What do you think about not using contractions in narration?

[Seadog777]

This is not just about writing sex stories. It's about writing in general.

I'm considering using only full forms (e.g. she is, did not etc.) in narration to make the authorial voice easier to distinguish from the characters' thoughts. Do you think that's a good idea? Would it put you off as a reader?

I think that since it's YOUR story, that you should do whatever the hell you want.

Do I think it's a good idea....I don't really care TBH. I'm not saying that to be rude, it's just that the human mind already tends to use contractions anyway when we read inside our heads. It's an automatic reflex at this point anymore.

No, it would not put me off as a reader.

JMO, since you asked.

Good luck.

 

[Britva415]

make the authorial voice easier to distinguish from the characters' thoughts

I mean, there are reasons to have an authorial voice (when the narrator is not a character), but aren't character's thoughts easily distinguishable with devices like quotation marks and explicit cues? The basics.

I think if you're writing character's thoughts in a way which is hard to distinguish from the narration, you've got more to worry about than the written "voice." You know?

If you're writing in first person, then your narrator is a character. Do you want him/her to have one voice when narrating, and a different voice in dialogue?

God no!

If the narrator is not a character, I still can't think of a good reason to adopt a contrived voice for the narrator. A character? Sure, contrive a voice for them, one which serves and represents the character well. One which sounds like how the character would actually talk. With the disembodied, non-character third person narrator, you don't have to write their voice like any specific person would real-life talk, and maybe you shouldn't, but, this "no contractions" thing sounds like a contrivance which would tend to draw attention to itself more than it would unobtrusively improve comprehension.

Like I said, the way to clearly distinguish a character's thoughts - or speech - from the surrounding non-character narration is with quote marks and specific cues like "He thought 'fill in the blank'." That's all that's needed.

If the narrator is a character, that's even less of a reason to make them tell the reader the story without contractions. This reader would always go "this is supposed to be this character telling this story but nobody would ever say that like that," totally undermining their believability as a character.

I should say, this is already a reason I'm not a fan of first-person storytelling in general. Most such stories do not contain and spell out the narrator character's motivation for telling you, some reader somewhere, this story. Why did they write it down? Who is the reader to them? There are first-person stories which are so good I can overlook this, and there are first-person stories which make the answers to these questions clear, but in general the first-person POV demands a suspension of disbelief because it's not (made) plausible that I, the reader, would ever come to know about the content of this character's narration.

 

[Britva415]

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[stickygirl]

It's when contractions are 5-10 minutes apart that you need to think about how it's going to be delivered.