I'm currently reading a young adult series and there's something that bugs me. It is first person POV and all narration that is not immediately happening is framed as thoughts of the POV character. For example, the story skips ahead in weeks or even years thus the need for a quick catch-up narration of what has changed. Such narration is always then brought back to present by saying how POV character realising her mind had wandered to past events when she should be paying attention to the person talking to her - or something like that. Because this is a series of several short novels there's also quite a bit of recapping / reminding the reader what happened in previous books in the series - and still always framed as the character's thoughts in the middle of a scene.
I understand that first person POV means only presenting what that character sees, feels, knows, thinks, etc, but is it really necessary to frame all references to the past as memories the character is having?
I've even seen it done in a young adult novel written in close third person. In that case in particular it really struck me as out of character that the character was thinking about the past instead of focused on what he was doing. I felt it could have been just narration without being presented as his thoughts in that moment and thus kept his characterization intact.
It also feels somehow more disruptive to the scene somehow - even though it's adding a line that brings you back to the scene at hand. It just feels off to me when done for every single narration of this sort. Is it just me? Is this how strict first person POV is meant to be?
Here's an example from a novel that doesn't do this!
So in the current series I'm talking about the author would have added in between "still friends" and "Spread out over.." something like, "I pulled my thoughts away from thoughts of all we'd been through together and back to the question at hand."
I just don't see that it's needed and therefore seems clunky and silly. Am I wrong?
I understand that first person POV means only presenting what that character sees, feels, knows, thinks, etc, but is it really necessary to frame all references to the past as memories the character is having?
I've even seen it done in a young adult novel written in close third person. In that case in particular it really struck me as out of character that the character was thinking about the past instead of focused on what he was doing. I felt it could have been just narration without being presented as his thoughts in that moment and thus kept his characterization intact.
It also feels somehow more disruptive to the scene somehow - even though it's adding a line that brings you back to the scene at hand. It just feels off to me when done for every single narration of this sort. Is it just me? Is this how strict first person POV is meant to be?
Here's an example from a novel that doesn't do this!
So in the current series I'm talking about the author would have added in between "still friends" and "Spread out over.." something like, "I pulled my thoughts away from thoughts of all we'd been through together and back to the question at hand."
I just don't see that it's needed and therefore seems clunky and silly. Am I wrong?
