Ist or third

Is it acceptable to switch from first person to third person mid paragraph?

 

No.

 

Like all the rules, you can break them if you really know what you're doing or are just a genius (which is another way to say you really know what your'e doing, only you absorbed it through osmosis and didn't need to study). Cormac McCarthy really knows what he's doing. But if your work still has any telltale signs of amateurishness (as most of ours do) then you won't come across as a master and you can't get away with breaking rules.

 

Thanks, appreciate the feedback

 

I wouldn't even switch between first person and third person in the same story, personally. Think about whether or how often you've seen something like that in other books or stories.

 

I don't think McCarthy switches from 1st to 3rd in the same paragraph. Does he? And I also don't think we should be striving to be the next McCarthy. Of course, you can break any or all writing and grammar rules you want. There are no writing police. But why do you want to break rules like this that are likely to confuse readers? And when it comes time to find a publisher it could end up hurting you.

It seems a little like you're saying amateurs have to follow rules and professional writers don't. I don't think that's true at all. We stop being armatures when we start publishing, but that doesn't change rules that are there to follow for a good reason. In addition to that, I'm guessing the OP is asking because they really don't know.

 

As a novice I am looking for direction, by way of collective opinion. It seems that some do some will and others pick and choose

 

I have no idea, I was responding to what somebody above me had said.

If a writer has mastered writing skills and can do it beautifully, I hope publishers can recognize that. If not then these are sad times we live in.

No, not exactly. A professional isn't necessarily someone who has mastered writing to the extent that they can transcend the rules.

The rules are like training wheels, or a tutorial. They're to help people develop their skills and learn how to write better. Those who become really masterful develop the ability to transcend rules when they want to. When a master breaks rules, anyone who really knows writing would agree that it's done skillfully, and wouldn't want them put in rule jail. Would you say Monet wasn't a master because he broke some of the rules of classical painting? He learned them first, developed massive skills, and found some of the rules too limiting.

I assume that as well. But I wasn't really responding to the OP, but to the No followed by a Yes that he received as answers. I was merely bridging the gap between those seemingly incompatible answers, giving a more high-resolution answer that indicates how each is true in certain situations.

I know some people believe the rules are absolutely immutable and that no-one ever earns the right to break them. Not all of us feel that way, obviously, nor do publishers. If they did many works of classic and modern literature would not exist.

 

Another way a writer can break the rules is to write what Robert McKee calls anti-narrative—which involves deliberately breaking the rules out of contempt or disdain. Writers who do this are like punk rockers, making a statement against skills and rules in general. It can work in certain genres, the ones I can think of (that I don't know a name for) would be about drug addicts and street people who are uneducated and rule-breakers themselves. You wouldn't expect properly-written prose in stories like that, especially if they're autobiographical or written by people who have lived the street life.

But in a situation like this it still needs to 'sound good'.

 

I wasn't trying to jump into a rules debate, but it does seem like the OP was looking for more direction than, "You can do anything you want." I have read books with examples of switching from 1st to 3rd at chapters or section breaks, So, yes, That's done. But most of the time it isn't done. That's why I mentioned thinking about how often you see this in other books. I would strongly advise against it in the same paragraph.

 

Nobody said you can do anything you want. My point was that once you've learned the rules you can do whatever you're capable of making work. And just before that Moose gave some good guidelines on what the rules are.

 

Have you tried it? You could post the paragraph and see what kind of reactions it gets.

 

Here's a post where I examined how a writer switched between 2 different POVs several times in a short story. It worked because he inserted an extra paragraph space the first time he did it, and also he shifted into the POV by first showing us the new character in an external shot, then going shallowly inside, and then more deeply. Here's the post: Is Alternative POV the same as Game of Thrones?

 

Try it and see what you think of it. Write a whole bunch of first to third switching paragraphs, put them away in a dark place for a few weeks, then pull them out and analyze the effectiveness of the of the device. If you think it sucks, dump it and go one with life. If you think it has possibilities, play with it some more. The more you play, the more you learn, and the better your writing gets.

 

All rules can be broken if done well but as a reader I don't think I'd like it much.

 

I agree, and I think it would be extremely difficult to switch between 1st and 3rd mid-sentence gracefully. Only a highly skilled writer should attempt it, and only for a really good reason. You'd better understand POV extremely well before daring it. I mean, if you want readers to like it.

I just ran across this, where Virginia Woolf switched POV in a single sentence, an astonishing feat. I get too bogged down in the wordiness and complexity of the sentence to even notice the POV change (I'm still reeling in shock trying to understand what the hell she's saying), but here it is:

It was fringed with joy. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees, leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses rustling—all these were so coloured and distinguished in his mind that he had already his private code, his secret language, though he appeared the image of stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead and bright blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at the sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide his scissors neatly around the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine on the Bench, or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of public affairs.
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It might help if I explain—the boy was cutting pictures out of a magazine with scissors.

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To me this feels like a ridiculously run-on sentence, plastered together with several comma-splices where there should be periods. In fact I think the so is a splice itself. I also feel like a new paragraph should have begun there. I didn't see any kind of easing-in or out from one POV to the other, just clunk! But the author of the book (Bill Johnson) seems to feel it works. Judge for yourself.

Edit—now that I've copied it over and read it a couple more times, I can almost grasp the immensity of the sentence, and I kind of like it. Totally out of place in these modern times, but if you can get yourself into the Victorian mood it works. Something about the rhythms of the sentence does make it feel like something changed with the so.

In fact the so seems to make the previous parts of the sentence into a clause, so that the mother's thoughts are the real subject, the rest just leading up to it. Interesting. That could be a strategy to experiment with.