Some Important Points about Direct and Indirect Narration
To change the narration of a sentence upcoming three points are of utmost importance. Remember they can solve more than half of your problems in changing the narration.
- Recognize Reporting and Reported speech
- Learn Three Persons of Personal Pronoun
- Learn Three Cases of Personal Pronoun
Reporting speech is the first part of the sentence before the other part which is enclosed in inverted commas. It is called reporting speech because it is telling or reporting something. The other part enclosed in inverted commas is called reported speech. It is called reported speech because something is being reported in this part of sentence.
In every sentence the speech outside inverted commas 'He says to me' is called reporting speech and the speech within inverted commas 'I love reading your books' is called reported speech or quoted speech.
Personal Pronouns have three persons First Person perspective I/we 'those speaking' Second Person perspective you 'those who are being addressed' Third Person perspective he/she/it/they etc 'those about which we are speaking'. In direct and indirect narration these persons have a key role.
Note:- Some people think there are only two first persons (I/we), actually they are six. This is because possessive cases (my/our) and objective cases (me/us) of I and we are also first persons. Same is the case with second and third person. (you/your/you) all are second persons and (he/she/it/they/singular name, plural name) and their subjective and objective cases are also third persons.
There are three cases of personal pronouns Subjective or Nominative Case, Possessive Case and Objective or Accusative Case.
What should we have to collect from above three points:-
Before one starts converting direct into indirect or indirect into direct, it is essential to have a strong hand on above mentioned topics reporting and reported speech, persons and cases. One must be able to identify the part of sentence in the inverted commas which is called reported speech. Then in the reported speech one must be able to locate pronouns if there are pronouns one must know what is person and case of these pronouns. For example in the above stated example "I love reading your books." is reported speech. In this reported speech there are two pronouns I and your. What one should learn from the above tables is one must know I is first person and subjective case and your is second person and possessive case. In other words one must know person and case of a pronoun like 'them' is third person and objective case.