First person exposition barrel

Congratulations...you greated a chatter box.

I'm not sure what to tell you. I write a lot of first person, which means I have to stay true to character, but I still control what the character says, when he or she says it, and how much they ramble on. I still control the characters, the story, and all else.

Everything in a first person story is essentially dialogue, but I treat the narrative as if it's just narrative, the same as in third person limited. The character still doesn't get to say anything, even in narrative, that isn't story, that doesn't matter.

That said, if a overly chatty, ramble on POV character works, if the story doesn't get lost in the midst of the chattyness, then use it. Some of my characters are more talky than others, and while I control what every character says, this control is always tempered with making every character an individual.

Religion0 said:

She's also prone to rambling and going off course, as well as weird metaphors (she's a magical healing slug girl, apparently), but that's just her voice. The exposition is kind of weird, though, as she has about ten times the exposition in half the space as some of my third person stories.

Has anyone else experienced this?

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Totally. In a short story I finished recently, the first person narrator has a tendency to go off on tangents. Or at least, they seem to be tangents. All but one of them actually gets a call back later. I was trying to have fun and challenge my own ability to weave in things like that. So for the first half of the story the reader is hopefully amused by the narrator's tendency let his mind wander, and then all of those turn out to be Chekhov's Gags that ratchet up the tension during the second half.

Isn't it strange and amazing how your characters just do what they want? I have characters that will ramble on for hours and characters with very little going on. I have characters that will randomly have a better vocabulary than me, sometimes even coming up with words I have to stop and look up. It really weirds me out. I guess I must know the words deep down somehow. Either that or the characters are real and controlling me from some alternate universe, lol.

andiwrite said:

Isn't it strange and amazing how your characters just do what they want? I have characters that will ramble on for hours and characters with very little going on. I have characters that will randomly have a better vocabulary than me, sometimes even coming up with words I have to stop and look up. It really weirds me out. I guess I must know the words deep down somehow. Either that or the characters are real and controlling me from some alternate universe, lol.

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I don't think about characters that way. For me, they're just creations, and they do exactly what I make them do, say exactly what I want them to say, when I want them to do it, and when I want them to say it.

I guess I fall in the middle. I've never quite understood the "the character does what it wants and I can't control it" idea, but I see it enough that I'm sure it must be the way the process works for some people.

But I will sometimes find as I'm writing that the voice of a character subtly changes over the course of the story from what I initially thought would be right for the story into something that more authentically fits their personality and the narrative because things changed, ideas on plot happened, etc. So then I usually go back and rework the earlier bits to match the later, better voice.

Anyhow. I agree with Neegh. Write it all out, then see what you think, and see what betas think, and if it's a problem, you can see about fixing it. but you won't know until it all exists in context

Yes, JAR. One of the perks of writing is that godlike power. Everybody else does as they damn well please, but my characters, to them I am a goddess.

When you have a chatty character, let her be that way.... except don't let the character ramble on in the middle of physical action. Eg. don't let the character go into a disseration on weapons during a fight. That's for afterward, when you're reflecting on how you got beat.