First or Third Person?

[ConfusinglyDelerious]

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.

Star Trek, definitely. An individual that is part of a larger hive-mind has first contact with James T. Kirk, who (memeously) fucked anything that had a humanoid orifice.

 

[ConfusinglyDelerious]

Do you like using first person or third person perspective?

For Lit I tend to mostly fall into first person perspective.

Largely because I have a penis, and thus know what that is all about, and despite having read, and discussed a lot about the opposite perspective, I don't feel confident that I'll be able to get it right, and eventually end up writing some stupid shit that will yank a reader out of their suspension of disbelief and make them roll their eyes.

Close third person is what I favour for most things I write elsewhere though. It lets me be descriptive from outside the POV character's... point of view... (okay, that is a mess of a sentence), without being aware of every little detail and every single though going through the head of everyone in the scene.
But that's mostly because I like unreliable narrators, and differing perspectives, and like for things to not be 100% the objective truth, and rather coloured by who the character is.

Unless I'm doing a post-mortem write-up on how something went tits up at work, I want a little ambiguity and a little room for interpretation.

 

[StillStunned]

You think about it for a minute, but you realize that StillStunned, though well-intentioned, is daft, out of his mind.

Out of my mind, but inside yours, bwahaha! The essence of 2P POV.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Perspectives are funny, because there's really no difference between first person and close-third person (in terms of what you can do; obviously you have to use different words to frame things). But they feel so different to write, and they feel different to read. Most of what I've written is in third person, but my current novel - which is more thematically complex and thick with introspection than any I've written before - is in the first person. It feels more appropriate if you're trying to completely submerge the reader into someone's psyche. But then again, I could write it in third person and suffer no limitations. Why didn't I? Because it feels different. It just feels different. More established writers than myself might be able to explain exactly why.

As for a more general, omniscient third person - it can be done, and done well, but it's not really my style. I am naturally drawn to write from characters' perspectives, and I'm naturally drawn to write about their reflective processes. I can understand why a more omniscient third person style works better in sci-fi or complex plots, though.

 

[SimonDoom]

Perspectives are funny, because there's really no difference between first person and close-third person (in terms of what you can do; obviously you have to use different words to frame things). But they feel so different to write, and they feel different to read. Most of what I've written is in third person, but my current novel - which is more thematically complex and thick with introspection than any I've written before - is in the first person. It feels more appropriate if you're trying to completely submerge the reader into someone's psyche. But then again, I could write it in third person and suffer no limitations. Why didn't I? Because it feels different. It just feels different. More established writers than myself might be able to explain exactly why.

As for a more general, omniscient third person - it can be done, and done well, but it's not really my style. I am naturally drawn to write from characters' perspectives, and I'm naturally drawn to write about their reflective processes. I can understand why a more omniscient third person style works better in sci-fi or complex plots, though.

I enjoy the "close" or "free indirect" third person style, but I can see two reasons why people would gravitate toward writing in first person.

One is that it is incrementally more personal than even a very well executed free indirect style. There's no distance between the narrator and character. With third person, there's always SOME distance.

The other is that, for the most part, it's easier to write. To do third person POV well takes some care and attention that first person doesn't. It takes consistency. Otherwise it's easy to slip back and forth between different kinds of third person, in which case it loses much of its effectiveness.

 

[Britva415]

Do you like using first person or third person perspective?

Writing 1p is easier but I'm trying not to do it anymore without a good reason. I think 3p POV is more fun to read and to write, and I think as a really broad generalization with of course tons of exceptions that often makes a better story.

For me, it has been an easy way to make a story better. My mind usually wants to default to 1p and that's probably just because I usually start writing with one particular character's experience in mind, but defaulting to 1p rules out including other characters' motivations and experiences as they experience them.

I do have a couple of drafts of stories where there's a good reason to tell it in 1p. But I don't want to just lazily default to 1p anymore. And in other people's works, it's rare that I find a 1p story which doesn't feel like it was just a default choice and where the 1p perspective does something for the story which couldn't have been accomplished in 3p.

 

[Britva415]

I looked up the "Fourth Person perspective" and found it's a BRAND NEW IDEA!!!!
(Cue the circus wagons and the clown car) It's horrible, I can't see a sane person writing that way for something that they expect real people to read and enjoy. It's a perspective designed to check a box, nothing more.

https://www.tckpublishing.com/4th-person-point-of-view/

Someone's being overly clever, there is no "fourth person." This is just second-person, but plural. As such, it appears to have everything which sucks about 2pPOV and none of what could conceivably (I'm being generous) be positive about it.

 

[TheLobster]

Someone's being overly clever, there is no "fourth person." This is just second-person, but plural. As such, it appears to have everything which sucks about 2pPOV and none of what could conceivably (I'm being generous) be positive about it.

The alleged “4th” PoV is first-person plural. It doesn’t address the reader directly, it just expands the perspective to include more people in the collective “we.”

I could see it being helpful when one character relates a story that happened to him and his group to someone else who wasn’t there, as you’d do on real life. But to write an entire piece like this? Eww, no.

 

[Shady_Lady]

Have just posted this on another thread but think it is relevant

As a challenge to myself, I once wrote a story about a chance encounter on a train between two women. In the first story, I wrote in the first person from the point of view of the straight(ish) subs perspective. I then wrote the same story again from the domme's perspective. It seemed to turn out OK but was an interesting exercise to see where the limitations are when things happen outside of the knowledge of the person whose perspective you are writing from. In the end, I did the third (and final) chapter from the third person to bring about the conclusion.

What it proved to me was that although the first person is powerful and emotive there are also limitations to what you can 'see'.

Maybe finish your story in the third person and then rewrite in the first, bearing in mind the perception limitations and see how it feels. That will highlight that although some parts are more emotive other chunks have to be left out.

 

[SamBomb]

Depends on the story, I've done both. When I think I prefer one, somehow find myself using the other for the next story. It's odd, it really is story dependent.

 

[Trionyx]

Whatever you do, please don’t mix the two in one story. I’ve seen too many stories start in first person and suddenly, I assume due to the author needing to fill in some extra info the MC might not know, things launch into third person. If you need to do that, write the whole thing as third person limited.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Whatever you do, please don’t mix the two in one story. I’ve seen too many stories start in first person and suddenly, I assume due to the author needing to fill in some extra info the MC might not know, things launch into third person. If you need to do that, write the whole thing as third person limited.

Depending on the details, you can have the viewpoint character say something like, "I found out months later that Elaine was next door, sucking my husband's dick while giving her brother and mine handjobs at the same time I was being possessed by the sex demon and compelled to seduce the priest and nun."

-Rocco

 

[MillieDynamite]

Narration in the first person works well. The observer can narrate when brevity is needed and expand with dialog when more detail is necessary. Telling for somethings, showing for others.

 

[alohadave]

Whatever you do, please don’t mix the two in one story. I’ve seen too many stories start in first person and suddenly, I assume due to the author needing to fill in some extra info the MC might not know, things launch into third person. If you need to do that, write the whole thing as third person limited.

If you are going to do it, make sure it's intentional, not a mistake.

In one of mine, I have a short scene where it switches to 3rd, when the rest is 1st. I wanted to have something happen without dropping into any of the character's heads.

 

[Trionyx]

If you are going to do it, make sure it's intentional, not a mistake.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion but I find the mixing of POV’s jarring, intentional or otherwise.

But I guess if we all agreed on everything, the forum would be rather boring, wouldn’t it?

 

[MillieDynamite]

There are tons, by weight, of books where the point of view switches between people. In the third person, we thought of many of the characters. Plus, books are written that switch between the third and first person. Several in the Dexter series do this. Several of them switch between Dexter's point of view (in first person or third person) and the antagonist. Dracula is written as a series of journals, diaries, news reports, and recorded entries on a cylinder phonograph. If it doesn't work, why are there thousands and thousands of books written like that?

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

I have a pretty strong preference for writing in third, but I'll read either. Each has its own effect and meta implications.

 

[christa_p]

Do you like using first person or third person perspective? I usually only write in third. I find it more descriptive because you can get more semi-omniscient with it, which works better because my ideas are so visual. I also find it to be less of a headache for whatever reason than just using "I" all the time (I'm aware it's more complicated especially at the higher levels of writing prowess). Part of me doesn't want the POVs to be super locked in and close to the character's psyche and the other part of me does.

I'm thinking of writing a new story in first person perspective because of the sentence ideas that are coming to me. They might come off more as teenage girl song lyrics than anything that's overly visual and poetic. I think this could be a fun exercise but I might also do it in two versions. I'm not really sure if readers who are used to a certain author writing in either third or first would have a problem with a change from the usual one to the other while traversing said author's catalogue, but that's very low on my list of decision making factors.

The story is gonna be about a guy who's cheating on his off-and-on girlfriend with his ex-girlfriend, from the ex's point of view. I'm not sure what else it's gonna be about yet, but I know there'll be more because I recently tried to do a story that was really short, just one scene long, and ended up adding a bunch of new characters and scenes to it just to complete the story and bring it to some kind of resolution. I sorta knew that would happen in the germinal stage of the writing of that one scene, so I'm hoping this new one picks up in the same fashion as well.

Pluses an minuses with both. In first person you can hear everything the main character is thinking but end up blind to what is going on with others. Third person gives you the ability to hear and see things with multiple characters as well as have story movements without some entirely.

 

[Britva415]

If you are going to do it, make sure it's intentional, not a mistake.

In one of mine, I have a short scene where it switches to 3rd, when the rest is 1st. I wanted to have something happen without dropping into any of the character's heads.

This kind of thing drives me nuts when there isn't something in the narrative which explains how this "manuscript" with different points of view came together.

I mean, I'm picky, I often have this reaction to first-person "manuscripts" in general (why are they telling this to me? If not me, then who are they telling this to? In their universe, how is it that I'm reading or hearing their story?)

I can usually set that aside because "convention" generally eschews requiring a frame like that, but my pickiness gets amplified a lot when the story switches POVs without any in-universe reason for having it happen and for having the story get compiled together from different narration streams.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

My current WIP is first-person, for various reasons, mainly that the viewpoint guy has only been a supporting character to this point, and I want the reader to get his "voice". I wrote a few pages last night, the story was rolling along.

This morning, I sat down to add to it and ... my first paragraph was in third person. I do that so often, I'm now trained to catch it quicker, at least.

I mean, I'm picky, I often have this reaction to first-person "manuscripts" in general (why are they telling this to me? If not me, then who are they telling this to? In their universe, how is it that I'm reading or hearing their story?)

"Pranked" is in first person from three different characters. In the sequel, it will become clear that two of them, at least, dictated their stories to therapists, because the experience was really traumatic for them. (The third won't reappear any time soon.)

-Annie

 

[Billintulsa]

Which way I go depends on the story I am writing. If I am writing about something that Vicki and I are doing together, then I write in 1st person.

When Vicki is on her own and I am not part of the scene, then I write in 3rd person.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Which way I go depends on the story I am writing. If I am writing about something that Vicki and I are doing together, then I write in 1st person.

When Vicki is on her own and I am not part of the scene, then I write in 3rd person.

Is she a character or a co-writer of yours?

 

[THBGato]

I nearly always write in first person. Pretty much all my stories are (and usually present tense too).

But I started a story recently in my habitual first person present tense and was finding it very hard and quite restrictive. I got 12,000 words in, which had taken about three weeks, and decide to park it. It just wasn't flowing (there were other issues to - I couldn't decide whether to include another boyfriend or not).

Then, I started on a new story, and decided to do third person past tense.... and it's so liberating! I'm not head-hopping or anything, but just that ability to pull back and describe, or skip over time. The writing is flowing and I'm at 6,000 after two days.

So, I guess it's just horses for courses.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I nearly always write in first person. Pretty much all my stories are (and usually present tense too).

But I started a story recently in my habitual first person present tense and was finding it very hard and quite restrictive. I got 12,000 words in, which had taken about three weeks, and decide to park it. It just wasn't flowing (there were other issues to - I couldn't decide whether to include another boyfriend or not).

Then, I started on a new story, and decided to do third person past tense.... and it's so liberating! I'm not head-hopping or anything, but just that ability to pull back and describe, or skip over time. The writing is flowing and I'm at 6,000 after two days.

So, I guess it's just horses for courses.

This is why I'm stuck on my fantasy novel. Most of what I write is first person. I just like that I can be semi-conversational with the reader like I'm telling them a personal anecdote. I started My fantasy novel that way, too. But now I'm several chapters in and I'm finding I need to expand my horizons. I have other characters who have a point of view I want to explore, backstory I need to expose, and I can't do that in first person. On the other hand, I love the wonder my MC experiences as she explores her new world and discovers things. I don't want to lose that. What I'm thinking of doing is keeping her POV first person and writing the rest in third.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

This is why I'm stuck on my fantasy novel. Most of what I write is first person. I just like that I can be semi-conversational with the reader like I'm telling them a personal anecdote. I started My fantasy novel that way, too. But now I'm several chapters in and I'm finding I need to expand my horizons. I have other characters who have a point of view I want to explore, backstory I need to expose, and I can't do that in first person. On the other hand, I love the wonder my MC experiences as she explores her new world and discovers things. I don't want to lose that. What I'm thinking of doing is keeping her POV first person and writing the rest in third.

You could have the whole thing first person and just have several point-of-view characters. A novel is not restricted following only one person.

-Eddie