Tried to keep that short, but I may have missed the mark. What I meant to ask is what challenges and advantages does each pose, and why would you favor one over another when narrating?
IMO, there are a number of things that third person can do that first person can't do or can't do as gracefully. Offhand, I can't think of anything that first person can do that third person can't. There probably are things, but they don't come to mind. (Well, OK, writing a book as if it's a diary or series of letters pretty much requires first person. I'll allow that one.) (And some people feel that an unreliable narrator requires first person. I disagree.) So I prefer third person. It can be omniscient or it can be limited. It can be close or it can be distant. It can show interior thoughts and feelings or it can refrain from showing them. It can change POV characters more gracefully. But if you don't feel comfortable writing in third person, all that falls out the window. Inspiration and writing flow are a delicate thing; you have to give them what they demand.
I feel like omnipresent narration gets too much hate. Everyone loves a good story. They just have their own preferences and ideas of what a good story is. Personally, I don't care about being told things or being shown things. I care about the mood and what it reminds me of. I care about originality and the concept. I care about what kind of message is being told or what kind of theme is being told and all the references that keep coming up in the story. If omniscient narration fits your story then tell it through an all knowing, omnipresent entity. That's what I'm doing with my story.
Thank You all. Maybee omniscient isn't that bad (sometimes) @GingerCoffee and @BayView helps me to think a little better. I was going to relax on 'Bea does not talk' and bulldoze along with telling. But your input makes me think I will let her talk but only in some unconscious way indicate her fear. And then later on we'll come back to this. Good input that makes harder writing. (There is no free lunch!)
Beautiful ears? You could do different chapters with alternating viewpoints. I didn't especially enjoy the book but Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" is an omni narrator who goes around different viewpoints fairly well IIRC.
So in my novel, for my prologue I ended up writing it in the third person point of view. Then when Chapter One comes to play I switched it to first person, unintentionally. Is that something that's alright to do? Like have the prologue be in third person and then have the rest of the book be first person? Thanks, Courtney
I think it's generally frowned upon to change within the book. At least if there doesn't seem to be a good reason. Come to think of it, prologues aren't too popular either now a days. As a reader I don't like first person at all. So if I picked up a book and it started with third person and then switched, I'd be pretty annoyed. To be honest that actually happened in the book I read now. It all started out with a dream which is described in third person - but as soon as the protagonist wakes up it's all described from her pow in first. I'm not really a big fan of the book so far...
Hmmm, maybe I'll write the prologue later because I'm so focused on the book I was lazy about writing the prologue. I'll change it to first person. First person is easier for me to put myself into the book and think like the character(s) so that's why I write in first person.
I don't think it's a bad idea writing the prologue in the third person and the rest of the story in the first person. I've seen it before and if it fits the story then it's the right call. Personally, I like it better when a story it's written in the third person but I don't mind the first person either, if you think that the first person pov is better for the story then there's nothing to talk about, hey!
This suggests that perhaps you don't even need a prologue? I'm not saying this as a general anti-prologue sentiment (though I am often anti-prologue) but because a prologue usually has a specific purpose.
You can have a prologue in 3rd and the rest of the book in 1st. But I agree with @ChickenFreak - do you need a prologue at all?
The prologue in my book is how my main character's "parents" came to meet. In my book Lucifer was attracted to a normal girl with brown hair and blond high lights and they were both trying to play cool, but ya'll know what happens next. It just explains things. I know prologue's are rare or not very important but I thought for my novel it'd help.
Sometimes explaining things too early can make the book less interesting. Surely discovering that the character's father is Lucifer is an exciting discovery worth building up to? (For example, would the Star Wars movies have been a whole lot better if you'd known the identity of Luke's father from the very beginning? And even better if you'd known the identity of Leia's father?)
Definitely. In my crime novel, my mc's entire internal arc is about reconciling herself to events in her past - two, in particular - and I don't reveal either until well into the story. I'm also reminded of Julia Alvarez' In the Name of Salome, in which there are two story lines, one of the mother that moves forward in time, and one of the daughter that moves backward in time.
I’ve heard it was always best to stick with either 1st person or 3rd. I once read a book that alternated from 1st to 3rd in every single chapter. Result? Unreadable by every stretch of the imagination. What made it worse was that this was a sequel to a book written entirely in 1st person, so clearly the author had an idea! Why he felt the need to change it up like that, I’ll never understand.
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes was one of my favourite books that I read last year, and that regularly swapped between the protagonist's first-person perspective, and the antagonist's third. It worked well for this book as it enabled a wider view of the terrorist and his motives while keeping it personal at the same time. I'd think it's quite a hard balance to strike though, and would have to be planned out well. I'm planning a quick switch to third-person towards the end of my own novel. It's used in this instance to heavily imply the death of my protagonist, and I'm not totally sure if I'm going to include it just yet. Obviously people will have their preferences on perspective, but as long as it makes sense and doesn't disturb the flow then I wouldn't think a brief shift to another perspective is too damaging.
I don't know where you might have heard it, but I would disagree. Hemingway included one 1st person chapter (the rest were 3rd person) in To Have and Have Not. And, as I've pointed out elsewhere, Christina Baker Kline in The Orphan Train moves between 1st and 3rd throughout the novel, depending on whose POV she is in at the time (there are only two). If you're more comfortable sticking with all one or all the other, that's fine. But there is no "rule" about it.
Laurie King’s Holmes/Russell series bobs between first and third—Russell is first, other POVs are third. It works for me, which doesn’t mean that I’d have the confidence to try it myself.
As with anything else, I think you need a reason to want to write it that way. In The Orphan Train, both characters are transformed by their interaction with the other, but the 1st person character's transformation is greater and more unexpected, and it's seen from the POV of the 3rd person character (more reliable narration?).
This may be largely semantics. I recently read a book where I view the author as having employed multiple third limited viewpoint characters. Maybe someone else would view it as omniscient--there is no chapter break, section break, or other transition between viewpoints, apart from starting a new paragraph. An example (one I'm making up; this isn't from the book): Mark entered the bar and tried to blend in with a group of students drinking and talking loudly near the entrance. It was the kind of place he might have frequented back home, in the states, when he was in college. The chaos would work to his advantage. He hoped. His target was nothing if not perceptive. He said a few things to the nearest students, as though he'd known them his entire life, then shouldered his way to the bar and ordered the local lager. It was cold. Felt great going down after the day he'd had. As he drank, he let his eyes flick around the room, just a random sweep you'd expect from anyone just entering a bar on a busy night. He froze. She was looking right at him. Shit. Katherine had noticed him the moment he'd walked in. Something about his bearing and body language showed he wasn't quite a part of the group of students he stood next to. Could be just an awkward foreigner--you saw them a lot in the local pubs. Americans, mostly, and that's what this one looked like. She watched him surreptitiously, eyes on him no more than half a second at a time, as he made his way to the bar and ordered. When he raised his glass to drink, though, their eyes locked. That's right, she thought. Made you. But who the hell was this guy? Then the narrative goes back to Mark, who is the viewpoint character for the vast majority of the book. So--is that omniscient? Is it multiple viewpoint third person limited? Does it matter which we call it?
I would call it omniscient, or head-hopping if we're being less charitable. (I've never had the difference between those two satisfactorily explained to me.) It matters because multiple third person limited is very common and widely accepted, whereas omniscient is uncommon in contemporary fiction, and controversial. Those chapter and scene breaks make all the difference.
I view it differently. At no time when in any character’s head is the narrator actually omniscient. It’s all a tight POV. And it doesn’t make sense to me that something like page formatting changes it from limited to omniscient. Reasonable minds may differ, of course
Ah, maybe that actually is the difference between omniscient and head-hopping, then. The narrator doesn't see and know all, but jumps from one person's limited view to another.
Yeah, that’s how I’m looking at it. Of course, people discourage doing it without at least a scene break, but this is a popular author.
