What breaks the enchantment?

[Mister Underhill]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

The convention is the distinction between narrative voice and character voice.

I get that, but I think your arguments so far as to exactly what that distinction is are based on an arbitrary rule that you've either formulated for yourself or picked up from somewhere else. It's this "rule" that I disagree with:

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Whereas in the first, Gandalf is naming others around the council, here in the second he does not .... and that seems to me to be because it is the narrator's voice that has taken over, giving the reader important information that the writer couldn't think of a better (more timely, more suspenseful) way to convey. It may well be that it is important information for the council members to learn from Gandalf, but that does not mitigate the fact that the voice is the narrator's rather than Gandalf's here.

[emphasis on the most pertinent extract mine, of course]

Who says a character has to reference his audience in order to make his dialogue "in character voice"?

The real question here, minus the jargon, is simply: Is Gandalf's dialogue believable as something that Gandalf would say, in a way that he would say it?

You already know my answer.

P.S. -- Sorry for this sidebar conversation. Carry on with the baggage and such.