So, I've been doing something in this book for awhile now, but it was causing problems.
Elven memories do not fade. Whilst they can forget, what they remember is as vivid as the moment it happened.
My first two POV characters are each telling their carefully curated story to someone else, with the intent of convincing their audience of one to take a course of action. While they are told in First Person, I use the standard "past-ish" tenses one typically finds in a novel.
My main POV character, the protagonist, also tells her story in First Person, but he uses verbs denoting the immediate present.
I have several reasons for doing this.
First, she doesn't show up until about page 120, which is pretty unusual for a protagonist. Typically, the protagonist is either the first POV character or the first named character in a book. Giving her words a stronger sense of immediacy is a way of more quickly drawing in the reader to her side, her story, and her POV. So far, so good.
However...
She is a prisoner in the opening scenes in which she appears, inspecting her new cell and dealing with the claustrophobia one gets in a prison cell deep under the earth. All good.
She starts telling stories to a fellow prisoner in a neighboring cell, stories about things that happened to her in the recent past. Here's where the problem comes in. Because she's telling things from her vivid memory "just as she remembers them", she is telling these stories about the past in present tense. This is not "normal" behaviour for a novel. Most readers won't pin down the subtle disorientation they are getting to the use of present tense in what we know is the past, but they'll feel it.
The standard solution would be to tell the past
events in past tense. But you already know why I don't want to do that, I'm exploring what that change in memory really *means* to someone's life.
So, I needed some way to orient the reader to what's happening so they won't be disoriented, but will instead buy into this behaviour.
And I found it!
Already established history for this character, who is now a
bard, is that she was injured when still young and lost all her memories, even including bodily movement. Imagine having to learn what newborns have to learn, but with an adult body. I already had her mention this to her fellow prisoner by way of distracting them from a sorrowful moment. I expanded it a bit.
The added bit, which I think makes all this hang together, is in the paragraph that starts with "I asked
emel once."
She is a cell under the ground, something she finds most troubling to her spirit. She is used to sleeping under the stars. The fellow prisoner, who is actually her captor, almost flubs out his real name, but catches himself in time. Emel is
Sindarin for "mother".
I sense the pain in his voice. My kindness has gone amiss. It was foolish to gift the scent of the world above to a prisoner long-held in darkness.
I must turn his thoughts elsewhere. This may suffice. “I am once-born but twice an infant.”
His body shifts fast and loud enough to vie with his exclamation. “What?!”
My delight in his reaction enters my voice. “No, truly!”
“How can it be?” I have retuned his curiosity to my story.
“Would you have me tell my life story to a stranger? We have not been introduced!”
“Oh, yes. Of course. F — Olfaen.”
“Folfaen?”
“No, Olfaen.”
“Ah. Carnimírië. But call me Míri, as my friends do.” I laugh again for the sheer need of it. The laughter keeps the weight of the stone from pressing on my heart.
“And your story?”
“My parents told me I came into the world in
Lindon. They left Lindon for
Lothlórien.
Yrch attacked us. A thrown javelin struck my head and knocked me from my
horse into a rocky streambed. I lost my memory; even worse, control over my limbs. I was a fully grown babe-in-arms.”
“What was your life like before? Were you told?”
“I asked
emel once. She said I was surrounded by music and healing, only all the people we knew are now in
Valinor. So, in a way, I lost nothing. But I did. Lose something. I keep a diary and write in it as if it is just now happening to me instead of the way bards tell a tale. If ever I lose my memory again, the record of my life will seem like it is me telling myself the story, instead of reading some stranger’s tale like all the other
tales I learn.”
“But it must have been hard for you.”
“Oh, I was so clumsy and slow to learn — well, everything. The other children raced ahead of me in knowledge and skill. I was so awkward and slow they thought me feeble-witted.” My smile brightens at a memory of kindness, but he could not see it. “A few were so very kind and thoughtfully helpful. They aided me in mastering my limbs, the lore of the ancient days, music, songs, and dance. Three in particular — Mithrellas and Nimrodel, who became my dear friends, and my older brother Voronwë."
PS - If Míri ever fudges the truth in her diary, trying to gloss over something she does not want to admit to, she'll be truthful but obfuscate the truth by how she says it. I'll slip that bit into past tense to hint that it has been skillfully edited.
