So this is going to seem self-evident, but if you write a story in first person POV, you are, in theory, telling this story directly to your readers. It should work equally well on paper, or–and this is key–face to face.
So there’s shouldn’t be scene breaks because you don’t stop in the middle of a story you’d tell someone at a party (unless it was to go get a drink).
Equally, you don’t usually have “meta-narrative”. This means you don’t do an info-dump, then describe a scene, and go back to an info-dump. Remember, always picture yourself telling a story to a friend at a party. If they’d have to ask questions to follow your story, you fail.
That will be all for now.
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15 Comments(+Add)
This is true in theory. And I see where you’re coming from. But … I also see that line of thought sort of overthinking the process.
Some works of fiction work great in the first person point of view as opposed to third person. And then there are some cases where a first person POV is just dreadful and would be best told in the third person POV.
I used to be a deadset against stories written in the first person that weren’t clearly meant to be written later by that narrator, asking myself, Then how are they TELLING this story?
But then I realized, ultimately, who really cares? If it’s done well, then it’s done well.
(Though I will admit I’m not fond of novels that’s split the first person and third person — these are mostly thrillers, of course, with the detective using the first person, the killer and other characters the third).
May I ask what brought this on, Jordan? What — too many THE LOVELY BONES-type stories in the slush?
… and speaking of overthinking, I guess I overthought this post.
You’re not saying writers SHOULDN’T write in the first person, and that if they do, it has to seem like it’s being written … just that when writing in the first person, everything should be exact and concise.
But shouldn’t that be the case in any narrative POV?
What it sounds like you’re specifically talking about is first person omniscience. That would be characterized as someone telling the reader a story, often clued in by phrases like, “if I had known then what I know now,” or “little did I know.”
But I think first person limited is similar to third person limited, only that you are in their head as the story’s unfolding, so the “I” doesn’t know the outcome of what is about to happen in the story. I’d suggest that’s a different beast than what you’re describing here.
And I’m not so sure about scene breaks in 1st omni. Applying the same logic, should you have chapter breaks even?
I don’t quite agree, as this suggestion assumes stories can only be related face-to-face. While that’s one way of doing it, it’s certainly not the only way.
If I do tell a story face-to-face, it tends to involve a lot of forgetting, asides, interruptions, and questions from listeners (and consequently there tends to be plenty of breaks in the story, more than if I was just writing it down) I’m sure that transcribing that story wouldn’t make a great read. I tend to assume that a “spoken” story given to me in written form is a stylised or edited version of what was actually said.
However, there are other ways to tell stories,,, email, blogs, and of course, written letters, and here I’ll write in a very different way to how I’d actually speak. I’ve told genuine personal stories to friends in all of these forms before. A first-person story in written form has no need to sound like a spoken story at all.
Agree with some of what people have to say above. It really varies. Meta-narrative, switching to something else and then coming back, can be used in very entertaining ways (Manuscript Found in Zaragoza).
Scene breaks can happen for many reasons: it is an epistolary narrative made up of many epistolary documents, the person narrates the story as it unfolds, etc.
Have you ever read The White People? It has two first POVS, one of the narrator and the other of the girl writing the diary. It suffers from the flaws you name and works great.
I think it has more to do with knowing what you are doing or trying to achieve.
Sorry, I was just thinking The White People is only one first person POV (the girl), but I still think it is pretty cool
Election by Tom Perrotta is a great example of multiple first person POVs — at least a half dozen characters, all with a distinct voice.
Chris, what, then, would you say is the point of telling a story in first person? Why not use third person? You mention letter, blogs, etc… but there aren’t any scene breaks in any of those mediums.
Silvia and Robert: As with any rule, these can be broken… by a master storyteller. Unfortunately, writers tend to think they are masters FAR before they are, especially if they have a Creative Writing major.
And Robert, this rant is brought to you courtesy of the EDF slushpile
For me, the reason I would use first person over third is it gets deeper into the head of the pov person than third can. Even third limited isn’t as deep. In it, you only can know what the character knows. In first, the same applies in even greater ways, but you experiencing it through their way of thinking and comprehending the world. So if the first person is deceived because of their wacky way of viewing the world, missing obvious clues, so will the reader be.
Whereas third might have elements of that, you are freer to show things they experience but don’t “see” from their perspective.
Ah, the slushpile. I just met it today, after opening to subs.
Rick,
Third person limited does the same thing as what you’re describing. In fact for my WotF winning story, I original wrote it in third person, then changed to third person because the protagonist dies in the end.
I didn’t mean to suggest that a first person story should try to emulate any of those other forms exactly, but rather that there are many ways in which we relate first-person stories in written form, that it’s not uncommon at all. Thus, I see no reason why first-person stories should all have to represent spoken stories, when that’s not the only way we do it in real life.
Not that I have any problem with stories that are meant to represent spoken tales – I enjoy them too when done well, but fiction (novels, short stories) is its own medium and rarely does it ever completely match up to how we’d relate a story in real life. I don’t see that as a problem, however.
As for 1st vs 3rd, well that I feel is a different issue altogether, one which has little bearing on the choice of spoken vs written (besides, it’s not uncommon to tell 3rd-person stories in spoken form either).
That’s how I see it anyway. You should of course go with what works for you
Your comment that this post comes in response to slushpile swimming comes as no surprise.
The rule reads like a reaction to having been dealt with some terrible, perhaps repeated literary abuse. A rule is created so that, if followed, all of that abuse might be encapsulated by it, and thus removed from your sore eyes forever. But the rule is not precise, and is not so much directly and logically connected to the terribleness, but rather, is a map to which neighborhood the terribleness lives in.
If this rule were a weapon, it would be a high-yield explosive device (not nuclear), which does a perfectly decent job of leveling an enemy weapons factory, but in the process also bursts an elementary school and incinerates a hundred innocent schoolchildren.
I am late to the party on this one. I am also with you on this rule…almost. In my experience, rules aren’t there to be followed. Stories that follow all the “rules” are usually a little flat. Rules are there so that the writer can be aware when they “break” them. One does not want to break seven rules at once; it leaves the reader scratching his/her head with the hand that used to be holding the story. The goal should be to break one or two at a time and have a reason for the violation.
My CW story breaks POV (third limited) in one place, largely to draw attention to the intimacy of the scene. Not sure if it works (my waitlist position suggests some things worked and some did not), but I knew I did it and I knew why.
-Oso
On the topic of line breaks, sometimes I think it’s just courteous to let the reader know when a significant span of time or location has passed. I still like to include a transition sentence or phrase, especially in first person, but that’s me. For instance a line break followed by: “I cooked breakfast the next morning…” Could it survive the lack of break? Sure, but I like to give my readers all the assistance I can.
-Oso