The Point of View questions thread

Third person allows for omniscient, which is usually what my writing is based off of. First person can be used, but be very careful as to expressing your character's reactions and feelings (to almost everything. A real person will always be thinking about things)

Yup.

 

I prefer first person, in writing *and* reading. I guess it makes me feel closer to the story.

 

I like both. Couldn't decide what to write a piece I'm currently working on in, so have gone with a combination of both. I want the main character's voice to be clear at the start when her past is explored, but also want other perspectives to be dealt with subtly later in the story.

 

The more obnoxious the character, the more I like first person. First person puts you into the driver's seat of the asshole main character and lets you have fun along with them (Charles Bukowski, Hunter Thompson, Tucker Max) rather than having to see from the outside how truly horrible they are.

 

Third person is what I prefer, but I won't turn down a story just because its in first person. If its horror I prefer it in first person though.

 

Hard thing to say but some stories are better in first than they are in third. I'm reading more first person than third at the moment.

 

I've always liked the first-person novels of Robert Heinlein. I'm thinking in particular of Double Star, in which the protagonist is an actor playing a long-term role, and the reader gets to hear his inner voice change as he falls deeper and deeper into the character that he's playing. It's masterfully done.

 

I like to write in third person, I find it more comfortable ,however both first and third person is equally intresting depending upon the story line and flow.

 

As a reader both are equally fine. But as a writer, absolutely third-person. Not only does it give more room for...anything, as it is the point of view of all-knowing narrator. But also, it makes it much easier to write characters of any age.

I write a lot of child characters and I can't imagine myself successfully writing in example a 9-year old's story in first-person. (I'm in my early 30s.) Even if I did succeed to research and remind myself of how well a young child would write, I probably wouldn't be able to mimic it as well as I'd like to. Also, their vocabulary would be far too small-scale for me to enjoy in writing. So, my kid characters I write in first-person only if I get inspired to write some sort of journal entry or something. And of course I'm fine taking their point of view and understanding of the world in the form of their thoughts and digging into their heads among the third-person writing, but to write whole entire stories only from their point of view and in their words...Nope. Not my cup of tea.

I do have also many adult characters but even with them I rather stick to third-person because of the knowledge freedom it provides. It just feels natural to me.

 

You can write first person from a more omniscient or at least adult perspective, looking back, as a way to get past the "don't want to write like a 9 year old" issue. Think of To Kill a Mockingbird.

And the freedom of 3rd is only really there if you're writing third omniscient, which isn't in too much favour these days. If you're writing close third, as is currently most common, you don't really have the ability to give extra knowledge.

I think we're talking about narrative distance, and mixing it up with terminology about first or third person.

 

Yes, but then I wouldn't be writing about a child character anymore as his adult self would be mixing into the way the events are viewed. Plus, when I start writing about a child character I do it slowly from their childhood onward, I don't jump into their adult years until I've written enough of their childhood and teenage years. I want to "watch" them grow up first so I'll have a stronger idea for what kind of people they are as adults. So third-person also fits the best to the way I want to write them. And I don't really care what kind of third-person is common these days - I just write the way that feels right and enjoyable to me. (Side note: I'm not writing a book to be published for profit.)

 

Well, I think you're still writing about a child character - again, see Mockingbird.

But I didn't mean to suggest you should change your way of writing! Do what works for you, obviously. I was just addressing the rationales you offered, not trying to question the conclusion you reached.

 

It's normal. Third person is like watching a movie, or witnessing someone else's life, which is why the majority of people prefer it.

First person is like listening to someone jabber on and on about themselves, which no one really likes to listen to in real life either.
In order to make first person bearable, the story has to be very interesting. Consider Farley Mowat for example, he was one of the greatest non-fiction writers ever. And no offence meant to Farley, but the writing style was sometimes mundane, but that didn't matter because the stories of his life were absolutely amazing and he still had the ability to story tell and make you feel as if you were there experiencing it as it happened.

 

Not necessarily. Like @BayView says, I think that this discussion is mixing up narrative distance with the issue. You seem to be talking about third person omniscient here, which is just one of the options.

 

And then, i thought to myself, this needs tidying up, so I will change the voice slightly to make it restricted 3rd from Omni 3rd, and I now regret that decision... Omni was the right way to go with it as with multiple characters, switching between them in Restricted 3rd would have taken a lot out of the story that i feel gave it its character.

However, on one of my other pieces, Restricted 3rd works really well, as its more of an over-the-shoulder look at what the character is doing/thinking. i would write in 1st with this, but the concept didnt work as i'd have liked it too. (As at one point you skip to another character briefly, due to the MC's absence)

 

I personally prefer third person to first person, as, at least in my experience, third person provides me with more room to explain and give background on things, develop more intricate scenes, and most importantly for me: it keeps me from being overly sentimental with my characters. First person for me just doesn't have those qualities, and while I have read several good novels written in the first person perspective (Brontë's Jane Eyre comes to mind), I, as a writer, could not produce the same results with the first person as I can with third person.

 

Writing in first person about the main character who is in third person works best for me. It just seems easier this way to produce an objective perspective in regards to all elements in the story.

 

I don't know if I follow. Do you mean like Sherlock Holmes or The Great Gatsby, where there's a first-person narrator (Watson or Nick) but the most important character (Holmes or Gatsby) is not that narrator?

Or something else?

 

yes, close enough -

 

I can read either - I have no preference. But I can only write in 1st person. I get terribly confused and conflicted with the 'voice' when trying to write in 3rd.

 

The problem with first person past is that the narrator knows whats going to happen, so any suspense feels fake and manipulative.

I also dislike close third. I prefer an omnipotent, distant voice; every great book I have read has one.

 

True, but avoiding this is where the skill's involved. Not that I'm including myself there. I just like the simplicity of 1st person. You can just sit down and start writing a story in a 'OK, this is what happened to me once....' kind of way. You don't have to worry about things that happen away from your protagonist, because you wouldn't have known about them. It just keeps things so much more simple, and anything that does that when writing is a big bonus to me.

 

Reading what most of you said on here, that third person prevails, I'm still developing the storyline and putting together ideas, but this is something I need to decide now, I guess there's a huge privilage of writing in third person, because - as many of you have suggested - it's limitless, for example, if I would want to describe a character in a rather dramatic way, doing it through another character thinking to themselves or so, would be slightly overrated. Yet, is if I want one character to express feelings of grief or intimacy towards the other, will doing it without the character actually speaking lessen the intended impact of the event to readers? Or will it be equally effective?

Thanks in advance.

 

I had a rather odd mind blip when working on my novel today. I started throwing in sentences that would probably be more associated with a third-person narrative that first-person. By that I don't mean I suddenly switched the POV, but I was writing things like 'I screwed up my face' which is essentially like the story-teller observing themselves, in the same way a third-person omniscient POV would observe its characters.

I'm praying it was a one-off blip. The worst case scenario is that I've been doing this all the time, but for whatever reason only noticed it today