Writing thought of the day.

[kiya]

A first person narrator rendered briefly speechless by an unexpected bend in a conversation is very difficult to render convincingly.

Comments

this probably isn't useful, but I loved the scene

[boojum.livejournal.com]

It's not quite the same thing, and I don't know if it'd be transferable across media, but there's a movie[1] with a wonderful language learning scene. First Our Hero is sitting at the fire, with everyone around twittering incomprehensibly, then Our Hero is sitting around a slightly different fire, with a slightly different everyone around twittering almost incomprehensibly, but with bits of sense thrown in ("dinner", "no", etc.), and so forth through various language learning stages until they're all speaking (to us-the-audience and to Our Hero) perfectly clearly and Our Hero is participating normally in the conversation. It was a neat use of limited third person.

[1] It might be "The Thirteenth Warrior". I believe Our Hero was Antonio Banderas.

Re: this probably isn't useful, but I loved the scene

[kiya]

It's a good scene.

"How did you learn our language?!"
"I LISTENED!!!"


Not really applicable to this situation, which is more having a character of ineffable poise and general adaptability suddenly find himself in the conversational equivalent of having stepped on the nonexistent top step of a flight of stairs.

Re: this probably isn't useful, but I loved the scene

[boojum.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten that the scene wrapped up that way. Great fun.

(By the way, I'm continuing to give unsolicited and tangential advice, because this is a cool problem, but I will quite readily shut up if you'd prefer.)

It's not quite speechless, but could you get said suave character stuck in one of those situations where everyone's reacting wrong and ze can't make them understand or really understand them and *argh!*? Sometimes when I get into that situation/state, I can describe it in words to myself perfectly sensibly. At any rate, *I* think my words are perfectly sensible, but they might not be to others, which could be a good way to indicate that I-the-viewpoint-character'm having communication problems. Sort of like a "diary" entry from the computer game "The Longest Journey": "hed hurts. boat goes up and down. hate boats. seasik. cant write. want go home. hate water."

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Seems like it'd be easier in past tense, though, which implies that the reader is being told what happened long after the fact. That gives you some leeway in describing what happened. "I was speechless."

Not that I have any idea what you're writing, but there you go. 8)

Speecheless in the first person

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't any more difficult than speechless in the third person.

You change the first person focus of attention from the conversation to something else; internal monolog, remembering to breath, the bootstrap sequence for the character's social function emulator, or whatever is appropriate to the character, and then you have them observe detail relating to the other party in the conversation that indicates that they were out of it for a significant, noticable span of time when their attention shifts back to the conversation.

Pas de problem.