First person POV question

[Bibliopro]

So here's the conundrum:

I'm currently working on a first person piece.  There are things I think it is essential the reader knows, but that my main character wouldn't know or wouldn't find out until much later.  What is the best way to write this?  Would it be best to do very short chapters from the other character's POV, so the reader finds out what I want him / her to?  How have others handled this?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I'm currently working on a first person piece.  There are things I think it is essential the reader knows, but that my main character wouldn't know or wouldn't find out until much later.  What is the best way to write this?

My preference would be for them to be visibly missing things that the main character notices are missing, so that when the reader feels they are missing they know it's that way for a reason.  Bits from other POVs; well, it depends on your story, but I'm inclined to think of that as not playing fair.

A lot also depends on your distance from the story.  If you're in headlong as-it-happens first person, or even a direct present-tense braindump sort of first, you really don't have any space at all outside of the immediate moment; if you are writing it at the distance of a memoir or a document someone is leaving after the story is done, there's nothing to keep your narrator from interjecting with bits of information they did not have at that point in the story.

It is possible to make things clear in the story to the reader without the narrator getting them, to some extent, but it is difficult.  Most readers seem to assume that a first person narrator is reliable, which kind of bemuses me as a reaction.  There are bits in the Dresden Files where things escape Harry at the time, and he doesn't figure them out until quite a bit later, but they are actually in from early on; Steven Brust does a lot of this in the chronologically earlier Vlad Taltos books, though they do not really become that visible until much later in the series.  There is an amazing section in Michael Moorcock's The Laughter of Carthage, a memoir of the narrator crossing the US as a speaker for the Ku Klux Klan, in which it is clearly obvious both that the narrator as a young man in the 1920s is completely wrong about who is his friend, who is his enemy, and what anyone's motivations are, and that the narrator as an obnoxious old man in his seventies writing this down is still completely wrong about these things, though not in exactly the same way.  I'd suggest these as examples if you're interested in looking at how this particular approach can be made to work.

[Bibliopro]

I am pretty much completely inside my character's head, as will the reader.  I was thinking that my character would just have to learn of everything after the fact and the reader would learn at the same time.  I may still ponder this, though.

Bits from other POVs; well, it depends on your story, but I'm inclined to think of that as not playing fair.

Why do you feel that way?  Just curious.

[Quantus]

One thing Ive seen done, though this may be cheating as well, is to break out of the first person view in small excerpts at the beginning of each chapter (ender's game cones to mind).  This gives a point in the book to break the POV without otherwise disrupting the story. 
This can make pacing difficult though, and you want to be careful not to give too much away.  One way to handle that is to make these excerpts entirely unidentified dialog.  Make it sort of a conversation over-heard, and you can give vital info while still stringing the reader along with clues as to who these people are.
Another way is to start the chapters with in-world document excerpts:  official document/reports, journal entries, letters, etc. Items that the character could potentially come across somewhere sometime, but while being relevant at that point in the story, dont have to be known to the character or attached to any particular point in the timeline. 

Then of course you could try to work a non-linear timeline, lots of flashbacks or something, but that can get convoluted.

[meg_evonne]

If you have chosen 1st POV(whichever style)...then it is rather unprofessional to shift to something else, just to make it easier.  If you are writing for yourself, no problem.  If you want to send it out eventually--this is the best time to attack the problem head on. 

Maybe try making postcard notes (or the ever popular Postit Notes) of the info you must impart and start playing with where you would stick it into your main characters head within the plot.  Can't figure out HOW to get it into his/her head? -- Strickly speaking, then s/he didn't need to know it.  So if it's vital, you have to come up with a scene where s/he can learn it.

Finally, there is always Bob. Another character that can impart it to your main character at the right point.  A newspaper article can do the same...a search on Wikipedia...a news reporters broadcast...a PBS special.  I invented a spouse who could transform into birds & then share an over the shoulder view of the antagonist in action back to the main character.  remember the witch's mirror in Snow White (or even Harry Potter)? It all depends on what you have to make the main character understand.  There is a reason that cop shows always have two partners--so they can talk over stuff and get it out of the way.   Jim's writing journal has a practical explaination of this. 

I get the sense that this is crucial stuff...in which case, you have to make it crucial in your main characters life and until you fill that hole, your plot will be incomplete.

I think this is what professionals call "writing"...  I'm just a duffer.  :-)

POV can be tricky... Good Writing!

Quantus posted before I could get in..EXELLENT POINT!
Quantus----Good point on the flashbacks.  Love flashbacks...big ones, little ones--use the notecards or postit notes!

[Bibliopro]

Thanks for all the help y'all!

I will definitely take the points into consideration and try to make this work out!

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

in response to me about bits of not-in-first not feeling like not playing fair

Why do you feel that way?  Just curious.

A single first is a certain distance from the story - a pretty short distance.  Most thirds are farther away than most firsts.  Your information problem here is a problem inherent to the distance your POV is from the story.  Putting in another POV just to get that information in, a third-person POV at a greater distance out from the story, is taking the easy option in a way that drastically changes the story shape, in a way that it wouldn't be if you were, oh, writing a great big GRRM-style epic with twelve viewpoint characters.

Chapter-starting snippets work around this for me, if they are, for example, bits of local guidebook or some such included in a medium-distance third or a memoir-type first.  In a headlong or braindump first, they are again breaking the distance everything else is from the story, and that's why I think of them as cheating.