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1st vs 3rd Person

posted 7 years ago by LeiaOfLothlorien (1980)
6 replies | jump to latest

Which Point of View do you prefer?

I almost always go for 3rd-person limited, usually multiple characters' POVs. It's easy to follow whose head you're in, and keep track of characters. Omniscient is rare, but interesting when done right.

I tend to avoid 1st person wherever possible; more often than not it comes of boastful or whiny. In addition, sometimes you don't know who the narrator is (at least at the start), and I find that disorienting. Man, woman, old, young? Who's talking here?! Sorry. One more critique is that it comes off feeling fake to me, especially for sci-fi/fantasy (which is what I gravitate towards), where you know it couldn't possibly have happened. For realistic/historical fiction, it can sometimes add depth. There are a few authors who can pull it off.

Your thoughts?

[–] PlaintiveMelody (245) 7 years ago

First Person can be very well done and give the reader a sense of total identification with the character. The reader is immersed into another person's psyche. I think Jane Eyre was a beautiful example of first person. I like third person limited, and enjoy books written from multiple characters' point of views as well. I think third person is what I generally read.

[–] LeiaOfLothlorien (1980) 7 years ago

Yeah, I know that First Person can be done well, especially with classics, but I personally don't like it most of the time. There are a handful of 1st Person books that I have enjoyed, but I can't think of any specific examples at the moment.

[–] PlaintiveMelody (245) 7 years ago

The first person books that are a little unsettling to read are the ones with an unreliable narrator, because the reader is not quite sure what to believe about the other characters and what is going on in the book. I have read that Nick Carraway is supposedly and unreliable narrator in The Great Gatsby, but when I read it, I thought he was reliable.

I honestly don't read many contemporary novels, so I wonder if there is a difference with the way first person is written now as opposed to in the past. Maybe we are more neurotic and weaker than people in the past, so more whiny in general.

[–] Furienna (3312) 4 years ago

Yeah, I'm not a fan of unreliable narrators either.
But I generally like 1rst person as much as 3rd person.
As a a matter of fact, I write my novels in (mostly) 1rst person.

[–] Zinger (2154) 3 years ago

2nd person.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller.

[–] damocci (1502) 2 years ago

I dislike first person. It always feels unnatural. Even in a third person narrative when, for example, there's an excerpt from a character's diary there is far too much creative writer style description and it's distractingly obvious that no normal person writes like that. I've never read a person's diary entry where the person describes a setting and emotions in vivid detail while using all manner of literary devices. A recent example of this is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. All the diary entries feel like they were written by the author and not the character.

Another reason is I cannot stand unreliable narrators. They frustrate me to no end end because it feels like such a waste of my time reading lies.

Because of this I simply don't read first person novels. My preference is third person omniscient because that feels more like a film in literary form. Third person limited is my second choice.