I first published this post a couple of years ago on another blog, but it's as relevant now as it was then.
I don’t know about you, but I find writing in the first person narrative much
easier than any other point of view. It could be that it’s a matter of placing me into the story—that I am the main character, therefore,
writing down my thoughts onto paper is as simple as taking a breath.
Although
I have to admit that I have read some very poorly written first person POVs,
where everything was “I did this” or “I turned left”, or “I sat”, which made
for an extremely irritating and boring first few pages. And I mean first few
pages because that was as far as I could get into the story. “I,” at the
beginning of every sentence is a death toll for any book. Keeping the sentences
varied in length, changing each sentence’s rhythm, and not starting each out
with a pronoun, is the key to any great paragraph, and that, in turn, successfully
lures your reader further into the story.
Of
course, you need to have enough of a story if you are only going to “see” the
view of just one person. On the occasions when I know I want to tell the story
from, not only the hero’s POV, but also the heroines, writing in third-person
proved to be the most expedient method. I even have a trilogy where there are
three POVs going. That’s great fun!
This subject was brought up in a recent Nathan
Bransford blog. He said, “Apparently
there are literary agents and professors and all kinds of ostensibly rational
people out there who think first person narratives are somehow unserious.”
What I found most encouraging was some of the
comments his readers left. Here are three:
Lane
Diamond: I started out my first book as a third-person tight POV (protagonist),
because so many literary agents indicated they profoundly disliked
first-person narratives (no doubt because they tend to devolved into a narcissistic
string of I, I, I, I, I, I, I).
Shawn: My
first agent told me that First Person was the mark of an immature writer.
She said that in this era, it has no place outside MG and some YA. She said it
was solipsistic, in only the way a kid could be solipsistic.
cinthiaritchie.com: Oh, man, in graduate school
they pounded it into our heads that third person was "the" way to go,
that first-person was a weaker perspective, that it wasn't respected--that no
one would take a first-person narrator seriously. Well! Excuse me, stuffy
professors, but I feel that you were quite wrong.
Some
of the best novels I’ve read were written in first person perspective. Have you
ever read any of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories or poems? Or have you read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak? Or Jeff
Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Let’s
go back farther in time, and we can read that F. Scott Fitzgerald used first
person perspective in The Great Gatsby,
and so did Merman Melvin in Moby Dick.
These books did quite well using a perspective that big publishers seem to
discourage.
Just
remember, in a wonderfully written story, you shouldn’t really notice the POV.
Everything should be seamless, and flow well.
Now
go out there and write!
