First Person Narrators who Break the Fourth Wall

[countdowntolov3]

I want to try writing in a style where the narrator addresses the reader, breaks the fourth wall, and acknowledges they're telling a story.

Things like:

Judge me all you want, but at that moment all I cared about was getting my booty...

Have you ever had two cocks sword fighting over your mouth? Well let me tell you, it's a lot scarier than it sounds.

I bet you're wondering how I got myself into this mess, and why my voice is so gravely. Well, the truth is, I'm a slut. And a damn good one.

But it's intimidating. Even writing those examples above makes me uncomfortable. I feel like I'm doing it wrong.

Have you done anything in this style? Or have you read something that you liked? Smack them here! I want to read them. Snarky narrators especially.

General discussion of this technique also welcome, of course. Especially if you have nuggets of wisdom for a writer dipping her toe in.

One thing I'm struggling with is that it feels jarring whenever I break the fourth wall. Like, I feel like I need to do it enough that it's not weird. But if you do it too much, it's kind of tedious, no?

Note: I think maybe I'm describing "metafiction" here? I know metafiction does a lot of fourth wall breaking and I-know-I'm-in-a-story. But I think also it's associated with narratives that are about the nature of narrative--which is not necessarily what I'm going for. Someone with an English degree can probably set me straight.

 

[StillStunned]

I've done it, in Flesh for Fantasy:

Don't worry, I'm about to get to the good bit.
(...)
I stopped. Well, I wouldn't be human if I hadn't. Or at least not a male human, I suppose.
(...)
I could have stopped there, I suppose. Stepped back and continued on my way to the kitchen. Made myself that coffee, parked myself in front of the telly. Concentrated on keeping my willy under control and filed the memory away for when I got home.

I could have, and perhaps I should. But I didn't.

It's rated 4.79, so my readers don't seem to mind. If it fits in the narrative style, go for it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

General discussion of this technique also welcome, of course. Especially if you have nuggets of wisdom for a writer dipping her toe in.

Dipping her toe into writing, or dipping her toe into fourth wall?

If you're new to writing I'd suggest nailing the more usual voices first, really get your technical chops down. Then, when you're good enough, give it a go, coz then you'll know what you're doing. Do it before you're ready, it could go awkwardly wrong.

 

[countdowntolov3]

Dipping her toe into writing, or dipping her toe into fourth wall?

If you're new to writing I'd suggest nailing the more usual voices first, really get your technical chops down. Then, when you're good enough, give it a go, coz then you'll know what you're doing. Do it before you're ready, it could go awkwardly wrong.

Dipping my toe into the fourth wall. Not to say I am a master writer or anything, but I think a little experimentation is appropriate where I am.

Good point, though.

 

[Djmac1031]

. Snarky narrators especially.

Snarky, did you say?

Perfect story for you then. May I present Elves Gone Wild.

Short, and filled with all the debauchery and snark you can handle.

https://literotica.com/s/elves-gone-wild

 

[Rob_Royale]

Yes, I have. But not often. I was writing and working towards the "why" something happened and realized I was dragging things out a bit too long, so fourth wall be damned.

At that point, we took the vessel in tow, but due to the nature of the boat and the ..., ah hell, let me just cut to the chase. The vessel broke up and sank in the middle of the night.

I don't see a big deal. First-person is a narrative and is someone telling a story. For the narrator to acknowledge it almost seems natural. I'm reading S. King's Faerie Tale right now and he does it constantly.

 

[countdowntolov3]

Snarky, did you say?

Perfect story for you then. May I present Elves Gone Wild.

Short, and filled with all the debauchery and snark you can handle.

https://literotica.com/s/elves-gone-wild

By the way: Hate to break it to you, but Santa doesn't read your letters, kids. He throws them unopened into the fireplace that is our only source of heat in the workshop. He'll sure as fuck eat all those cookies you dumb little bastards leave out for him, though.

'd

 

[Djmac1031]

One thing I'm struggling with is that it feels jarring whenever I break the fourth wall. Like, I feel like I need to do it enough that it's not weird. But if you do it too much, it's kind of tedious, no?

I don't know too many stories that do it. But there are plenty of films that were very successful with it, including Ferris Beuller, Deadpool and Fight Club.

I think it probably works best with humor but it really depends on the story.

 

[intim8]

It's more naturally doable in 1st person. 1st person doesn't typically address the reader directly, but you can do it and it isn't jarring. I did some in my Nudio's Pizza story. It's styled mostly as the character telling the reader the story, and in a few cases, "responding" to what he thinks the reader might be thinking, sometimes directly speaking to them.

But, the whole thing is written in a kind of lighthearted, borderline comical style.

Drawing cute little hearts with my dick... it's a talent I'm pretty proud of, by the way. I mean, try it sometime. See if you can control the speed and flow well enough to paint anything other than a monochrome Jackson Pollock reject on anything, let alone within a 16-inch circle. All while you're having an orgasm.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think the question to ask, seriously, is why you want to do this. How will it contribute to your story?

If your story has a light, comic tone, I can see it working, because breaking the 4th wall can be used well for comic effect, or to establish an unreliable narrator. Holden Caulfield does this in Catcher in the Rye.

But in a serious story, I think one has to think long and hard about it before using it. I don't think it makes sense in most stories.

 

[AlinaX]

It's fairly normal for the narrator to converse this way with the reader. To really break the fourth wall, you need to go further and make the reader part of the story, e.g., have a character speak to or look at the reader.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I think the same as AlinaX. Your examples are a breaking of the fourth wall in that they address the reader, but I wouldn't consider them a true use of the technique.

To me a breaking of the fourth wall often involves a more thematic integration of the technique with the story being told, often through a character's acknowledgement that they are in a story. And I think the technique shouldn't be used lightly. It has to serve the story in some greater way than a passing remark. If a character is going to go all in and shatter the illusion of fiction, it has to be leading somewhere substantial.

For your examples, though, I think they work fine. They are in passing, not nearly as intrusive as a proper shattering of that wall. They are just giving the narrator voice and character, so I wouldn't be too afraid to use them.

 

[jaykaythree]

I don't break the fourth wall as much as I take a sledgehammer to it ... assuming, of course, that I even allow for its construction in the first place.

 

[ronde]

I'm not a fan of the narrator directly addressing the reader. It breaks the readers train of thought and drags them out of the story. I have done it on occasion. When I do, it's usually in the form of a "secret" first person narrator who reads like a third person narrator until I reveal that at the end. The ending takes the form of, "That's what I was told happened" or other words to indicate that it was really a first person narration of something that happened.

I also avoid using the word "you" unless it seems to be just normal speech for the character, with "you" being just a slang term meaning "everybody".

 

[CalebZhass]

I want to try writing in a style where the narrator addresses the reader, breaks the fourth wall, and acknowledges they're telling a story.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the narrator can't break the 4th wall. The fourth wall is the camera. Breaking the fourth wall refers to the actors acknowledging towards the audience, that they are in a set, surrounded by three real and one imaginary wall, that they just pretend to be there. They don't normally interact with the audience, as that is not their role, and the audience sits outside of their world, which is constrained to the set. So when they still do, as AlinaX said, look at you or talk to you, it sticks out and feels odd, making it good device for certain things. Then again, it also breaks the immersion a bit, which is why it's used sparsely in storytelling.

The narrator's role is to interact with the audience, to tell the audience directly what's happening, what the background is. The narrator making remarks, like "Don't worry, I'll get to the good bits." is not breaking the fourth wall, it's just a break in the flow of telling the story to interact with the audience a bit more directly.

To answer along the spirit of the question, I don't believe it to be strange, when a storyteller in either a first or third person story interacts with the audience, telling them about their feelings in the moment or about their plans on how they will tell the story going forward. It's actually a way of dragging the audience in a bit more, making the thing more intimate. Though mileage might vary on that, I guess different people might have different tastes in this regard.

Now in a first person present tense story, this is a bit different. As that's not so much a retelling of what has happened, but actually expects you to step into the shoes of the character from whose POV / through whose actions the story is told. If that character happens to acknowledge the fact, that there are readers following what he/she does, that'd be once again breaking the fourth wall, as you then have a character making you aware that they know they are in a story, being on a set with an audience sitting just outside watching what they do.

 

[AlexBailey]

I write mostly in first person. I come at it like constant inner dialogue - like a diary entry, lists of inner musings. Still there are hard breaks of the fourth wall that don’t work for me.

Asking the reader questions can throw me out, while having the narrator ask themselves questions shares their thoughts.

From my novel during a quiet moment by a fire at the beach:

I'm sitting on the blanket next to the girls. Sam is behind me, his arm around my belly and his nose behind my ear. I smell his breath and a memory from my drunken birthday is jogged loose in my mind. I remember back to the night before that awful morning, where we were sitting by the fire on the Australian beach. I was watching Sam look into the empty bottle of rum, saying '...any more of this and I might have taken you to bed.' We stared at each other for a minute on the verge of passing out before we kissed once, then laid down on the beach with his arms around me. Why couldn't I remember that until now?

"Hey Sam?"

"Yeah, love?"

I didn't really have anything to say, I just wanted to hear his voice. "I like that..." I say, "...the way you call me 'love.' It's better than 'mate.'" I chuckle. "When we were hanging around with your friends, you always called me mate, but the rest of the guys and you were always calling each other 'cunts'..."

I don't normally like the word 'cunt' but it's so common in Australia that it's lost it's meaning, it's almost a term of endearment, a vulgar version of 'mate.'

 

[VallesMarineris]

I want to try writing in a style where the narrator addresses the reader, breaks the fourth wall, and acknowledges they're telling a story.

The fourth wall is an illusion. It’s like the four minute mile, or like the rule against splitting infinitives.

Look, you’re a storyteller. You tell stories. The reader knows they’re being told a story and expects you to lead them through the events of the story, helping them appreciate it. It’s part of the storyteller’s job. You’re a guide, a conductor, a pilot. Or maybe an escort, a rescuer, a hostess. You get the idea.

In contrast to movies, there is always a narrator in literature, because the story is always, duh, narrated. So you have to talk to the reader; you are always talking to the reader. You being whatever persona you’ve taken on to narrate the story. Readers want you to have an attitude and they want you to express it. You can’t have an interesting story told by a dull narrator.

What you call the fourth wall is just the narrator taking on more personality in the story. This is fine. You’re asking the reader to stretch their mind a little bit, to maintain the perception of being in the story while staying aware of your external opinion of what’s going one. But that’s just part of the story, a second level, and if you can do that it’s double the fun.

There are many ways to do this. In a mystery the author is deliberately laying out clues for the reader and daring the reader to figure out who done it before the hero. Readers know this. It’s part of the fun of the story. You can think of the structure of the genre as a bridge that carries the reader over the wall.

As a different example, in Tristram Shandy, Lawrence Sterne’s unfortunate hero is trying to write his autobiography, but laments to the reader in the book that he’s spent months writing the first 200 pages of his life and only covered the first day, and so has no hope of ever finishing. This is hilarious in itself, since of course Tristram is a fictional character, and also because he’s right: the first 200 pages only get through the day of his birth, a story that in itself is ROTFL hilarious.

But you don’t have to worry about any of this. Just take on the role of storyteller and tell the story, including your view of the events and the participants. You have a reason you want to tell us this story, to amuse or educate or scare or excite us. Whatever. Don’t think you have to hide behind the story. Pretend you’re a stand up comedian, or a wise old lady, or a stranger over a cocktail. Whatever gets you going. Let the reader see why you think the story is worth reading.

 

[oneagainst]

The Light Between The Trees does this - but it's first person unreliable narrator addressing (no... accusing) the audience. I did it to maintain momentum and attitude of the FMC during the opening sequence, as she pleads for her life in a cafe. It was also a way to set the scene for the rest of the book, having the character herself warn the reader about what was to come, rather than the usual boilerplate initial disclaimer.

From the comments, seemed to work....

 

[AchtungNight]

If I feature certain Marvel characters in a story, breaking the fourth wall becomes a necessity. Isn’t that right, Jennifer and Wade?

[Deadpool and She-Hulk nod, then politely decline AN’s offer to hook them up together. Neither is the other’s type.]

Oh well.

 

[SimonDoom]

The fourth wall is an illusion.

Yes, it's an illusion, but in fiction it's often an important and useful illusion. In many stories, especially those told in third person POV, a goal is to immerse the reader in the story so the reader in part loses awareness that they are being told a story. I think this is especially true in stories that are serious in tone. If, as an author, you are narrating a suspenseful passage in a horror novel, and as a narrator you suddenly break the wall and address the reader directly, you could ruin the suspense. I think the same could be true in an erotic story, where the reader wants to be immersed in the narrative and the erotic event. Breaking the wall could spoil the mood. Shrivel the willie.

That's why my general advice would be NOT to do it unless you have a good reason to do it that serves the story's particular purposes.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the narrator can't break the 4th wall. The fourth wall is the camera. Breaking the fourth wall refers to the actors acknowledging towards the audience, that they are in a set, surrounded by three real and one imaginary wall, that they just pretend to be there. They don't normally interact with the audience, as that is not their role, and the audience sits outside of their world, which is constrained to the set. So when they still do, as AlinaX said, look at you or talk to you, it sticks out and feels odd, making it good device for certain things. Then again, it also breaks the immersion a bit, which is why it's used sparsely in storytelling.

The narrator's role is to interact with the audience, to tell the audience directly what's happening, what the background is. The narrator making remarks, like "Don't worry, I'll get to the good bits." is not breaking the fourth wall, it's just a break in the flow of telling the story to interact with the audience a bit more directly.

To answer along the spirit of the question, I don't believe it to be strange, when a storyteller in either a first or third person story interacts with the audience, telling them about their feelings in the moment or about their plans on how they will tell the story going forward. It's actually a way of dragging the audience in a bit more, making the thing more intimate. Though mileage might vary on that, I guess different people might have different tastes in this regard.

Now in a first person present tense story, this is a bit different. As that's not so much a retelling of what has happened, but actually expects you to step into the shoes of the character from whose POV / through whose actions the story is told. If that character happens to acknowledge the fact, that there are readers following what he/she does, that'd be once again breaking the fourth wall, as you then have a character making you aware that they know they are in a story, being on a set with an audience sitting just outside watching what they do.

Technically, your are right about cameras. (Or stage plays.) But informally, we know what the OP is talking about. I think she means a first-person narrator, but I've read novels where the author (in third-person?) will stick themselves into the text.

 

[Djmac1031]

To me, "breaking the 4th walk" in writing has always meant the narrator, usually 1st person, stops telling the story for a moment to address the reader directly.

Example again from my Elves Gone Wild story. And yes obviously I was going for humor.

Throughout the story Willie the Elf has been bragging about his huge cock.

Then as hrs getting ready to fuck Mrs. Claus (Maggie) she insults his size.

Willie then breaks the story to address the reader:

Maggie positioned her plump pussy over my stump and planted herself on it with an angry groan.

"You call that a cock?" she hissed, smacking my face. "It's barely the size of a holly sprig!"

Confused? Of course you are. But I'm not surprised. I pegged you for a Short Bus passenger the moment I saw you, scrolling through these pages with your dead sheep eyes. But okay, I'll explain. In small words.

My cock IS huge. For an elf. But Mrs. Claus is a regular sized person. Get it now?

Dumbass. Anyway...

From there he continues the story from where he left off.

It's a direct acknowledgement that someone is reading this story, and reading online, scrolling through the page. And Willie can see them there, reading it.

Which deferentuates it from a narrator merely acknowledging they're telling a story.

 

[VallesMarineris]

Yes, it's an illusion, but in fiction it's often an important and useful illusion. In many stories, especially those told in third person POV, a goal is to immerse the reader in the story so the reader in part loses awareness that they are being told a story. I think this is especially true in stories that are serious in tone. If, as an author, you are narrating a suspenseful passage in a horror novel, and as a narrator you suddenly break the wall and address the reader directly, you could ruin the suspense. I think the same could be true in an erotic story, where the reader wants to be immersed in the narrative and the erotic event. Breaking the wall could spoil the mood. Shrivel the willie.

That's why my general advice would be NOT to do it unless you have a good reason to do it that serves the story's particular purposes.

I’m not suggesting the author should be talking directly to the reader in every paragraph. But the author can move the point of view in and out for valuable effect. I think calling this change in POV a wall is the wrong metaphor. It’s more of a bridge, or maybe an FPV drone the author pilots. Let’s take as an example one of OP’s lines:

I bet you're wondering how I got myself into this mess, and why my voice is so gravely. Well, the truth is, I'm a slut. And a damn good one.

Here are ways to move in steps from all the way in the scene to the OP’s line:

“Wow,” Joe said to me, “how did you get yourself into this mess? Your voice is so gravelly. You must really be a slut. And a damn good one.”

My voice was gravelly. I’m a slut. And a damn good one..

Yes, I got myself into this mess. And my voice is gravelly. Well, the truth is, I’m a slut. And a good one.

I bet you're wondering how I got myself into this mess, and why my voice is so gravely. Well, the truth is, I'm a slut. And a damn good one.

Or we could move even further out:

You may be wondering, dear reader. how I, the young, innocent woman I’ve just described for you, could have got herself into such a mess, and how she (meaning I) is going to explain her gravely voice to her saintly great-aunt and benefactor, who is right now being helped out of the limo. Well, the truth is, if you stayed with my depraved story this far, I’m a slut. And a damn good one!

Okay, I had fun with that last example and laid it on pretty thick. But I don’t see a barrier here, I see a continuum. A few tweaks could move any of those lines closer or further away from the action. And do for the story whatever the author wants.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

The "fourth wall" technique has been used extensively in literature, and is especially popular in detective genre stories, but even appears in classics such as "The Catcher in the Rye". (AKA: "asides", "authorial interjections")

I use it sparingly in some of my first-person POV stories here. One example that comes to mind is in "Our Love Saga":

We were in the new rental house within a month. I surprised Samantha with a Sheltie puppy two weeks later, who we called “Snapper”. It made her sound far more ferocious than she was, but with an AKC registered name of “Cole’s Snapdragon”, Snapper seemed to fit.

Do you know how rewarding it is to be a hero to the sexiest woman in the world?

(Who else would the question be directed to but the readers?)

 

[Britva415]

Unless there's a really strong frame making real clear who the narrator is addressing the entire story to, and it's not the out-of-character reader, I think first-person is already breaking the fourth wall. Most first-person stories don't have this and are pretty clearly addressing an out-of-character reader.