Young Writers Society

Hi, seniors.

Well, I am writing a novel in which my character is to tell a horror story to his friends. Now, I am unsure as to how to write a story in my novel. The story, my character is about to tell, is pretty long (8000 words maybe?)
Should I write that story as first person or third person? I am writing the novel as third person, by the way.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks a lot.

If the story that the character is telling happened to them, or they were in it, then yeah, go first person.
For example... Say Bill (hypothetical character) is telling about something that happened to him... Bill wouldn't say "Bill did this". He'd say "I did this".

However, if they're making up stories with their own characters, then they'd go third person.
*drags Bill back in*
Say Bill's telling a story about some guy named Steve. Bill would say "Steve did this," not "I did this," when referring to Steve's actions.

I hope this all makes sense. I'm terrible at explaining things, so I'm not sure if it did. XD

You can also offset the story into its own scene to help make the distinction between the story proper and the story-within-the-story more distinct. That way, if you do switch between the point-of-view, it will be less jarring and you won't have to worry about huge blocks of dialogue (or having to remember to place a quotation mark at the start of every paragraph).

Look at how J.K. Rowling does it in Harry Potter. Throughout the series she includes newspaper articles from the Daily Prophet (some of which are quite long). To offset these stories from the rest of the story, the newspaper story is indented so it starts one inch from the left margins and won't go any closer than an inch from the right margins. It looks narrower on the page so the reader knows it's separate from the story.
In the last book Hermione tells the tale of the three brothers. She reads it from a book and the story is fairly long. Rowling puts this in italics (which may or may not be necessary for yours). However, Rowling also breaks the story up by giving some reactions from Harry and Ron as Hermione reads. This might be helpful for your story because I would imagine the other characters would have some reactions throughout a ghost story. These reactions don't have to be long on involved, but I think it can help break up the big pieces of dialogue as the character tells the story. I also think it helps keep the reader in the story because not only can they experience the ghost story, but also the reactions of everyone else experiencing the ghost story.

And I agree with the first comment, that if it's a ghost story about the character telling the story- first person. If it's not, then third.

In Joseph Conrad's infamous novel Heart of Darkness, it is set in first person but the majority of the novel is another character telling a story. To mark that this character was still talking, Conrad used ' to start every paragraph. For when the narrator was talking, he didn't use it.