Story with two narrators

i_would

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I was having this idea, unsure whether it would work or how to go about it really, to create a story with two narrators, in the first person. Switching from one to the other, telling the story using both character's viewpoints.

There may or may not be overlap between the narration (i.e. an event described by one, is subsequently described by the other), characters will of course sometimes be together, sometimes separate.

Could give interesting perspectives. It's a bit like the third person limited, but jumping between two characters.

The trick is going to be to have the reader understand which character is telling when. Or maybe that's to be kept ambiguous intentionally for better effect.

OTOH maybe the above is simply a stupid idea that's never going to work :)
 
Sure it's a lot of trouble because you have to send in the story as a file (like you would for an illustrated story) instead of just writing it (someone should get Laurel on that) but having different fonts like Bold and Italics would handle the confusion just fine, after that it should work just fine.
 
I'm using the occasional italics and so in my stories, and still using the paste box. Just use the appropriate html tags. That's the easy part, and not exactly the question here.

Should narrators be separated like that, one italic, the other regular font? Maybe more fun to NOT separate them so obviously?

Would love to hear suggestions of stories where this has been done.
 
Wait. . .I can use html tags in stories?! I owe you a debt of gratitude good sir.

I would separate them that way unless you want confusion in the story.
 
This is going to sound like a silly question, but how do the html tags work please?
 
You know how when you bold or italicize or change the color on Lit you get that little bit of information in brackets? That's the html code. I'd show you but they'd just vanish because that's what they do when you input them correctly.
 
This is going to sound like a silly question, but how do the html tags work please?

For a word or story segment you want in italics you put this in front <i> and end it with this </i>

if you mess up and don;t end it the italics will run through the entire rest of the story.

Bold is the same except with a B.
 
I meant for Lit but despite being linked Lit the Website and Lit the Forums could easily use different code.



I broke those with hyphens so they'd stay visible. Here on the Forums you use brackets not greater than and less than symbols. I've never used on in a story though and was shocked to find out that would work.

Does it show up in the preview or will I not know until I know if I try this?
 
I meant for Lit but despite being linked Lit the Website and Lit the Forums could easily use different code.



I broke those with hyphens so they'd stay visible. Here on the Forums you use brackets not greater than and less than symbols. I've never used on in a story though and was shocked to find out that would work.

Does it show up in the preview or will I not know until I know if I try this?

You see the HTML in the doc obviously, but when you paste it into the submission box and hit preview you will only see the words in bold or italic.

But do yourself a favor and preview each page of the lit story before submitting because as I said if you do not "turn off" the code the italics or bold will continue to run.

For me this is easier because in the past I had issues submitting a word doc. The copy paste works better.

ETA- I also manually put the words in italics(I never use bold) in the doc as well as the html to double insure it gets done so in word it looks like

<i>This is how it looks in word</i>
 
I was having this idea, unsure whether it would work or how to go about it really, to create a story with two narrators, in the first person. Switching from one to the other, telling the story using both character's viewpoints.

Most of the stories I've written with a coauthor here and filed under the name Shabbu are written that way.
 
I was having this idea, unsure whether it would work or how to go about it really, to create a story with two narrators, in the first person. Switching from one to the other, telling the story using both character's viewpoints.

There may or may not be overlap between the narration (i.e. an event described by one, is subsequently described by the other), characters will of course sometimes be together, sometimes separate.

Could give interesting perspectives. It's a bit like the third person limited, but jumping between two characters.

The trick is going to be to have the reader understand which character is telling when. Or maybe that's to be kept ambiguous intentionally for better effect.

OTOH maybe the above is simply a stupid idea that's never going to work :)

One way to do this is the epistolary novel model e.g. "Dracula", which makes it easy to identify narrators.
 
Thank's LC. I used to always send them in as files but I found they go faster if you copy and paste so know I only send files for illustrated story and I do no more than 6 of those a year and usually it's rare to see me at 2.

I will review each page I was just curious if it would show up at all. Like how tabs don't and it would bother me less if the first twelve comments on every story didn't involve how I should indent. :rolleyes: And several after that explaining how I'm not a moron it's a format thing. And I occasionally screw something up and bleed over in the background.

Anyway on subject, I think the story idea is great. You want to keep the two voices as separate as possible, with different fonts if possible because that makes life better.

Speaking of fonts can we do that too?
 
Oh, no, not different fonts. I doubt Literotica even permits that (or any other legitimate publisher, for that matter). You separate them by marked section, and you contain them in fairly long sections unless you want the reader's eyes to cross.
 
Oh, that sucks. I don't see why they wouldn't allow different fonts since the majority of people have Microsoft Word, I'd think you'd be safe using any font from 2000 or older but I'm just interested in using italics and bold because there are things I've always avoided doing in stories (mostly internal dialogue but also scary voices) because I didn't have that ability.
 
Literotica has its own font for the story file (Verdana). I've never seen another font used here. If anyone else has, would like to see a citation of the story in the file.
 
Oh, I wasn't questioning you. I've just only seen a handful of stories with bold and/or italics. There are only 433 illustrated stories. If they didn't have their own category I wouldn't know they were even possible.

But thank you much.
 
Oh, that sucks. I don't see why they wouldn't allow different fonts since the majority of people have Microsoft Word, I'd think you'd be safe using any font from 2000 or older but I'm just interested in using italics and bold because there are things I've always avoided doing in stories (mostly internal dialogue but also scary voices) because I didn't have that ability.

Just to clarify, Lit allows you to modify text style (bold/italic/underline). But you can't change from Verdana to Helvetica, etc.

About HTML, see for example this really recent thread http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=950833

It seems no comments on my original question though :-(

Oh, sorry, I intended my previous comment to be a response to your question, but maybe I was too terse. Yes, this can be done, though it takes some work to do well.
 
Wow, that was alot of info. but thanks guys (and ladies), I appreciate it.
 
It seems no comments on my original question though :-(

Excuse me. I think both my #12 and #15 posts were responsive to the OP question, and I even pointed to examples for you.

No, I don't think it would work well to change perspective from paragraph to paragraph for a run of paragraphs (although no doubt it has been done here). You'd give the readers whiplash. You can do it from one section to the next--and I've pointed to examples on how this is done.
 
And I disagree.

Here is a story http://www.literotica.com/s/lst3k-ep-01-the-tale-of-benjamin the original travesty which is told first person and it whips back and forth pretty much paragraph by paragraph and occsionally line by line between two narrators and it's rib splittingly funny.

I had a serious story told in a similar fashion but like many things it's three computers in the past if not farther.
 
Excuse me. I think both my #12 and #15 posts were responsive to the OP question, and I even pointed to examples for you.

I stand corrected. Missed those in between the rest of the noise.
 
And I disagree.

Here is a story http://www.literotica.com/s/lst3k-ep-01-the-tale-of-benjamin the original travesty which is told first person and it whips back and forth pretty much paragraph by paragraph and occsionally line by line between two narrators and it's rib splittingly funny.

I had a serious story told in a similar fashion but like many things it's three computers in the past if not farther.

This is something totally different. Unless it changes tack later :) I read a couple dozen paragraphs of that one, and the second narrator (the one in bold) is more like a reader commenting on the story than that it actually is the story.

What I'm more looking at is either a second story line, interspersed in the first, or the same story told from alternating viewpoints - with or without overlap.

The last I have seen in a documentary/photo book that I have about the occupation of the TV tower in Riga, marking the beginning of the end of Soviet rule, where events were described by eye witnesses. And the same event was sometimes reported on by three, four or even more eyewitnesses, each from a different viewpoint. Which was really interesting and gave the documentary a lot more depth. Format is of course quite different from fiction, each eyewitness got their separate section in a chapter.
 
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