Personally, I prefer to stick to writing in third, but I agree with Song4MyKing not to worry about it being over-used. When you only have two choices like 1st and 3rd (unless you\u2019re being really fancy with 2nd), both of them are going to get used a lot.<\/em><\/p>\nThanks, Christie V Powell, for shouting out to a past post!<\/p>\n
I agree that first-person over-use is one worry we can cross off our list. If only there were dozens of person choices!<\/p>\n
On that score, I wonder if it would be possible to write an entire novel in first-person plural (we). Has anyone encountered such a book? One possibility might be a Greek-chorus sort of narrator. Or twins or triplets. I\u2019ve always been intrigued by the myth about the Myrmidons, descendants of ants who were turned into human soldiers by Zeus for Achilles\u2019 grandfather\u2019s benefit. In the Iliad, Achilles\u2019 soldiers are called Myrmidons. A Myrmidon, or a squadron of them, could narrate in first-person plural. Or, there could be a dystopia in which group-think has taken over, and the narrator is the group.<\/p>\n
I agree with Song4myKing that a first-person narrator\u2019s voice\u2013in general\u2013needs to be straightforward and to not call attention to itself. Whether our narration is in first-person or third, it should get out of the way of the unfolding story.<\/p>\n
But I say in general<\/em> because if a more idiosyncratic first-person voice works, then it\u2019s fine. In writing, the rules can be broken. The only absolute law is: Thou Shalt Be Clear. We can deliberately confuse a reader along the way, which can be fun, but at the end, he should know what happened in the story\u2013unless we\u2019re writing experimental fiction. An unresolved ending is okay, as long as the reader understands it\u2019s unresolved on purpose.<\/p>\nWhen I think of successful quirky voices I think of Mark Twain. I love his narrators! And I give Twain a pass, as I usually don\u2019t, when the narrator runs on a tad too long. I tried, though not exhaustively, to find a contemporary quirky voice I like. Salinger\u2019s narrator in Catcher in the Rye (high school\u2013maybe middle school, I\u2019m not sure\u2013and up) is certainly quirky. Originally published in 1951, I doubt it can be called contemporary, and I can\u2019t say I like it, because I read it many decades ago and, though it was an important book for many of my friends, it wasn\u2019t for me. I didn’t dislike it.<\/p>\n
The keys to a successful quirky voice, in my opinion, are likableness and interest. If the reader loves this MC, he\u2019ll love the odd voice\u2013especially if we don\u2019t overdo it or make it hard to read. And if what this crazy narrator is telling our reader is fascinating and in synch with the voice, he\u2019ll want the story served up exactly that way.<\/p>\n
When we\u2019re not going for quirky though, the voice can be similar to a third-person narrator\u2019s, telling and showing what\u2019s going on and reporting thoughts and feelings. Our character can be full of personality and still narrate simply. Katherine Paterson’s The Great Gilly Hopkins<\/em>\u00a0is a marvelous example of this. The reader will experience the personality through dialogue, action, thoughts, and feelings. The last two can be told rather than enacted. For instance, let\u2019s take fear. Our first-person MC can report symptoms like icy hands, rather than narrate Aaa! Eek! Yikes! Oh, no!<\/em> which, piled up, is likely to become tiresome in a hurry. (One Yikes!<\/em> is fine.)<\/p>\nWhen I write my post and you guys comment here, we\u2019re all writing in first person, our own first person. We each come off a little different. We sound like ourselves, and we\u2019re not annoying. We have something to say, so we say it. Same for our first-person narrator, who has a story to tell.<\/p>\n
The delight of first-person narration is the opportunity to reveal character through storytelling. Our narrator reflects the world as she sees it. Her responses can be different from what ours would be in her place. Empathy is called for. How would someone like her react to this or that? We come as close as possible to another person–even though that person is invented.<\/p>\n
And the sensory data we talked about in the last post can flow naturally. Our MC, on the spot, tells the reader: I felt the wind, shivered in the November chill, saw the ordinary backyard in flashlight glow, tasted the vinegar of my unease, heard the rustling fallen leaves as Reggie veered here and there\u2013and then choked and snorted on the stink of skunk.\u00a0<\/em>(As you may guess, this has happened to Reggie and me more than once.)<\/p>\nOne last thing: choice of narrator. Usually our MC is our first-person narrator. So far, all mine have been. I\u2019ve tried and failed to narrate from the first-person POV of a secondary character. Someday I\u2019d like to succeed. Two examples of secondary narrators are found in the Sherlock Holmes tales told by Dr. Watson and The Great Gatsby (high school and up) told by Nick Carraway, both of which I love. In each, the secondary character tells the story because, I think, the MC is by nature unable to. Imagine Sherlock Holmes as a narrator! The digressions! The technical language! The abandonment of the story for a new case.<\/p>\n
There can be other reasons for a secondary narrator. This secondary narrator, unlike the MC, may be on the spot for all the story\u2019s important moments, or may be a more reliable narrator, or may care about our MC in a way we want to convey. We can try more than one narrator before we settle.<\/p>\n
Here are four prompts:<\/p>\n
\u2219 Your telepathic team is engaged in a difficult enterprise. They may be building a seawall against an expected tsunami and time is running out, or protecting their citadel from a much bigger force of non-telepaths, or mounting a political campaign to restore democracy in a dystopian future. You pick which and narrate the scene in first-person plural.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Write the fairy tale \u201cSleeping Beauty\u201d from the first-person POV of the fairy who prevents Beauty from dying.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Pick a scene in one of your stories that\u2019s written in third person and translate it into first. Do more than just change pronouns. Make the first-person version more internal.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Your MC has trouble focusing on anything. He worries constantly and has synesthesia. Here\u2019s a link to a description of this quality: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Synesthesia<\/a>. He is assembling a seven-foot-tall model of a dinosaur for his cousin whose birthday is the next day, who has had a tough year, and who adores dinosaurs. The manufacturer’s directions are hard to follow. Write the process in the voice of this quirky narrator. Your goal is to make the reader like him and not be put off by the odd voice.<\/p>\n\u2219 Write a scene of a family dispute told from the first-person POV of the dining room table.<\/p>\n
Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CONGRATULATIONS to the NaNoWriMo\u2019s in blog land! You are my heroes! How did it go? Please share your experiences. What was most helpful? Least helpful? What strategies did you develop? What discoveries did you make? How will you use the experience in the next eleven months? What did you learn that might help the rest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[48,70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":915,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions\/915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}