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WHOS_ON_FIRST

                                              February 18, 2005

Need a language of narrative that
doesn't presume a medium.

Typically, a story has an author,
and it has a

  main character
  viewpoint character
  hero

And the story is directed at one or
more human beings, the...

  reader?
  viewer?
  audience?

I'd really like a more
general term for the
"consumer" of the            The narratee that
narrative.                   recieves the
                             narration from the
                             narrator.


In practice I often suddenly
shift between terminology,
one moment I say "reader"
envisioning a written story,
another moment I say "viewer"
or "audience" envisioning a
movie/teleplay/play...

Maybe there's a pronoun dodge
of some sort?  "And then one wonders
what the main character is thinking."





                                  A related problem in
                                  narrating a narrative
                                  is clumsy jargon like
                                  "main character" and
                                  "point-of-view".

            You can't just say                           Usually these
            "the viewpoint",                             are the same,
            because that makes                           though there
            it sound like you                            are cases where
            mean the viewer.                             they aren't --

            Pretty frequently                            Though typically
            in writing about                             that's a sign that
            writing, writers                             the author is being
            resort to the                                excessively clever.
            acronym "pov"...
                                    POV







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