Is it easier to write in the first person?

[Featured Author]

I'm thinking of starting a story, but I'm having a hard time getting past the first two pages. It feels more natural when I think of myself as the character. Do you think it would be easier for me to trying writing in the first person? Is that OK if I go to get it published?

 

[Greybeard]

It definitely isn't easier. It's just different. Some folks may find it more natural to write in the first person, but most don't.

 

[Black Dragon]

There's nothing wrong with writing in the first person. There was a long stretch during which first person fiction (especially fantasy fiction) was rare. However, more authors are choosing to go this route nowadays. One of the best books in recent years, The Name of the Wind, is largely told from the first person.

As for whether or not it's easier, I would suggest giving it a try and seeing how it works for you. You never know, it may actually be a better fit for what you are trying to accomplish.

 

[Mythic Scribes Bot]

I've written a few tales in first person point of view. I found it to be way simpler.

 

[Black Dragon]

Everyone is different. Writing in the first person may seem easier in some ways, but it opens up a whole new set of challenges. For example, how do you use multiple points of view in a first person novel? There are ways to do this, of course, but you have to be clever about it.

 

[kjjcarpenter]

Many people think first-person is easier because you don't have to be as descriptive and you only have to follow one person's train of thought. True for the latter, but if every sentence in the story starts with "I" it's going to bore the reader. You need to know how to write detailed first-person effectively without coming off as unrealistic. And the rumour about being less-descriptive is an out-right lie. If anything, you need to be more descriptive on a certain degree. You need to write what your protagonist is thinking and it needs to be natural. The idea of first-person is to connect with the character on a deep basis and understand them. If you don't have a deep character to begin with, this format is going to fall flat.

So to start off you're going to want to know the character before you start to write about them. You need to have many layers to them. An excellent example, and one of the only first-person books I actually enjoyed reading, is "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss. Although not first-person throughout, 90% of the novel is told in Kvothe's perspective. Refer to this novel and learn to know how Rothfuss tells his story through Kvothe's eyes. He nails it perfectly; you feel as if Kvothe is real and he is truly telling you the story.

Secondly, what style? Present tense? Past Tense? As if it's all in the character's head or if the character is writing down their thoughts of a past adventure in a journal? You may think this is unimportant, but it is somewhat vital if you want a flowing story with a lot of depth to it.

Next, think of the story you want to tell. Even if you only have a few points outlined. Will you be able to tell everything you want to from only one perspective? If not, you have three options. Go ahead as you are and try to tell it from your character's point of view; tell the story from multiple perspectives when needed; or switch to third person.

Personally, I loathe first-person writing. I find it bland—unless done right—and restricting. Of course that's just my personal opinion and there are exceptions. Do a lot of reading of the same style you want to write in and you'll get an idea if that is what you want fairly soon. That's my final piece of advice.

Best of luck with your story!

 

[Black Dragon]

That's excellent advice, Kev.

I'm in the category of people who find it easier to tell a story in the first person. It seems to come more naturally to me.

However, for the sort of story that I want to tell, it simply doesn't work. For the past three years I've been dedicating much of my free time to writing a work of epic fantasy. It's a large, sprawling tale, and at the same time it's very personal. It's the story that I've been wanting to read since I was a teenager. But there's no way I can tell this story effectively from just one point of view. The story requires multiple points of view in order work. And frankly, It's very hard - if not nearly impossible - to have multiple POV characters in a story. It feels too jarring jumping from complete immersion in one head to another.

 

[Navchuk]

kjjcarpenter makes a great point. Seeing "I" throughout a short paper or even blog posts quickly becomes tiring and distracting. One can work around it in several ways, though putting together a novel would present many challenges in finding new ways to describe scenes or convey messages.

It kind of reminds me of what we had back in elementary school when it came to so-called "power writing". We were never allowed to use any form of the word "be" in any portion of the paper. While it did provide a new way of writing, it wasn't easy to come up with ways of putting together a short story, especially at that age.

 

[Legerdemain]

First Person writing in my view becomes limiting when trying to describe settings and other character's motivations in which my character (being "I") would not know or have no right knowing. Some of that can be solved by tense, but mostly it becomes convoluted.

One trick you could try is to write the character as yourself, but put your own name in as a stub for your future character once you decide on them. That way I would be writing about "Chris going to the store to buy more alcohol to keep the demons away" instead of saying "I am going to the store to buy more alcohol to keep the demons away", and it becomes less depressing that way as well.

Another point to writing I would like to bring up is that you don't need to start with your linear story. Start by making what I like to term "Concretes". I make characters and back-stories, I make settings and their histories, then a story can flow out of them. This way "Chris is going to the store to buy more alcohol to keep the demons away" can come naturally out of my creation of "Chris" who has a drinking problem and fights the images of the murder of his sister at the hands of night-terrors.

 

[kjjcarpenter]

One trick you could try is to write the character as yourself, but put your own name in as a stub for your future character once you decide on them. That way I would be writing about "Chris going to the store to buy more alcohol to keep the demons away" instead of saying "I am going to the store to buy more alcohol to keep the demons away", and it becomes less depressing that way as well.

I am against this. I don't think this would help solve the problem, rather, it would spawn a new one. The character you are writing about becomes you rather than a separate entity. Even when writing in first person, you should still have an idea about who you are writing about, like you suggested about creating a back story. Writing is not about winging it. In the long run, you're far better off calling your character "Bob" instead of your own name, unless, of course, your name happens to be "Bob".

 

[Chaz24]

Why would anyone want to read a story about someone else telling what "they" did? It is much better to be able to immerse yourself in a world of multiple characters.

 

[Taree]

To me, writing in first or third person all has to do with what you want to accomplish in your story.

A lot of people like to put themselves as the subject so that they can feel that they are experiencing the story first hand. This is good if one is the only character.

But I do think that third is much better when it comes to practicality and public compositions. This opens up the world to many different levels which can be used to create more successful stories.

That's just my own opinion, of course.

 

[Legerdemain]

That's just my own opinion, of course.

But, the point of the board is your opinion matters, eh?

 

[Ravana]

The choice of first or third person will generally come down to whichever feels more natural to you—and it may, probably will, vary from story to story. The most important thing to remember is limitation on knowledge: if you're writing in first person, the reader should only have access to what the character knows (and, just as importantly, the character should only have access to what the character can know: nothing happening "behind the scenes").

Third person can be done either as single (all from one viewpoint—think The Hobbit, all of which is told from Bilbo's point of view) or plural (LotR—much of it is from Frodo's point of view, but some chapters are from the other hobbits, and a couple from other Fellowship members). Also, they can be limited or omniscient: either the reader knows only what the particular character knows, or else the reader has access to everything… this is especially important when you are dealing with the thought processes of the various characters. You can also do third person omniscient without access to any character's thoughts—as though the reader were another physically present observer, limited to only what such an observer might see. (This can be particularly difficult… and all but impossible in first person.)

It's also possible to switch back and forth between the two: the majority of the story is first-person, but with third-person "cut-scenes" where it seems necessary to fill in some background or "meanwhile, back at at the castle…" action. I wouldn't recommend trying until you get very comfortable with both in isolation, as it becomes very easy for the author to lose track of what the narrator doesn't know, or to allow the story to drift or to rely too much on the third-person material. It's even possible to do multiple first-person points of view, though you have to be very clear when these change or else the reader will become lost… and your characterization should be strong enough that the reader can tell who's speaking even without putting overt headers at the beginning of each chapter. (Re)read Dracula for one of the few successful examples of this.

 

[Ravana]

Secondly, what style? Present tense? Past Tense?

Arguably, this should be a separate topic, but…:

There's actually very little choice here: I can think of exactly one story I've read that was written successfully in present tense. And I can't give a reference: it came from one of my freshman comp students, who, as far as I know, managed to succeed only because she didn't know it was impossible. Consider the difference between the following:

"Without warning, arrows began falling among us from the sides of the road. Henrik and Ebel went down at once; the rest of us scattered. I drew my sword and waited for the inevitable order. Then the sergeant shouted 'Charge!" and we all leapt up and ran for the ambush as fast as we could."

"Without warning, arrows begin to fall among us from the sides of the road. Henrik and Ebel go down at once; the rest of us scatter. I draw my sword and wait for the inevitable order. The sergeant shouts 'Charge!" and we all leap up and run for the ambush as fast as we can."

In fact, the present-tense one could be punched up considerably: all I did here was change verb tenses. If you can maintain it, present tense can be incredibly powerful and compelling. Most people can't, though—try it for as little as one or two pages—and if you drift at all (apart from sections that are overtly expressed as memories), it ends up destroying the whole story.

 

[kjjcarpenter]

Of course, Ravana, you cannot just change the verb-tense and hope to morph a story that would read well as past-tense and hope it sounds as compelling in present-tense. It's a completely different style of writing that needs time and practice. And I must disagree, it is a choice as much as any other.

Have you read "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins? It's a child's book written in first-person while being told in the present-tense. The author knew what she was doing and managed to succeed on a fairly decent level. Although, sometimes, as with any writer, it falls short, but for the most part it comes off as convincing.

The intention of present-tense stories is to get the reader involved in the action, to be experiencing it as it's happening rather than being told of past events. This works well for books directed at children and teenagers because attention spans are of a much lesser degree, and presenting the actions and suspense first-hand draws in the reader; they feel as if what the character is experiencing is occurring to them. Of course, this can be achieved with other tenses and perspectives but it's all subjective.

 

[Black Dragon]

I found the present tense very difficult to pull off. It just sounded too forced.

 

[Ravana]

The intention of present-tense stories is to get the reader involved in the action, to be experiencing it as it's happening rather than being told of past events. … Of course, this can be achieved with other tenses and perspectives but it's all subjective.

I agree completely that a well-written present-tense story has impact like no other. I disagree that it's "all subjective": most attempts at doing so are objectively awful. No, I haven't read the Collins book; I'll try to track it down. But I'm not sure you're using "present tense" correctly here: most fiction is written from a temporal viewpoint that carries the reader forward at the same pace the characters progress through the action. But nearly all English fiction is written in past tense: that's just the way narrative voice developed in our literary tradition. It has nothing to do with the characters recollecting their experiences over drinks at some later date. (Not unless they're named Ishmael, at any rate.) Nor does it have anything to do with attention span: it doesn't make a story any longer to say "I went to the zoo" than it does "I go to the zoo."

At any rate, if you can manage it, more power to you. Nor would I want to discourage anyone from trying: in fact, I'd encourage everyone to make an honest attempt or two. Even if it doesn't work, you'll learn some things in the process. But most people will have Black Dragon's experience: very difficult to pull off… at best. Which is why I said there was very little choice there, though perhaps I should have said there's very little reason for most writers to worry about making the choice at all, apart from experimentation: past tense represents virtually everything you'll have read since the age of about four or five (in fact, Black Dragon: by "forced," did you perchance mean it had the feel of something written for a preschooler?), it's what your readers will expect, it's almost certainly what's going to flow from you naturally as you write—to the extent that it will require conscious effort to produce anything else—and that you will need to pay painfully close attention to everything you do in order to keep it consistent in any other tense. So, yes, present tense is a "choice"… but only in the sense that, if you do not deliberately make that choice, you'll be writing in past: "default mode" for English fiction.

When done correctly… yep, great. Anyone who can pull it off probably has a guaranteed niche. I'd just advise the average writer, and particularly less experienced ones, against setting their hearts on it, or even losing sleep over it. That's mainly what I was getting at.

 

[Meg the Healer]

I faced a similar situation. I began my first chapters in the first person because it was easier for me to "know what was going on" when I got to "act as the character." But as I progressed in the chapters I found I wanted to share with the reader what other people were thinking and doing and I couldn't do that within the chapters I was writing. So I ended up switching to third person. This way the reader is following everything and even though the reader is going to know everything that's going on I want the....um...."shock value" of having the reader say "No! Don't listen to him Thomas! You don't know the whole story! You can't kill her....you've got it all wrong!" And I think this will keep the reader wanting more because I want them to think they're the tiny voice of consciense in my hero's head. And the tiny voice of reason in my heroine's head.

So I think you'll actually find that as you start your process - you may switch between them until you figure out "how" you want to tell your story.

I also tend to write as if one day it will be seen in film. (A little narcisstic I'm sure!) So, to me, I think writing in the third person is easier because you can "watch" as it unfolds in your head. I think it's hard to tell a story on film when the story was written in first person, I think it loses some of its value. Because in first person YOU are the hero, in a movie someone else is...

 

[Vita Numinous]

Though I prefer third person, I've had a story that really did better off in first person. So though I write most of my stuff in third, I have to say it entirely depends on the project and what suits it best.