I have written…or, more accurately, am writing one book in first person. The only reason that book is being written in first person is that, when I try to change it to my favored third person point-of-view, it loses its snap. Somehow, “The fumes he exuded made my eyes water” has more zing than does “The fumes he exuded made her eyes water.” And not just that small portion loses its zip, but the book loses it all the way through when placed into anything but first.
First person point-of-view is, however, limiting. It makes the writer stick very closely inside the protagonist’s perspective, unless one resorts to omniscient or employs a less conventional method of mixing first and either second or third points-of-view. Omniscient, however, is a tool only for the most adroit; the use of second and third POV’s requires a book with a large scope and unconventional plot. Unfortunately, my first person book’s scope does not permit this latter method of irregular construction.
Creating a work in first person, however, runs the danger of main character self-indulgence, which renders the read B-O-R-I-N-G. And that’s the huge pitfall of ‘first’.
Happily, every one of my other books is nicely set in third person, whether a single or a multiple point-of-view is employed by, respectively, a single main character, or several main and secondary characters. So I am content to allow one novel to deviate from my own self-imposed traditions, traditions which I feel best serve putting story above everything else, and especially above author intrusion and, worst, self-indulgence.
By its very nature, the ‘I’ perspective, first person point-of-view, is laden with hazards of self-emoting and self-indulgence. It is too easy for an author to begin to wallow in a character’s inner narratives and flounder in that character’s angst, especially since the character springs from the author’s subconscious. And self-indulgence and emotive wallowing is where ‘boring’ starts for a reader — at least this reader. It is where ‘tedium’ lives when I run my eye down any book shop’s shelf containing a majority of works written in first person. Sadly, that majority starts and ends in ‘I’, not with plot. Predictably, these ‘I’s’ (so favored, I understand, by angsty tween and teen crowd readers) are self-saturated with cloyingly emotive crud. Sadly, these stories, were they done from third, might have some glimmer and gleam of worthiness. Instead, they reek of self-infatuated flatulence.
In short, except in the hands of an author in complete control of his or her creation, the I’s don’t have it.
Recently:
- Moving is Tough on Writing Novels
- Move complete & back online…when the DSL doesn’t falter
- Offline for a week.
- The ‘I’ Proposition
- No, I didn’t get eaten by my novel.
- Scott Heim reads We Disappear at last reading at Chelsea
- Hunger in the World
- What a Beta Reader Can & Cannot Do
- A Gift for Eternity Finds a Home
- Today’s Giggle: SE vs Employee, the Benefits — Not.
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