How about if I just explain them here, and you save it and then if you ever need it again, you'll be able to find it?
My differentiated firsts are:
First braindump -- first person, present tense, narrator is not ahead of the text. Within the text, you're actually inside their brain, it isn't being written at all. This is what I used for the firsts in The Rebirth of Pan. Example: Marge Piercy's Braided Lives. Example: "I'm walking down the street, and I see Jim. What's Jim doing here? I take a step towards him and oh my God. No. No! I've stepped too close to the black hole! I'm falling in a spiral!"
First headlong -- first person, past tense but the narrator is only a little ahead of the text. Diaries, letters. Within the text, the text is being written at textually specific times. My favourite example of this is Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. Example: "I'm going out now to confront Jim at the spaceport. I don't know how it will go. Later -- well, I saw Jim, but I also fell in the black hole. It was so embarrassing!"
First reflective -- first person, past tense, narrator is way ahead of the text. This is what I used for Sulien. Example: Mary Renault's The Persian Boy. Within the text, the text is being written after the events of the text, and generally at a specific time and for a specific purpose, at least implicitly.Example "Little did I know when I stepped out that day that I'd end it by falling first into a black hole and then in love."
As you can see by my examples, I've ordered these in order of immediacy. However, they are also ordered in reverse order of that huge advantage of first, being able to explain things directly to the reader. In braindump, you can't stop and explain. There's an I, but no "you". In the others, there is, it's being written and processed and you can have mannerisms, and just stopping dead to explain, for example, "We always keep a black hole in the middle of the road, you just have to be careful to step around it."
no subject
How about if I just explain them here, and you save it and then if you ever need it again, you'll be able to find it?
My differentiated firsts are:
First braindump -- first person, present tense, narrator is not ahead of the text. Within the text, you're actually inside their brain, it isn't being written at all. This is what I used for the firsts in The Rebirth of Pan. Example: Marge Piercy's Braided Lives. Example: "I'm walking down the street, and I see Jim. What's Jim doing here? I take a step towards him and oh my God. No. No! I've stepped too close to the black hole! I'm falling in a spiral!"
First headlong -- first person, past tense but the narrator is only a little ahead of the text. Diaries, letters. Within the text, the text is being written at textually specific times. My favourite example of this is Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. Example: "I'm going out now to confront Jim at the spaceport. I don't know how it will go. Later -- well, I saw Jim, but I also fell in the black hole. It was so embarrassing!"
First reflective -- first person, past tense, narrator is way ahead of the text. This is what I used for Sulien. Example: Mary Renault's The Persian Boy. Within the text, the text is being written after the events of the text, and generally at a specific time and for a specific purpose, at least implicitly.Example "Little did I know when I stepped out that day that I'd end it by falling first into a black hole and then in love."
As you can see by my examples, I've ordered these in order of immediacy. However, they are also ordered in reverse order of that huge advantage of first, being able to explain things directly to the reader. In braindump, you can't stop and explain. There's an I, but no "you". In the others, there is, it's being written and processed and you can have mannerisms, and just stopping dead to explain, for example, "We always keep a black hole in the middle of the road, you just have to be careful to step around it."