Does it take you out of the story? Do you find it interesting? Basically, what's your take on it?

For clarification, I'm not referring to those times when a story purposely changes its narrative style. I'm talking about when you are reading a story and suddenly the way the writer tells the story does a complete 180, like he just found his voice and completely changed the way he tells his story.

What made me create this thread is that I was reading a story where for the first three chapters or so the author seemed to be trying to mimic J.K's style(and pretty decently too) for one of those "Child has an adventure!" type stories and then suddenly apparently went "fuck it" and started using a dark, horror/mystery/Agatha Christie time-ish narrative style that was also good but it was like dude where the fuck did that come from.

And after I stopped to think about it, I realized that those shifts in narrative voice are pretty common in fanfiction, because writers are still trying to find their voice and tend to shift in between at times. In published works authors generally have time to revise and adjust their voice in earlier passages, so there's never this ridiculous shift that appears in fanfiction from time to time.

So yeah, what do you guys think of stories that do that? Does it take you out of the story, do you find it interesting, don't care about it or what?

 

For me, it depends entirely on how well integrated it is with the story being told.

If it's a random scene that abruptly veers into the grimdark for no reason, then yes, it's jarring to read. I have a hard time getting back into the story afterwards. I also know that it probably won't be the only time the author pulls this; the rest of the fic is likely to be just as half-assed.

But if it's a scene change, where the style shifts to fit the situation, then I'm fine with the different narrative voice. And if it's done well, I even think it is clever stylistic choice. It isn't something a beginning writer would usually experiment with, though.

 

Like always, it depends. I would accept it, and indeed appreciate it, if the author switched to a different character PoV and had the skill to change the 'voice' with it, but otherwise it seems odd. Unless, of course, there was a good enough reason for it: for example, if the story is becoming darker and grittier, by all means change the narrative voice to reflect that. Similarly, if the story wants to move to a more romantic feel, keeping a thriller/crime noir type voice might be strange.

As with all writing, it depends on the skill of the author. So long as he or she can pull it off, and it's not just a mistake, I'm all for it.

 

I experimented with that a couple chapters ago in my fic. The focus on the chapter was more romantic than dark (the rest of the story is darker), so I change the voice to being a tad more poetic - nothing much, just using a couple more metaphors and letting word definitions be stretched a bit.

Some people liked the chapter, others noticed and questioned me about it, so it didn't really work.

So I'd have to say, at least in my very limited experience on the writing side, that changing the voice in a story is not a good idea.

On the reading side, I know it throws me off. What really throws me off, is a change from first person to third person in a story. I was reading a series one time. The first book was in third person, the second was in first person. I never got past the first chapter of the second book.