Switching to first person

Hi all

I was active on this forum some time ago, and the community here was really helpful! I lost motivation for my science fiction novel, but recently looked back through my flow charts and read some of my completed draft chapters, and I feel excited about it again.

One of my characters is, for most of the story, completely alone apart from a dog he finds while wandering in a wasteland. The dog is an important character itself, and fulfils the Caregiver archetype. The human character is autistic, and the dog is instrumental in him overcoming challenges indirectly associated with his autism through his (the dog's) caring and their mutual empathy and understanding.

The story is written in 3rd person, in past tense, as is typical. However, I'm considering switching to first person present tense for a very short chapter (just a few paragraphs) written from the perspective of the dog. The idea is to explicate the relationship between the human and the dog in a way the autistic character wouldn't (because this is not his style of communication). Using first-person present tense seems appropriate for this, because to me, the dog thinks and speaks like a child - very concrete, here-and-now language and an uncynical but perhaps naïve understanding. It is deliberately quite vague in order that it can be revealed only at the end of this chapter that it is the dog "speaking".

This is the first part of my story that I genuinely loved as soon as I wrote it. Reading it back made me cry. However, I'm concerned that readers might think it's a mistake (i.e. accidentally switching voice/tense) or that it will seem juvenile.

Any and all opinions are welcome, and thanks in advance

 

I think it's impossible to say in abstract - we'd need to read the story with this chapter in context. I'd leave it for now and see what beta readers say when you get to that stage.

 

Good point. I can post the chapter if it would help (it's literally three paragraphs) but it would be out of context with the rest of the story. I think as you say I'll have to get beta readers to feed back, and I'll ask specifically about this. My hope is that the writing style will be different enough that it will be obvious that it was intentional. The dog child-like language in short sentences, whereas the rest of the story is written in a very adult tone. So I'm hoping this will be sufficient to make the reader realise that there is a reason for the shift.

 

Thank you. I didn't know Stephen King did that (I haven't read that book). The thing is, I have deliberately not made it clear that it is the dog speaking until right at the end. I want the reader to wonder who the character is talking about (he refers to the way the human communicates with him and how it differs to his other experience, but doesn't use the human's name (because he doesn't know it)). It is revealed literally in the last sentence that it is the dog speaking when he is talking about how despite the differences, he will be loyal to the human. The final sentence is, "I will let him call me Dog, even though my name is Caleb." Prior to this, the human character, when talking to the dog, called it simply "Dog". So it will be obvious to the reader which character is speaking, and my intention is that once this is revealed it will become clear what he was talking about. Since the chapter is very short, I think it will work - it won't take long for the reader to reach the final sentence, realise what was happening, and make sense of it. I almost want there to be a build-up of intrigue and confusion, followed by a moment of heartbreak when it is revealed who the character is and what it means for their relationship.

 

Urgh...

This is a tricky one.

My inclination under all circumstances is to write in first person. I think it's the best way to write personal, emotionally involving stories. With a story that has a really tight focus on one character then I think that's crying out for first person. But I also think that it's a bad idea to write a first person character who has a thought process that is demonstrably different from the reader. You can sort of pull that off if they are a psychopath and it's not immediately clear that they do see the world differently and part of the reveal is discovering they were an unreliable narrator; but that's a gimmick. I don't think reading the thought process of an autistic character is going to be good fun, I think they will have trouble bonding with him and you need that in first person.

I don't know if I love switching voices in the middle of the stream but maybe that's the only way to make it work in this context. I think it would help a lot for the reader to at least see a little bit of what's in his head to understand him without having to be told it by the voice of god. Perhaps it's the best way to handle a tough writing situation.

 

I think it could totally work, but I wonder about having only one very short chapter from a different POV. That seems like a lot of work for the reader to figure it out, without there being much payoff.

 

Yeah that's kinda my feeling too. But as the first chapter I think it could work; so we only jump POV once and the first person bit is our first contact with him to grab our attention and realize that maybe he's a bit different and not quite as we'd expect him to be thinking, just catch our attention then go into the book proper in third person maybe?

 

Thanks for the replies I'll quote them in order with my responses.

Good point, but there is no main protagonist in this story. There are multiple characters whose individual plot arcs culminate in a finale which ties them all together. So first person throughout isn't doable. Also, this is an attempt at hardcore SF, so 3rd person sits better anyway IMO.

I'm interested in this opinion. Why do you think that reading the thought process of an autistic character would not be enjoyable? Yes the character's perception will be different to that of (most of) the readers, but he is a very high functioning, verbal, asperger-type. His perceptions and interactions will allude to coping strategies he has learned, and his experiences will teach him to use these skills and theoretical understandings more confidently. This is just one of several characters whose POV the reader will be exposed to, so I don't think it will become arduous to read. If you think differently though, I'd love to hear why as it might improve my writing of the character.

It won't quite be mid-stream - it will be clearly marked as a separate chapter (the chapters are going to be headed with the character POV, like in 1Q84). This one will be headed with the actual name of the dog, which the reader didn't know before this point, but will discover at the end of the short chapter that it is the dog.

I'm not sure what you mean here. The character will already have seen the autistic human's POV before this point. The dog providing his perspective balances the explication of the relationship. I want to show that the dog is benefiting from the relationship as well, and is staying with the human because he wants to and because he perceives the good in him.

I'm hoping that the chapter headings I described above will help with delimiting what is one POV and what is another. The possible confusion is intentional, as I said in an earlier post, and the payoff will be, I'm hoping, a sudden rush of realisation about how much the human means to the dog - how significant he is to the dog and how important the relationship is to him.

That won't work unfortunately. The dog character is introduced later in the plot and serves a specific purpose (the autistic character learns things through his interaction with the dog and also its ultimate fate, which help him to resolve several issues and overcome the main issue he is facing in the story.


I hope I'm not coming across as argumentative - I really appreciate all your responses and this discussion is really helping me. It's also a really interesting discussion

 

I immediately thought of "A Boy and His Dog" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072730/
Could you lead off with the first person from the dog, as thought maybe reflection or even narration of sorts?

 

Hah! Actually I've never seen that film, or even heard of it. It's an interesting idea though. No, leading off from the dog's perspective won't work. As I said above, the dog is only introduced as a character later. It wouldn't be possible for him to start the story.

 

I don't think there's anything about a character being autistic that requires third vs first person, or makes their narration less interesting. That kind of bothers me, personally, as an autistic person who writes a lot of autistic characters.

Personally, I'd find switching between first and third person jarring. Usually when I switch perspectives in a story, I tell the story in 3rd person. If it really feels like it needs to be first person, I put in scene markers each time I switch perspective that clearly say who's talking.

I can think of two stories that used both 1st and third person - one had a 1st person MC and the other perspectives were 3rd person, and the other had the MC suddenly switch from first to third person. Both of them threw me with the shift, and it pulled me out of my immersion for awhile afterwards. So I would not recommend switching between first and third person.

 

As a reader it would drive me absolutely batty, but I'm admittedly not very adventurous when it comes to an author's writing style. Especially being only one scene, I I would probably interpret it as continuity mistake rather than a deliberate choice. But again, I prefer my stories straight up 3rd person limited from beginning to end.

 

I agree, as long as the 3rd person narrator makes it clear what the autistic character is thinking. Otherwise a neurotypical reader might assume things about the character's thought process as they are interpreting the character from a NT perspective.

I agree. I would think that a neurotypical reader would be interested in taking the POV of an autistic person. It's like taking the POV of someone from a different cultural background.

I agree. I'm aspie, but didn't set out to make this character autistic. It just kind of happened, then I went back over and added more detail which made it a bit clearer. I haven't specifically said that he is, but anyone who knows anything about autism should be able to tell. And it's clear he's different in some very specific ways, so even if the reader doesn't know about autism it should be obvious that something isn't the same as the other characters (or themselves). The character has ended up as a combination of some other autistic people I know, and a bit of myself too (though I'm trying to limit that).

I kind of want it to be jarring. I want the reader to experience an abrupt shift of POV rather than gently segueing from one to another. Using a different voice emphasises that shift and, I hope, makes the section feel more personal (as that's the point).

Come to think of it, I think this idea has been influenced by Existence by David Brin. The novel is written in 3rd person past tense, but there are sporadic chapters which are written in first person present tense. I'm not sure who the speaker is, but I think it is the autistic characters who are connected to the computer equipment. The meaning is quite obtuse, and he also uses strange punctuation and is all in italics. It really stands out as distinct from the rest of the novel. It definitely takes effort to shift into that POV. I don't really understand the meaning of those particular passages as the writing is so strange, and I think it's a NT's attempt to communicate an autistic thought process. I'm not sure it works in that sense, but the shift in POV doesn't seem to detract from the novel at all.

Good point about being pulled from immersion. I'm trying to decide if this is, in fact, what I want to do - stop the reader in their tracks for a while to reflect on this new (and hopefully unexpected) perspective of the dog.

Personal taste is going to come into it of course. I love hardcore SF and things like this aren't completely out of the ordinary. Again, Existence did this quite a lot, interspersing 3rd person past tense prose with transcriptions of TV interviews, the first-person parts by the autistic characters, and even whole passages from another (fictitious) book.

This is my main concern. It worked in Existence because Brin did it all the time throughout the book. You never really settled into one voice or tense, so it was obvious it was supposed to be happening. To me, it happening only once makes it stand out as a special and intimate insight into an otherwise impenetrable POV, but maybe that's just because I know it's supposed to be written that way. Anyone else might not realise that and think I messed up.

 

As an experiment, I've just rewritten the passage in 3rd person past tense. To me, it has completely lost its passion. It needs to be spoken by the dog. I want the reader to feel what he is feeling, not observe it. I understand that 3rd person POV can (and should) still elicit in the reader the feelings of the character, but I feel like the reader needs to be closer to the character's POV in this passage. Also, writing in 3rd person made this section linguistically clumsy. Because I don't want it to be known who the character is until the end of the passage, and because both he and the human character are male, I have had to use 'he' to refer to the dog and 'the man' to refer to the human. This is repetitive and clunky. Using 'I' and 'he' in first person is much more fluent.

I'll take all of the advice in this thread into consideration, and also of course any feedback from readers. But I think this is something I'm going to be stubborn on. I'm actually thinking of adding another one of these passages later on (there will be a part where it will be implied that the dog has died, but he will actually return, and it would be nice to take his POV again at this point). This might help to indicate to the reader that this is deliberate, because it happens more than once.