How to write scenes where high emotions are described by a narrator in the first person who isn’t actually experiencing the emotions?

Question

I am a young writer who has been working for almost two years now on my first draft for a modern fantasy/ fiction novel. As this novel has several emotional high points (and overall tries to bring to light the mental health or decline of mental health of ‘the prophetic chosen ones’) such as a revelation to a hidden identity, several auditory, visual, and tactile hallucinations, PTSD flashbacks, vivid dreams, the works. As all my main characters’ ages range from 16-19, how can i still retain that youthful perspective and life while properly describe a character’s traumatic scene?

Ben · Accepted Answer · 2026-03-31 11:13:15Z

Okay, so you have a protagonist, the chosen one, and a first person narrator, who witnesses the events.

First, you need to come clean about why you chose that separation. What purpose does it serve? Whose experiences do you want the readers to identify with?

If I told a story from the perspective of a companion of the chosen one, then that companion's experience of witnessing the events would be what I would be interested in. Basically, The Life of Apostle John instead of The Life of Jesus. And regarding the PTSD and so on of the chosen one, the focus would be on how John experienced witnessing that. There is no way you can let the reader experience what Jesus experiences while recounting the experience of witnessing what Jesus experiences through the eyes of John. Does that sound convoluted? That's because it is. It won't work.

What your narrator narrates is the observation of your chosen one's experiences from outside. Your narrator can see what anyone might see who was present while someone else had flashbacks: someone who is in distress.* Like any other bystander, your narrator can only learn of what the distressed person experiences when they verbalise their experience during or after the experience. And what you narrate is what the witness feels and thinks when they hear that.

If you want to give the chosen one's experiences to your readers first hand, you need to narrate from the perspective of the chosen one (in first or third person).

* You'll have to research what that looks like. There are videos online documenting people while they are having flashbacks.

If the person having flashbacks is a stranger, it is not very impressive. But when it is a person you love and deeply care about, you may be almost equally distressed. It is the bond between witness and chosen one that determines, what the witness experiences. So that may be part of what you narrate: their worry, compassion, and so on.

I think you mean one of the Apostles. St Paul wasn't an eyewitness of the life of Jesus. — Kate Bunting
– Kate Bunting, Commented 18 hours ago
@KateBunting Oops. Shows how little I know about Christianity. Changed to John. — Ben
– Ben, Commented 18 hours ago
So why is "Sherlock Holmes" not titled "the life of John Watson"? — Stef
– Stef, Commented 14 hours ago
@Stef Sherlock Holmes, the character, does not suffer from "several auditory, visual, and tactile hallucinations, PTSD flashbacks, vivid dreams" that can only be shown to the reader if the narrator has access to a character's mind, but about witnessing stunning cognitive feats that are easy to verbalize and are only surprising narrative turns and only formidable when viewed from outside. Sherlock Holmes, the tale, requires the first-person observer perspective to generate the intended narrative effect. — Ben
– Ben, Commented 9 hours ago

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How to write scenes where high emotions are described by a narrator in the first person who isn’t actually experiencing the emotions?

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