First person is a highly versatile point of
view, and its limited scope is both a blessing and a curse. Let’s explore the nitty-gritty details of
what writers can accomplish through this perspective. It’s obvious that first person can be a
powerful tool for establishing an immediate emotional connection with the reader. The audience is granted access to the protagonist’s
innermost thoughts and feelings. Readers view the world through that character’s
unique lens, as if they’re hearing a story told by a close friend. In the case of likable characters, their emotions
often guide the audience’s reaction. Their happiness is your happiness; their sorrow
is your sorrow. But first-person can also generate empathy
toward villains or antiheros in a way that’s more difficult to achieve in third person. As one perceptive reader phrased it, “By
placing you in the criminals' shoes, the authors generate ambivalence and twist our emotions,
rather than letting us simply dismiss in disgust.” First person is also great to use when you
have a character with a strong voice and an interesting perspective on life, such as someone
on the autism spectrum. The writing style reflects the attitudes of
the protagonist and provides constant characterization. Oftentimes, the tone is set within the first
line. Take a look at the opening of Emma Donoghue’s
novel Room, which is told from the perspective of a young boy who is isolated from the outside
world: “Today I'm five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe,
but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I'm changed to five, abracadabra.” Now compare that to the opening of Andy Weir’s
debut The Martian: “I’m pretty much fucked. That’s my considered opinion. Fucked.” Then take a look at Humbert Humbert’s first
words in Vladimir Nabokov’s classic Lolita, told from the perspective of a poetic pedophile: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” If you’re itching to experiment with your
style, consider writing from a first-person perspective of someone with vastly different
opinions than your own. Maybe you want to write from a Jewish tattoo
artist’s point of view or an old couple living in the Alaskan wilderness. If you have little personal experience with
that perspective, find online forums or blogs where people share anecdotes about those lifestyles. Watch documentaries and read memoirs. You could even interview people who have had
those experiences, or do field research by taking classes or in-person tours. Your goal as a writer is to portray those
identities as authentically as possible. Another appealing feature of first person
is the potential for unreliable narrators, wherein the protagonist skews the reader’s
interpretation of the actual events or outright lies about what happened. All narrators are biased to some extent, but
authors who want to intentionally create an unreliable narrator will drop hints, often
by creating contradictions between what the protagonist says and what they do. For example, a narrator might claim he’s
a genius and his classmates are all idiots. But when the reader finds out he’s the only
student who failed the exam, that makes us question the validity of the narrator’s
claims. You can convey these contradictions through
multiple perspectives as well by having different characters interpret the same incident in
completely disparate ways, which is known as the Rashomon Effect. It’s named after Akira Kurosawa’s film
Rashomon, in which four suspects, witnesses, and surviving victims of a murder give contradictory
accounts of the incident. Right now, a dozen examples of books and movies
with unreliable narrators are probably whizzing through your head. Unreliable narrators can be both fun and frustrating
for readers, as they add another layer of tension and mystery to the story. Literary critic David Lodge suggests that
“The point of using an unreliable narrator is indeed to reveal in an interesting way
the gap between appearance and reality, and to show how human beings distort or conceal
the latter. This need not be a conscious, or mischievous,
intention on their part.” In other words, unreliable narrators don’t
always lie on purpose; they may actually believe their own distorted view of reality. For writers, unreliable narrators are an opportunity
to explore the deeper aspects of a character’s personality as well as the eccentricities
of the human mind. With first person, there are also many different
forms with which to present your story. Characters might speak through a diary, a
memoir, a series of letters, or even interviews—or any combination of media. This allows you to create the illusion of
reality, as Yann Martel does in Life of Pi, which features a fictional author’s note
explaining how Pi’s story came to be. When I read this book many years ago, this
opening cast doubt on whether or not the story was fact or fiction—I had to double check
the book’s Wikipedia page to be sure. In Life of Pi, the fictional author acts as
a peripheral narrator, occasionally adding his own commentary to Pi’s story, which
contributes to the book’s larger themes about truth and storytelling. Thus, the narrative structure you use not
only makes the story more engaging, but it can also help you emphasize important themes. So those are a few of the primary advantages
of using first person. It allows you to: 1. Establish an immediate connection 2. Explore unique perspectives 3. Enjoy unreliable narrators 4. Experiment with different narrative structures Nevertheless, there are several limitations
to first person. For one thing, it’s difficult to execute
successfully. Your character needs to have a captivating
voice, and they shouldn’t sound like an echo of the author. It can be hard to limit yourself to only the
word choices or descriptions that particular character would use, so first person often
involves writing outside of your comfort zone. In addition, unlike with third person, you
are often limited to one character’s worldview. You can only see what your main character
sees. Say Mary is our narrator and Bob is a secondary
character. If Bob leaves the room to poison Mary’s
tea, the reader only finds out when Mary does. The author can drop hints—perhaps Bob is
a little too insistent that Mary drink the tea—but this approach can’t create the
same sense of dramatic irony as third-person, wherein the reader knows something that Mary
doesn’t suspect. You could switch between different first-person
perspectives in these situations. However, you generally can’t include more
than two or three narrators without the voices sounding too similar or the reader forgetting
who’s who. Then again, William Faulkner’s As I Lay
Dying features 15 different first-person narrators, so these kinds of “rules” are always meant
to be broken. Another common problem with first-person writing
is that many sentences begin with “I,” which can be tedious to read. To avoid this, you can eliminate “filter”
words that stand between the narrator and the reader, especially when it comes to sensory
experiences. This includes words like felt, saw, heard,
watched, noticed, and thought. Look at this example sentence:
I heard the door slam shut, and I felt my heart skip a beat. Instead, you could write:
The door slammed shut, and my heart skipped a beat. This makes your writing tighter and the scene
more immediate. Here’s another:
I smelled bread baking, and it made me hungry. A revised version, with added details:
The sweet scent of Hawaiian rolls wafted through the air, and my stomach gurgled. This revision also involves the basic showing
versus telling principle: Rather than simply telling the reader that the character is hungry,
use an action that shows the character is hungry. When writing in first person, it can also
be hard to incorporate descriptions. If the narrator is encountering new places
or people, or recounting a story to the audience, then this isn’t much of a problem. However, if a protagonist is describing their
own appearance or familiar places, it can feel forced and take the reader out of the
story. This is what gives rise to the cliché of
a character examining themselves in a mirror, which is best avoided. Here’s an atrocious example: “I examined
my long, raven hair in the reflection, and bright blue orbs blinked back at me.” Don’t do this. You can make these descriptions sound more
natural by having other characters comment on the protagonist’s appearance (Your eyes
are so blue, I could just gobble them up!) or by having the protagonist note a change
in a familiar place (The bar was usually littered with cigarette butts and Mars Bars wrappers,
but there wasn’t a speck of dust when I went in that day). Even so, descriptive passages generally sound
better in the third person because the author doesn’t have to worry as much about capturing
the protagonist’s voice. Those are a few disadvantages of first person: 1. Difficult to write in someone else’s voice 2. Perspective is limited to one character 3. Many sentences begin with “I” 4. Descriptions of familiar things may sound unnatural When writing in first person, you’ll also
need to address the question of verb tense: Should I write in past or present tense? Let’s address the past tense first, since
it’s more common. With first-person past tense, the story is
often presented as a retrospective. The narrator is telling us their story after
the fact, and they may even talk directly to the audience, as Jane Eyre does, stating,
“Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt!” Many classic novels use the retrospective
format, such as To Kill A Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye. You’ll find it in popular fiction as well,
like The Book Thief, which is narrated by Death, who is looking back on the story of
a girl he watched grow up during WWII. At one point, he even tells the reader, “I’m
spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it.” Sometimes the audience is not the real-world
reader but other characters within the book itself, such as in The Canterbury Tales and
The Name of the Wind, making the story one long piece of dialogue. Kvothe, the hero of Patrick Rothfuss’s novel,
tells his listeners, “I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the
minstrels weep. You may have heard of me.” Some narrators aren’t telling stories about
themselves but rather those of others. This narrator is sometimes called a peripheral
narrator if they are part of the action but not the focus. For example, The Great Gatsby is Nick Carraway’s
account of Jay Gatsby. Within the first page, he writes, “Only
Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby,
who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.” Just as Carraway portrays Gatsby, so does
John Watson portray Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories. The incidents are written from Watson’s
perspective, and here is one of the many things he has to say about Holmes: “He was, I take
it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has ever seen…” In the modern BBC adaptation, John keeps a
blog about Sherlock, but it serves the same purpose. To once again quote reader Andrew Lim, “The
narrator plays a foil to another main character who is great in some way, distinctive, or
unusual. It can be more powerful to experience that
greatness as an ordinary person in the aura.” In both The Great Gatsby and Sherlock Holmes,
the first-person narrators are creating physical artifacts—the book you are reading was created
by them. Thus, in a retrospective story, the characters
are able to reflect on their past selves and foreshadow events to come. First-person PRESENT tense, on the other hand,
is often used as the primary tense in novels where the narrator is constantly addressing
some kind of reader, like in a diary, which might have a mix of present-tense thoughts
and past-tense actions. One example is Jeff Kinney’s children’s
series Diary of a Wimpy Kid: “First of all, let me get something straight:
This is a JOURNAL, not a diary. I know what it says on the cover, but when
Mom went out to buy this thing I SPECIFICALLY told her to get one that didn’t say ‘diary’
on it.” The use of present tense to show action happening
in the moment is a much more modern phenomenon. You’ll see it in bestselling novels like
The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Time Traveler’s Wife, and Fight Club. Present tense generates a sense of immediacy,
and the reader experiences the events with the character rather than hearing the story
after the fact. Look at this quote from The Hunger Games by
Suzanne Collins: “All the general fear I've been feeling
condenses into an immediate fear of this girl, this predator who might kill me in seconds. Adrenaline shoots through me and I sling the
pack over one shoulder and run full-speed for the woods. I can hear the blade whistling toward me and
reflexively hike the pack up to protect my head. The blade lodges in the pack.” Present tense can work well for stories that
feature more heart-pounding action than introspection. Screenplays are written in the present tense,
so it makes sense for books focused on visuals to imitate the feeling of a movie by using
present tense. You can feel the influence of screenplay writing
in Blake Crouch’s sci-fi novel Dark Matter: “My wife, Daniela, sits on the kitchen island,
swirling her almost-empty wineglass in one hand and holding her phone in the other. She feels my stare and grins without looking
up from the screen.” In addition, the combination of first-person
and present tense makes internal dialogue sound like the protagonist is voicing his
thoughts aloud: “It will be good to be home again. I’m thinking of starting up the gas logs. We’ve never had a fire before Halloween,
but tonight is so unseasonably cold that after walking a mile in this wind, all I want is
to sit by the hearth with Daniela and Charlie and a glass of wine.” Unlike with past tense, the thoughts feel
less filtered by time and reflection, resulting in an almost stream-of-consciousness effect. Present tense can also enhance a story’s
themes. Author Emma Darwin names disorientation as
a feature of present tense: “The stream of one-thing-after-another-after-another-after-another
suits any narrative where the point-of-view character is disoriented, and/or you want
the reader to feel the same.” The form of the narrative matches its function. However, many readers feel that present tense
pulls them out of the story—it calls attention to itself because it’s unfamiliar. In addition, present tense requires suspension
of disbelief. The writer is asking the reader to believe
that this story is happening in real time, which may make the reader too aware of the
author’s presence in the story. Ultimately, your choice of verb tense depends
on personal taste, and some readers don’t even notice one way or another. A side note about first person in terms of
young adult fiction. First person carries a stigma in certain circles
and is sometimes considered to be for amateurs, mainly because it’s a popular choice for
YA writers. In fact, many teen readers prefer first person,
perhaps because they enjoy the ability to easily put themselves in the characters’
shoes. But as you’ve seen in earlier examples,
it’s clear that first person has been widely used in literary fiction for decades, if not
centuries. Therefore, it is not your choice of perspective
that matters, but how you use it. How a first-person narrative is perceived
depends on the character’s level of self-reflection versus external action. Is your story more about the character pondering
the spiritual significance of finding life on other planets, or is it more about aliens
taking over the world and the heroes trying to defeat them? It boils down to the difference between genre
and literary fiction, which I’ll cover in a different video. Here’s an exercise you can use to test out
your first-person writing skills: Choose a place you’re very familiar with. It can be a room in your house or a store
you visit on a regular basis. Now write a paragraph from the first-person
perspective of one of your characters. Then switch to a different character and write
a paragraph from their perspective. How do they differ? As an example, think of a kitchen. How do the characters’ different interests
shape what they see? What do they notice that others don’t? If they’re a chef, they might critique the
quality of the kitchen knives, or think about how horribly wrong everything went the last
time they made macarons. If they’re a family-oriented person, the
kitchen table might be a place filled with fond memories of family gatherings, the smell
of spices and gumbo, a white cat sprawled on the table. Physical descriptions can extend into memories. Where do their thoughts gravitate? What questions consume their minds on a daily
basis and how does that impact their view of everyday experiences? Your narrator’s language should be influenced
by his or her gender, class, ethnicity, education, profession, and interests. Someone who grew up in a strongly conservative
family is going to perceive the world differently than someone with a more liberal background. Your choice of narrator not only impacts what
they notice and think, but also the structure of their internal dialogue—their syntax,
diction, and dialect. One character might narrate in straightforward,
choppy sentences, whereas another might ramble in long, verbose prose. A character might frequently express thoughts
through similes and metaphors or never use figurative language at all. Writing from one character’s perspective
can feel claustrophobic, but it allows you to immerse yourself in a different mindset
and use unconventional narrative formats. How do you feel about first person? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. What are your favorite books told in first
person? If you’re choosing to write a story in first
person, why did you make that choice? Whatever you do, keep writing.
