And my point (of view) is....

[pbray]

Started reading Rob Thurman's Nightlife this morning, a new urban fantasy from a first time author. Pondering deep thoughts as only the insufficiently caffeinated can, it occurred to me that I've been on a recent trend of reading books written in the first person. It's not that I specifically sought them out for their POV, just one of those things.

I haven't written in first person since I was a teenager scribbling away in a notebook. But now having read several of these, I'm getting the itch that says "Hmm, I wonder what it would be like to write one of these critters?"

Any thoughts from people who have done this?

Someday there will be life after the lizard trilogy is turned in, and it's never too soon to think about what I'll be doing next.

ETA: truepenny has some interesting thoughts on first person narrators here.

Comments

[larryhammer]

It's useful when you want to explore the consequences of being unreliable -- especially when the POV's getting things wrong is part of plot. Or if you want to misdirect the reader. Or as a way of controlling the voice.

---L.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas comes to mind--the unreliable first person narrator was essential to that story.

[janni.livejournal.com]

I use first person who I want my character to be seen not-quite clearly -- and when I want her take on events to reach the reader without that wide-angle view that shows you right up front where and how she's wrong in that take.

First person is very close-in. I tend to think of it as obscuring more than it reveals.

Which sometimes is really useful.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

>>Which sometimes is really useful.

I can see where it would be.

[larryhammer]

First person is very close-in. I tend to think of it as obscuring more than it reveals.

There -- that's the smart way of stating it that I was utterly failing to come up with.

---L.

[wen-spencer.livejournal.com]

I have a novel in works that's first person. Interestingly, also all the small bits I've written from the bodyguards of Tinker's universe has come out in first person. Just finished up reading ODD THOMAS which I think made the best use of first person I've seen in a long time. The novel in the works has the slight problem that freedom of thought that first person gives allows the story to wonder too much. Trying to rope it into a workable plot has been the greatest challenge.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's the challenge in deed.

BTW, the sequel Forever Odd wasn't as strong a book. Locus has a review this month that basically says Forever Odd seems like it is a transitional book setting up the character for a new story, and I had the same feeling when I read it back over the New Year.

[mindyklasky.livejournal.com]

I've been writing chicklit - all of which is in the first person - and I'm finding it fun. It's freeing, in a way - I can only tell what that one character knows, so I don't have to worry about including some other information that I might have been able to weave into the third person narratives that I used to write.

Now, a lot of chicklit is in the present tense, and I haven't been able to bring myself to write *that* yet...

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I picked up one of those present tense stories and it made my brain hurt. Some authors may be able to pull it off, but not the one I tried.

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

I agree with what everyone has said here, but will also do a slightly different take on it.

If you have an unreliable POV character and that unreliability is necessary for the plot, then you have a good reason to use first person. That's been established. (I suddenly feel like I'm in teacher mode; sorry if it sounds like that.)

However, I also agree with janni that first person is also good for stories in which you want the "up close and personal" viewpoint to get across. I know that that's the reason I wrote my book in first person; not because she's unreliable, but because I wanted the reader to feel they were there, in the scene, AND to feel more intimately what my main character was feeling.

In both instances, I think the underlying common thread is that the stories themselves are character-driven more than plot-driven. And that the focus is exclusively on that one character. I haven't read Odd Thomas, so can't comment on whether these thoughts apply to that or not.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Interesting. One thing I've noticed is that most of the first person POV books I've read recently take place over a very short period of time, a few days or weeks at most, and it seemed to me that it would be easier to deal with the limitations of a single narrator when the action is so compressed.

But TST takes place over a much longer stretch of time, so that's another theory blown out of the water.

[(Anonymous)]

howq do i get out of this

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure of the question, since you didn't leave an address. If you wandered into this section by mistake and didn't want to leave a comment, you can use your browser's back button to go back to the previous screen.