One of the typical questions I get from newbies is “What person do you write in?”
Of course that’s NOT what they’re actually asking. What they’re actually asking is “What person do I have to write in so my fiction will be accepted by publishers?” or in the new age of indie possibly “So my fiction will be professional?”
I have bad, sad, horrible news to all you newbies out there. There is no answer to that. There are authors – and editors – who confuse their personal preferences with a law of nature, but wishing don’t make it so.
I always find it very funny when people who have decent careers and should know the history of the field come out and opine that “only newbies write in first person” or “first person is the mark of the amateur.” Pleeeeeease!
Just because you’re not good enough not to Mary-Sue when you use first person, don’t project your weaknesses on other writers. Go look at… oh, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Go on. I’ll wait. Yep, first person. And if you have a low opinion of that book, that’s your prerogative, but you’re also not a very good evaluator in my opinion and the opinion of the millions of people who made that book an international classic of SF. In fact, most classic science fiction writers operated mostly in first person. That is just a fact of life.
It is also a fact of life that most of classical mystery – Agatha Christie, Rex Stout – was written first person. Most urban fantasy still is.
Yes, I can see you rolling your eyes. Stop that, they might stick that way. Look at that again. You might have literary pretensions and think you’re all that, but go look at the data and how it tracks. When genres are at their most popular (they don’t call it golden age sf because the covers had foiling) they are written first person. The most popular genre now is – arguably – urban fantasy, which is first person.
So, while you personally might not like it, there seems to be a strong market preference for first person.
Perhaps, of course, you write for political commentary or intellectual acclaim. Fortunately I’m a philistine, I write for cold, hard cash. I think critical acclaim comes afterwards, when you’re dead and your kids are still getting rich off the royalties and sub-rights. And I’m willing to wait.
Does that mean that you must write first person?
Not necessarily.
I’m a natural first-person writer. This is because that is the closest to how I experience the story as my subconscious core-dumps it. I.e. I get the story “told” to me and know only what the main character knows.
Yeah, I fell for the same thing y’all did. “I must write third person to be professional.” Or rather, I didn’t, but
I knew – back then – most editors had. If they saw first person, particularly if it was the same gender as the author, they assumed you were Mary Sue-ing. I knew better. For one most of my first person isn’t the same gender I am. (For another… All those of you who think I’m Athena, I had a disturbed teenage-time, but not THAT disturbed. For heaven’s sake, the woman has a natural sense of direction and special memory. I have neither. And I was never that self-confident.) I just get the character in my head, speaking in his/her voice.
But I had to learn to write third person to break in, and I did it.
Is it better? Is it worse?
It is DIFFERENT. There is no “right” person to write in. It’s like asking me “how long should a story be?” The answer to THAT is “as long as it needs to be” and the answer to the voice is “the voice it needs to be to tell the story.”
First person lends itself to coming of age stories and to stories that have an unreliable narrator, though the second requires a REALLY GOOD narration so the reader doesn’t feel cheated when he realizes he’s been taken along for a ride.
Third person is good for action that requires a multiple povs and a rolling narration with cameras following various
narrators.
Take my Shifter series. The action is carried by a group and they might be and often are under attack from multiple fronts. Sure I could do first person from Tom and/or Kyrie’s perspective, but you’d miss what is happening with Rafiel, except in cumbersome retelling. Easier to roll from one to the other of them, as the action leads.
Witchfinder, the novel I’m putting up for free one chapter at a time (on Friday’s) over at According to Hoyt is also the same type of narration because, again, multiple fronts, multiple characters. Same for that mater with the Musketeer Mysteries.
So… if there isn’t a right one, which one is easier?
Normally? Even though I’m a natural first person writer, third person is easier. Third person is WAY easier if you’re uncertain about the plotting, because you can show what the bad guy is doing and the pincers closing on your good guy, which helps timing. It’s much, much, much easier to do it in multiple voices.
However there are special circumstances. The last three novels I wrote were first person. I’ve been having the devil of a time with Noah’s boy, and it just hit me that I REALLY am not having a problem with the book – I’m having an issue with the different feel of switching back into third after first. THAT I can cope with. (Mostly.) It hit me because I’m having the same feeling as with Witchfinder – I’m insufficiently grounded in ANY character, is what it feels like, and it’s just because of habit established in my most recent work. Anything can become an habit.
I recommend you experiment with both third and first, and if you can become proficient at both. Kris Rusch calls this “enlarging your toolbox.” The more tools you have, the better the work you can do.
So, why limit yourself? Instead of raging at first – or third – as sloppy or unprofessional, put on the student cap, read some good examples and learn to do it. People seem to prefer first, but there’s enough bestsellers in third to show sometimes it’s needed. Just learn to use it. Refusing to is like saying “I’m a carpenter, but I’ll never use a hammer. It’s all staple guns for me.”
The one exception I’d make is second, and that’s because it annoys me as a reader. It’s a personal thing. But I’ve written a couple of shorts in second person, and it can be done. And if you’ve never done it, you should try it.
There is no right voice. There’s the right story, and the right writer.
Mad Genius Club 
19 responses to “I, You, They”
Grumble Grumble, I tried to answer this in AccordingToHoyt and it disappeared. [Wink]
You mentioned that third is easier than first and IIRC Eric Flint commented on why it is easier.
From what I remember, he said that too many first person narrators are uninteresting people. With first person you, the writer, may have a harder time of making the narrator’s words/thoughts interesting.
Obviously this isn’t true for *all* writers but is something to think about.
One of Eric’s suggestions was to write a scene both ways and see which scene works better for your readers.
Eric creates characters in a completely different way from how I do — and I think he’s still not aware other people come at it differently. Sorry, but that’s my opinion. I had no clue anyone created them the way he does and I think it goes both ways.
When you hear that character in your mind and it’s compelling, you don’t have to make it interesting.
First or third, people who write themselves into stories make them boring, period.
Well, he may have been responding to too many *bad* first person stories submitted to the Grantville Gazette. [Wink]
Oh, I’d love to see you and him discuss the issue. I’m sure it would be interesting. [Smile]
If by “interesting” you mean WWIII — it’s almost worse than politics, so both of us edge around it.
Unless he got really unlucky, he had the same number of BAD third person. It’s just that bad first person feel worse, because first person is inherently more difficult.
I’m currently revising a 1st person novel I first drafted over five years ago (proverbial go-back-to-earlier-novel-and-apply-all-that-you’ve-learned-about-fiction-since project).
As part of my critique/rev I’m trying to make sure I really know my protag — that she has hard, clear edges and an unmistakeable & definite voice. Interestingly, one of the hurdles to this is that I’m not the same person I was when I wrote the last draft; I believe that’s affecting this other voice that is, after all, co-located within my psyche . . .
I’d really like to see a good novel written in second person. (No, I’m just kidding. Mostly.)
The Dinosaur Rex series were written second person and bestsellers. Now, I don’t LIKE them, but they were bestsellers…
For a recent example, Charles Stross’ Halting State was in second person, and I believe the sequel is as well, though I have not read it. It wasn’t his best work, but it was decent. I think it was done this way to give off the vibe of the old text adventures – “you are in a maze of twisty passages, all the same”.
I thought that Jennifer Morgue was in 2nd person.
I have it somewhere so I could check I suppose.
I’m in the process of converting a first person story into a third person so that it matches the style of the rest of the series. The conversion makes my head ache, because I can’t have the informational asides, have to keep a strict event sequence, and have to find new ways to explain certain actions and events.
Interestingly, what had been a rather breezy “I got this scar by p-ssing off my boss” war story became a very painful tale when the narrator/ PoV changed. I’d not anticipated that development.
well… You can do close-in-third pov, which is almost like first.
It’s actually a much closer third person than I usually write, as I discovered re-reading a bit today (draft revision). *shrugs* I’m going to blame the cat’s baleful influence, since it is not yet the full moon.
AND The Baleful Cats would make a great name for a rock band.
I imagine the most difficult (I’ve never tried it) and I have read good books written this way. Is those that switch pov, first person with one character, but third person when following other characters. I have seen it done well, but usually it comes out cumbersome.
One of the most interesting styles, that I really liked was the first person, down from two opposing characters views that Larry Correia and Mike Kupari did in Dead Six.
Those are very difficult — both the last and first and third alternating.
“First person lends itself to coming of age stories and to stories that have an unreliable narrator, though the second requires a REALLY GOOD narration so the reader doesn’t feel cheated when he realizes he’s been taken along for a ride.”
An excellent unreliable narrator story is “Eutopia,” by Poul Anderson.
I use first- or third-person depending on what makes most sense for the story. Mostly third, except for the sooper-seekrit stuff.
I tried a 3rd/present installment short once on the Harlequin boards. It actually worked pretty well.
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