In the course of the discussion last Wednesday about choosing your novel’s perspective, there were a few comments that completely blew my mind, in the sense of the Death Star exploding into a million pieces. Here they are (emphasis mine):
Lane Diamond: I started out my first book as a third-person tight POV (protagonist), because so many literary agents indicated they profoundly disliked first-person narratives (no doubt because they tend to devolved into a narcissistic string of I, I, I, I, I, I, I).
Shawn: My first agent told me that First Person was the mark of an immature writer. She said that in this era, it has no place outside MG and some YA. She said it was solipsistic, in only the way a kid could be solipsistic.
cinthiaritchie.com: Oh, man, in graduate school they pounded it into our heads that third person was “the” way to go, that first-person was a weaker perspective, that it wasn’t respected–that no one would take a first-person narrator seriously. Well! Excuse me, stuffy professors, but I feel that you were quite wrong.
What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Apparently there are literary agents and professors and all kinds of ostensibly rational people out there who think first person narratives are somehow unserious.
Yes, the perspective employed by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, by Herman Melville in Moby-Dick, by Vladimir Nabakov in Lolita by Philip Roth in Portnoy’s Complaint (I COULD GO ON)… This perspective is unserious?
Oh, but those are older examples you say. Well, what about Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon, The Secret History by Donna Tartt I COULD GO ON.
I’m sure there are some people out there who don’t like first person. Fine! Don’t read first person books. But to call it unserious is completely crazy.
I consider Raymond Chandler the master of first person, and without I in every sentence.
When choosing a POV, learn your craft well because as a reviewer I've seen some bad writing that sells, which reflects badly upon all authors.
I write and prefer to read stories told in first person present tense. I read others too, but I can connect with and get sucked into to those that are in first person a lot quicker than any other POV. Why? I'm not sure, but I do have a theory. First person gaming. Yes, that's right. Now hear me out. I loved to play games where they were created to make it seem like I was the main character. After a long day at school or work or whatever I could come home, turn on my PS3 and go shoot some bad guys, save a princess, or dance my buns off. Reading in first person present tense is the SAME THING to me. Sure, I can read about what a character is doing, and it can be fun, but I would rather feel like I'm the character. That I've escaped my world and have been deposited into whatever book I'm reading. I hated high school, but reading YA's and experiencing it again through someone else is fun. Same thing with slaying monsters, falling in love, figuring out who killed who with a candle stick, and damn that silver tie…
And for those that think it's EASY, try spending every free minute pouring your heart, soul, sweat, and tears into a 70k-100k novel only to have it criticized by agents, editors, and FELLOW AUTHORS. Real easy.
Personally, as long as a book gets people to read it, who cares what style the author wrote it in. If every book was the same, it would be boring.
I don't care what you write or how you write it. We're all following the same dream and I think that's pretty awesome.
I write first person present because I like to know what's in my protagonist's head. Sometimes, even if you are writing in 3rd, writing a scene in 1st helps you understand your character better. Read what you like and write in the POV that "speaks" to you.
I was told by my NY publisher that they would not take anything else by me in first person. Indeed, they didn't. Maybe that means I am in hell, nor am I out of it. Sometimes I mix, to be in different heads. But I really have to say, for my genre (historical Fiction) I think nothing brings the past to life like I.
First person sells. Readers love it for some reason. It's the elite that shun FP and why we don't see more from trad publishers.
When I see First Person in a lot of YA or unpublished writing, it tends to annoy me mostly because it's written 'as though' it's third person– a play-by-play of events as they happen. Hence the overuse of I's.
It doesn't read like how one would be speaking naturally if telling a story to someone else. i.e "I looked in the mirror and ran my fingers through my long blond tangles." (egregiously bad example to make my point.)
To me, the most successful first person is when the narrator is clearly speaking TO somebody, whether it's the reader or someone 'off screen'. And they are speaking with an agenda, whether or not that agenda is clear. Like Humbert Humbert, Holden Caulfield, Offred, etc.
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I once posted a short story on Online Writing workshop for comments and one of the comments was that while they thought the story in itself was competent and even good, they thought that the first person POV was always unprofessional. Not my execution of said POV but that there was no way to execute first-person in a professional manner. They also provided links to academics and literary agents who said the same thing. To say I was dumbstruck by the comment would have been understating things.
I never realized that some people in "the business" have such a low opinion of first person POV.
I never really think about it, and just write what feels natural. I've got one YA novel I'm querying that I feel needs to be first person, but then another with multiple characters that has to be third person.
Most of the YA books I've read are in the first person, so I just assumed that's the standard.
I've switched back and forth in revisions of short stories and usually end up with a POV I'm happy with.