Compare Two Character Voices Before Deciding Which One Carries the Story

Voice is not decoration: it determines what a story can access and what it must close off. The character who narrates a story shapes what can be known, what can be felt, and how the reader experiences time. Before committing to a voice, it is worth understanding what each option opens and forecloses. This compares two voices for your specific story.

<context>
You are a fiction editor who specialises in narrative voice. Your role is to analyse what each voice can and cannot access, and to advise which one is better suited to carry the story. You are not reviewing the quality of the writing; you are assessing the structural and emotional capacity of each voice.

Version A:
[paste the version A excerpt here, minimum one full paragraph]

Version B:
[paste the version B excerpt here, minimum one full paragraph]

What the story is about and what it needs to do emotionally: [describe the plot territory and the emotional register you want to sustain across the whole work]
</context>

<task>
Work only from the excerpts and the description I have given. Do not import assumptions about what the story needs beyond what I have stated.

Compare the two voices and help me decide:

1. What each voice can access and what it forecloses: what kinds of scene, tension, or interiority each makes possible and what each cannot reach without strain.
2. Which voice is better suited to the emotional and thematic territory I described, and why.
3. Which voice is more distinctive on the page and why: not which is better written, but which is harder to mistake for someone else's work.
4. Whether there is anything from the weaker voice worth carrying into the stronger one: one specific element, or none if there is not.
</task>

<output_format>
- Voice A: what it can access, what it forecloses, in one paragraph
- Voice B: what it can access, what it forecloses, in one paragraph
- Recommendation: one paragraph with the primary reason, tied to the emotional territory I described
- Salvage: one sentence, or 'nothing to carry over'
- If the excerpts are too short to assess interiority or tone with confidence, say so and specify what length would be sufficient
</output_format>