ending Story or Stranger than Fiction situation where the story is directly impacted by the "real" world while also impacting the "real" world itself either through prophetic text or an author directly influencing future events
Yeah they definitely need to intersect at some point for it to work as a narrative I think. Unless the whole point is that they don't in an interesting/unexpected way. I have some plans for something more specific now, I think.
A cool way to do it would be to have the narrator unable to talk to or influence the characters in the book, but they can directly speak to whoever is reading. Of course, whatever you decide to go with, I'd super be interested in seeing what you come up with
alright hear me out, it’s a horror novel, and it’s a jaded horror reader as the omniscient narrator “and of course, jane and the rest of the hapless college students decided to split up and kiss each other, because god knows that’s what you do when there’s a supernatural serial killer in your area.”
one last one, i’m feeling good writing these “and jim, of course being jim, felt the need to escape the entity into the basement. jim of course doesn’t know the use of the fear of the unknown, and that the entity travels via shadow and gets into the basement with ease… yip-pee.”
and here’s some more for good measure “and kiera, as the woman with no supposed agency, goes in the shower right as the creepy motel owner uses his keys to get in… i wonder what happens next?! oh, surprise she died.”
A story about a limited 3rd person narrator that knows the broad strokes of the story while the protagonists notice that the narrator doesn’t quite know the details
oh me too! I also like stuff that plays around with voice/the psychology of the different voices, if that makes sense? like I usually write everything in first person present except for when I don't, there's always *reasons* for it.
That does!! Also reading your website and hell yeah to more queer fiction!!!
I haven't had the time to read lately, but I had $5 and just purchased For We Are Young And Free
Ah hell yeah, that's a really old one now and kinda edgy, but I still have people telling me they liked it to this day. :) I wrote it just before I came out, had a breakdown, then published it after. If you like it, let me know what you think. Thank you!
I'll be sure to 🙏
I'm also thinking about getting the pirate story collection too, dystopian sci-fi and queer otherworldly pirates are major interests of mine
oh shit you will LOVE that collection then. My story is up first, it's about a non-binary drone pilot who really wants to be a robot and it does some interesting things with pronouns/perspectives. There's otherworldly stuff later on too. I'm really proud of both the book and my part of it too. :)
I actually have another story like that where these aliens break down an artist by revealing that their universe is just a bunch of stories that I tell to entertain myself lmao. It's on my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/metaphysics-more-67962075
it didn't do MUCH of this because it would have given away the game too early, but Gideon the Ninth plays with this. Seemingly second-person narrative that's actually a (sometimes shocked and exasperated) third-person omniscient narrator, speaking to the reader conspiratorially.
I mean that's kind of how The Name of the Wind is told. The narrator of the frame story isn't *actually* omniscient, but he is prideful and has a "I am telling the story how I want to tell it" attitude so for all intents and purposes he is. The question is whether his perspective is correct.
"ugh, so of course Reginald, this complete *bastard* who I'm forced to tell you about despite the fact that we're metaphysically prevented from ever meeting is like hgggghhh i'm the man (i'm paraphrasing,) and offends the aliens which fucks their first contact *right up*. So his assistant, Sarah..."
"always stumbling in the dark that girl, is forced to watch him have his head melted by an alien plasma rifle and run for cover and like, she's a lesbian, she doesn't like him very much, but they trained together back on Mars and they respect eachother as soldiers, so..."
"it's pretty traumatic for her to watch him die like that. takes her *years* to recover! and I wish I could tell her, like, oh, that's just what the story wants right now, you're going to have your big time to shine because of that, but she's already wracked with guilt because she has this kinda..."
"precognition that that's how it's gonna go but she feels bad about thinking it because she just watched a guy die. and anyway, because of his incompetence she has to find a way off of this now hostile planet, and if he had have simply read the dossier for once, the way she asked him to...."
"probably he'd still be alive to see her at the award ceremony later in the book. oh did I spoil that for you? fuck, I'm sorry. nobody ever asked me if I wanted to do this, you know? They just wrote me into being & it's what I have to do, so, anyway. She's sheltering behind some fuck off temple..."
"I know everything about it of course but I don't think either of us are in the mood for an info dump session for now so we'll put a pin it for now at least, maybe forever, I don't know..."
Little did they know- Sigh. I wish they did reader, know that is. I really wish the protagonist did know what I'm about to tell you. And you'll see why I want them to know in a few pages. Op, shouldn't have said that, spoilers n all. Sorry. Umm. Back on topic: Little did they know...
But yeah you might be interested to know this cuts quite close to the other story concept I've alluded to but haven't mentioned elsewhere in this thread. 💜
I've often thought it'd be fun to see a Highway to Heaven reboot, but the "Guardian Angel," can't interact directly. It'd be a good broken 4th wall story, and it'd be a fun way for two actors to share space.
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I read this whole thread in the voice of the Narrator from Slay the Princess, and while not exactly the same, I feel like "Narrator constantly annoyed at main character not following his directions and arguing with them in return" is as close to this premise I've seen
That sounds like people who've seen a horror movie over and over and keeps yelling at the main characters.
"WHY DID YOU HIDE THERE, YOU LEFT THE DOOR CRACKED WHEN YOU RAN IN AND YOUR MUDDY FOOT PRINTS GO STRAIGTH THERE! TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES,YOU FUCKING BELLAND!!"
Sometimes I think I should read it just so I can get what people are talking about there but there's just so much of it lol. I know there's versions of it that can help me get around this.
Imagine that with the narrator having ADHD with moments where they go: "Oh that just made me remember something. Did you know that for a long time astronomers tried to find a planet between Mars and Jupiter which led them to discover Ceres, the first small planet of our solar system, hence why (1)."
"Ceres being the Roman goddess of agriculture, harvest and fertility, she was adored and worshipped by the Romans back then. But you'd ask me 'why am I talking about all of this?', it's because I don't want to talk about how this girl on Mars is so stupid! Like, girl, how??!! For the love of Ceres!"
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the fact that this is actually the plot of one of my oc's entire life until they just said "screw this im inserting myself in the story fully" and now is a real character
I guess omniscience and omnipotence aren't necessarily the same thing so it's good if they've got the ability to break out like that too. I like that background for a character though!
This is actually kind of like Tress of the Emerald Sea. The narrator is present in the story and telling it in past tense, but cannot interact in a helpful manor with the protagonists bc his mind was, at the time, scrambled.
the Narrator in "Central Park" is a busker who really invested in the family he's narrating and has total omniscience about. He even gets "replaced" at one point for giving a character a "spoiler". (which leads to one of my favorite songs in the series, actually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G31XsRgqmFw )
In both games the narrator is Homer, the Greek writer. And in hades 2, he is directly address by the main character. As well as, in both games, the main characters indirectly react to his comments!
Lol literally my first draft of my book but I edited the shit out of it and made the character less there so It won’t me confusing lol. (Didn’t post it I wrote it for fun) he did make a lot of jokes tho, he’s a menace.
He’s also a part of the story. He appeared in the prologue, the chapter we met the main character (we only met her in the middle after the fake main character died), the chapter where the so called antagonist(he was more like a second main character) died and the ending.
But that’s only like visual appearances, he was very much there sharing his opinions and basically shaping the second main character into the light of the villain by telling it like so even tho it’s obvious he’s not and he really just abused him and put him there
Ig the difference is that teller is not only omniscient but practically god and can intervene as much as he wants(and does usually when it comes to annoying the second main character) but he wants it to be as natural as possible because he’s an “artist” and unnatural stories are no fun lol
you know I don't know if I communicated it super well but this IS what's going on with Monkey in TDH, and in earlier drafts he keeps trying to yell at people through the footnotes
I DO think my editor was right to cut it, and the text is still in there, it just got shifted into those interstitials.
It was definitely a Killing of Darlings though, and Yat finally actually hears and responds to the footnotes in act 3 and it was a pretty emotional moment.
oh, wait, maybe I have read them then? I know I reviewed the version before the one you did for international distribution but I don't know if it's the version you're talking about or if there was another one before that
Yeah I must have another version cos I'm not sure this is there. I think I can see where you've worked them back into it looking over it again though. Plus this version is still visibly early.
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Honestly I should just read the book 😂
I like the idea though. I feel like I've seen things like this in movies, like George of the Jungle or Monty Python
it’s called “loser’s bromance” by kuzure_collapse
https://archiveofourown.org/works/56481916/chapters/143534035
“I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU!!”
It’s about a writer who’s trapped in his own manuscript…..the issue? He’s a horror writer.
Issue number 2? An entity titled The Dark™️ is using his writing to become more powerful and trying to kill him off in the story
Saga Anderson is also gorgeous and seemingly a normal well rounded adult which is a great contrast to Anxious and Traumatized Alan and Old Grump Alex Casey
Hope you love it when you give play!!
Suppose there was an omniscient narrator that didn't know they were omniscient.
I haven't had the time to read lately, but I had $5 and just purchased For We Are Young And Free
I'm also thinking about getting the pirate story collection too, dystopian sci-fi and queer otherworldly pirates are major interests of mine
Does that qualify?
(At least if the players don’t metagame…)
Psychoman comic
Cue, they've already done that reply below 👇🏻
I took a screenshot many many years ago though!!
"WHY DID YOU HIDE THERE, YOU LEFT THE DOOR CRACKED WHEN YOU RAN IN AND YOUR MUDDY FOOT PRINTS GO STRAIGTH THERE! TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES,YOU FUCKING BELLAND!!"
Please you can add us as friends so that you can join us in always with all children at the orphanage always
(Minor spoiler ahead)
In both games the narrator is Homer, the Greek writer. And in hades 2, he is directly address by the main character. As well as, in both games, the main characters indirectly react to his comments!
It was definitely a Killing of Darlings though, and Yat finally actually hears and responds to the footnotes in act 3 and it was a pretty emotional moment.
That’d be pretty cool