(no subject)

[graculus]

Oh no, spamming the livejournal...

Anyway, here's the thing: I'm writing a story which has a character who has amnesia (yes, just in time for my cliché panel at connotations!) and I'm writing it in third person kind of from his point of view.

So, character A has amnesia and for a certain reason, he actually thinks he's B. Is it reasonable for me to call him B once he comes to the conclusion that's who he is (even though that conclusion is wrong, he's going to get told it's wrong but initially not believe it and then discover it is wrong), or am I stuck with calling A 'he' all the way through until he finally does get his memory back? Because I can't call him A if he doesn't know he's A, can I?

And does this make any sense at all? No? Fair enough. ;)

Comments

[manna]

Yes, I would go with calling him 'he' until he decides who he is, then 'B' once he come to that conclusion. Especially if it's written in pretty close third.

And then I would get it betaed to hell with a high-power microscope, because I know if it was me I'd be typing the wrong name all the damn time. :-)

[graculus.livejournal.com]

When my head stops spinning. ;)

That's the problem with slash amnesia stories if you're writing them from the pov of the person who's the amnesiac! He doesn't know who he is, he doesn't know who anyone is, so it's all 'he' and 'he' and that's confusing (not to mention tedious to write if you're avoiding epithets).

[manna]

(not to mention tedious to write if you're avoiding epithets).

But surely the beauty of it is that you don't have to avoid the epithets! It's about the only time you can totally legitimately use 'the tall man' or 'the dark haired man' or 'the policeman' as a description for someone because that's really all the character knows about someone he's just met -- they're tall, or dark-haired, or a policeman (but turn out to actually be a stripper in police uniform). I think you should go all-out for it.