First or Third Person?

[Voboy]

I've never heard of it before this thread, but it sounds like a Shiny New Object.

Just wait.

My next submission, now in progress, is going to be in Seventh Person. It's going to Revolutionize The Publishing Industry.

 

[StillStunned]

How about Zeroeth POV? Using negative space as the narrator.

 

[Voboy]

This is downward creepy. The samples read as though they were written by a hive mind, like the Borg in Star Trek. Quite unsettling. Might work for a certain brand of horror stories but as a general narrative PoV? No way.

Creepy is a good word for it. It's effective in "In Flanders Fields," when The Dead are talking, and Atwood uses it (sparingly) in The Penelopiad... in her case, it's also the dead who are talking.

I'm sensing a trend there.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I love writing in both. I have written a few stories in double first person. One part is from one person's point of view, and the other from the others. The third person gives more information, but the first person is far more personal when you read.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I find that first person is far more common in stroke fiction than in fiction in general or even erotica in general. This is probably because it is written as a fantasy for the reader to be in the shoes of the main character. The more plotless the story is and the more bland the main character is (if the main character is male) the more chance that it will be in first person.

 

[StillStunned]

The more plotless the story is and the more bland the main character is (if the main character is male) the more chance that it will be in first person.

I'd like to point out that the narrator isn't necessarily the main character. If they're bland, it allows the story to focus on someone else. For instance, my series "My Little Sister Sal" is about the narrator's sister. He's a bland everyman, because the stories are all about Sal. He's just a vehicle for the reader to experience her through.

 

[Voboy]

I'd like to point out that the narrator isn't necessarily the main character. If they're bland, it allows the story to focus on someone else. For instance, my series "My Little Sister Sal" is about the narrator's sister. He's a bland everyman, because the stories are all about Sal. He's just a vehicle for the reader to experience her through.

This, for sure. Nick isn't the main character in The Great Gatsby, after all. And there's a reason he's bland.

 

[Bamagan]

I've never heard of it before this thread, but it sounds like a Shiny New Object.

I think I could imagine a potentially interesting application, where there's a third person narration that's impersonal and more-or-less omniscient, but it gets 'localized' inside one or more characters and adopts a pseudo-first person POV while still retaining elements of omniscience. Perhaps in a story about possession, or altered states of consciousness.
It might also be interesting to distinguish between two conceivable types of hive mind: a collection of individual but interconnected minds, which would interpret things from both a personal and a collective perspective, and one that is truly unified, and each brain/body is analogous to a limb or appendage, and probably would use first person (plural) perspective for its perceptions.

 

[StillStunned]

I think I could imagine a potentially interesting application, where there's a third person narration that's impersonal and more-or-less omniscient, but it gets 'localized' inside one or more characters and adopts a pseudo-first person POV while still retaining elements of omniscience. Perhaps in a story about possession, or altered states of consciousness.

It would be the creepiest Group Sex story here on Lit.

 

[Bamagan]

It would be the creepiest Group Sex story here on Lit.

Or possibly the only story in E/V that contains just one person and both E & V.

 

[StillStunned]

Or possibly the only story in E/V that contains just one person and both E & V.

Avant garde erotica, this is where it's happening, people!

 

[Voboy]

I think I could imagine a potentially interesting application, where there's a third person narration that's impersonal and more-or-less omniscient, but it gets 'localized' inside one or more characters and adopts a pseudo-first person POV while still retaining elements of omniscience. Perhaps in a story about possession, or altered states of consciousness.
It might also be interesting to distinguish between two conceivable types of hive mind: a collection of individual but interconnected minds, which would interpret things from both a personal and a collective perspective, and one that is truly unified, and each brain/body is analogous to a limb or appendage, and probably would use first person (plural) perspective for its perceptions.

A harem story could work. Possibly a whorehouse story (though not one I'd like to read) set in a French government brothel during WWI. Or one of those "refugee-girl-arrives-at-a-monastery" pieces, where all the monks are trying to commit to God despite their hard-ons?

It's not for me. But it probably has its uses.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I'd like to point out that the narrator isn't necessarily the main character. If they're bland, it allows the story to focus on someone else. For instance, my series "My Little Sister Sal" is about the narrator's sister. He's a bland everyman, because the stories are all about Sal. He's just a vehicle for the reader to experience her through.

This, for sure. Nick isn't the main character in The Great Gatsby, after all. And there's a reason he's bland.

Absolutely, and a good writer does this on purpose, but I mean hey, we all know the mass of stories on lit that first person narrate from the bland nobody main dude character who gets laid despite the fact that he does absolutely nothing to make himself layable (other than maybe mentioning in exposition that he regularly visits the gym). Throw a rock and you'll hit a couple of these. This is[/u] a thing.

 

[alohadave]

It would be the creepiest Group Sex story here on Lit.

I could see it being used in mind control. If the group forms a gestalt consciousness, it could be an interesting narrative device.

 

[intim8]

Do you like using first person or third person perspective?

Both. I have some vague and undefinable criteria for whether the psychic distance of 3P or the intimate personal feeling of 1P are better for a story I'm contemplating. Though sometimes, as the story develops, that changes and I have to go back through and change everything.

 

[Trionyx]

FP makes it easier to write gay or lesbian stories. One uses I and he/she pronouns in describing the action instead of turning to the characters’ names just to keep things straight, no pun intended.

 

[WeShallUnclench]

The style I have mostly settled for is sneaky first person.

That is, I write in third person, but tie the reader to only the protagonist, they are the only ones who's feelings and thoughts are ever revealed explicitely.

I find this way, I can create focus and retain tension - you can be surprised by how the "external" characters act, and left guessing about how they feel and think.

But the main character also remains mysterious to a degree, because not everything is revealed about them, either. You think you are familiar with them, and then they do something unxpected.

That last one is somewhat harder to pull off with first person writing, because it seems unclear how the narrator would plot something the entire time and somehow manages not to think about it in their inner voice until the very last second.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The style I have mostly settled for is sneaky first person.

That is, I write in third person, but tie the reader to only the protagonist, they are the only ones who's feelings and thoughts are ever revealed explicitely.

Yes, this is called close third, or limited third - limited to the one character.

but even third person can either be omniscient or limited

 

[stickygirl]

I love writing in both. I have written a few stories in double first person. One part is from one person's point of view, and the other from the others. The third person gives more information, but the first person is far more personal when you read.

I can think of a few published works that do this and some almost end up being diary style paragraphs or chapters. I suppose when there is also a third person narrator added to the mix, it's described as 2P+1 or summinck.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Dracula comes to mind as the most prominent example of the the epistolary style and yes, it is letters, news articles, diaries, journals and such is the book Dracula. That way one can have scenes that overlap and are told from a different point of view. I love Dracula by Bram Stoker and it does give a very three dimensional view of the events, but it is hard slog writing that way.

I can think of a few published works that do this and some almost end up being diary style paragraphs or chapters. I suppose when there is also a third person narrator added to the mix, it's described as 2P+1 or summinck.

 

[DinglyDangly]

I've learnt more about writing styles, in this thread. 1st person, 3rd person writing. Still crap at it though as I tend to drift between the two, without realising it, probably why my writing suffers so.

 

[Voboy]

I've learnt more about writing styles, in this thread. 1st person, 3rd person writing. Still crap at it though as I tend to drift between the two, without realising it, probably why my writing suffers so.

Yeah, you really do have to commit to one or the other. I think, for the way I write, that it's the only truly important decision I have to make before I decide whether a story idea has legs.

 

[StillStunned]

I've learnt more about writing styles, in this thread. 1st person, 3rd person writing. Still crap at it though as I tend to drift between the two, without realising it, probably why my writing suffers so.

If you find yourself drifting between 1P and 3P, maybe you should try 2P?

 

[SimonDoom]

If you find yourself drifting between 1P and 3P, maybe you should try 2P?

You want to write a story. You wonder whether it should be written in first person POV or third person POV. You solicit a variety of suggestions, and suddenly, out of the blue, StillStunned advises you to try it in the second-person POV. You think about it for a minute, but you realize that StillStunned, though well-intentioned, is daft, out of his mind. You thank him for his advice, and don't take it.

 

[TheLobster]

If you find yourself drifting between 1P and 3P, maybe you should try 2P?

If it worked for Old Spice commercials, I'm sure it can somehow work for erotica.