History Main / AllFirstPersonNarratorsWriteLikeNovelists

* ''TheCuriousIncidentOfTheDogInTheNighttime'' is narrated by a teenager with an autistic spectrum disorder, thereby averting the tendency of first-person narrators to write in a polished, literary style, while also justifying the level of detail.

* ''FifthBusiness'' by Robertson Davies is a particularly {{egregious}} case. Elaborate writing aside, the first person narration comes off as a bit odd because the entire story is framed as a letter from the main character to the headmaster of the school that he works at. Said letter happens to be around 300 pages long, and it describes around forty years of the protagonist's life in intimate detail. When was the last time someone wrote their autobiography as a letter to a friend? Hell, how many envelopes can fit a 300-page letter?

* Oddly, both justified and averted in the first book of ''TheQueensThief'' series, where the story turns out to be a book written by the scholarly and book-obsessed narrator in a much less scholarly style. Possibly [[{{YMMV}} justified or unjustified]] when the same thing occurs in the fourth book (the narrator, who is not the same as in the first book, is telling the story verbally, not writing it down, but he's a rather sensitive and detail-oriented guy).

* Oddly, both justified and averted in the first book of ‘’TheQueensThief'' series, where the story turns out to be a book written by the scholarly and book-obsessed narrator in a much less scholarly style. Possibly [[{{YMMV}} justified or unjustified]] when the same thing occurs in the fourth book (the narrator, who is not the same as in the first book, is telling the story verbally, not writing it down, but he's a rather sensitive and detail-oriented guy).

* Oddly, both justified and averted in the first book of ‘’TheQueensThief’’ series, where the story turns out to be a book written by the scholarly and book-obsessed narrator in a much less scholarly style. Possibly [[YMMV justified or unjustified]] when the same thing occurs in the fourth book (the narrator, who is not the same as in the first book, is telling the story verbally, not writing it down, but he's a rather sensitive and detail-oriented guy).

* Future!Ted from ''HowIMetYourMother'' often displayed a rather haphazard narrative style (especially in the first three seasons), occasionally dropping random spoilers and explanations into the story instead of working them into the plot properly (e.g., pausing the action in "Okay Awesome" to say "Oh I forgot! This is important: your Uncle Marshall just had a temporary filling put in that afternoon" right before said filling plays a part in the story.) He also tends to meander around at random: for example, in "Showdown", in the middle of Past!Ted's best man speech at Marshall and Lily's wedding, Future!Ted suddenly interjects with "Oh wait! [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse I forgot to tell you guys what happened to Uncle Barney!]]" and spends the rest of the episode showing a completely unrelated scene from a different storyline, and doesn't come around to telling the wedding story until the next episode.

* IainMBanks's ''Feersum Endjinn'' is written from the point of view of somebody who compulsively uses misspellings and abbreviations. [[YourMileageMayVary Wich u mite thnk is vry kool, or just 2 anoyin 4 wurdz.]]

* In ''TheCatcherInTheRye'', the narrator, Holden Caulfield, accurately represented the colloquial teenage dialect of the era.

* Another justified example would be in ''WutheringHeights'', where Lockwood, the initial narrator, is a bit of a prat and the kind of guy who would be prone to this sort of thing. Then when Nelly tells most of the story, he specifically requests it be told like this.

It can stretch plausibility to begin with [[FridgeLogic if you think about it]], but moreso when the narrator is very young or uneducated, but hey, that's why we have the LiteraryAgentHypothesis. Or the MST3KMantra. This is pretty much one of those AcceptableBreaksFromReality that's so commonplace that we tend not to even notice it.

* ''FlowersForAlgernon'', about a man with learning difficulties who undergoes a medical procedure to turn himself into a genius, plays with this. The first-person writing starts off poorly spelled and simplistic but dramatically improves as the procedure begins to show effects.

* Mark Twain's HuckleberryFinn was criticized for (among other things) the hero narrating the way an uneducated 14 year old from the DeepSouth in the 1860's would talk. But that don't matter none.

* ''Riddley Walker'' by Russell Hoban is a post-apocalyptic novel set in what used to be the English county of Kent. Riddley narrates the entire book in something like a phonetic transliteration of a Kentish accent. Example: "We ben the Puter Leat we had the woal worl in our mynd and we had worls beyont this in our mynd we programmit pas the sarvering gallack seas."

* "The Chymist" as a justified variant of this trope: The character is an InsufferableGenius with an obvious penchant towards [[LargeHam self-indulgent]] [[HannibalLecture soliloquy]], and hence speaks [[PurpleProse rather vividly]]. It's even {{lampshaded}} several times ''by the narrator himself'', as well as his companion.

* Being the ridiculous ThomasLigotti fan-boy that I am, I would venture forth his short story "The Chymist" as a justified variant of this trope: The character is an InsufferableGenius with an obvious penchant towards [[LargeHam self-indulgent]] [[HannibalLecture soliloquy]], and hence speaks [[PurpleProse rather vividly]]. It's even {{lampshaded}} several times ''by the narrator himself'', as well as his companion.

* "Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban is a post-apocalyptic novel set in what used to be the English county of Kent. Riddley narrates the entire book in something like a phonetic transliteration of a Kentish accent. Example: "We ben the Puter Leat we had the woal worl in our mynd and we had worls beyont this in our mynd we programmit pas the sarvering gallack seas."

As for why authors do this with such frequency? It's simple: it allows for a more exciting story. When's the last time you heard someone describe something that happened to them in as much detail as your favorite book? If they did, it would probably be a more exciting story... but also a much longer one. But this way, you get the best of both worlds: a story with the depth of storytelling of a novel, but the humanness of its protagonist infused into the narrative itself.

It stretches plausibility when the narrator is very young or uneducated, but hey, that's why we have the LiteraryAgentHypothesis. Or the MST3KMantra. This is pretty much one of those AcceptableBreaksFromReality that's so common that we tend not to even notice it.

Sometimes writers try to avoid having the narrator sound too much like a narrator speaking the King's English, by having them write in an informal, more casual dialect. Even when that's the case, however, there's usually one consistency across pretty much all first-person novels: The events in the story are described in more detail than someone casually relating a story would likely ever give.

* Another justified example would be in WutheringHeights, where Lockwood, the initial narrator is a bit of a prat and the kind of guy who would be prone to this sort of thing. Then when Nelly tells most of the story he specifically requests it be told like this.

* Another justified example would be in WutheringHeights, where Lacwood, the initial narrator is a bit of a prat and the kind of guy who would be prone to this sort of thing. Then when Nelly tells most of the story he specifically requests it be told like this.