POV: First vs Third
So, in my last post, I listed my novels so far. All of them, except for Teen Ghost, have been written in first person. With that one, I went with third. This was done for structural reasons as well as an exercise. I wasn’t sure if I could write in third. Halfway into the first chapter, I knew I’d made the right decision.
Now, working through Chapter One of Clash has brought on a dilemma. Actually, I’ve been trying to figure this one out for a few weeks. I’m not sure if I want to write it in first or third. They both have their pros and cons.
First: You can really get inside of the character’s head and infuse the writing with her, or his, voice. But that can also create a problem for long descriptive type paragraphs where the character might not describe things in that fashion. And you always have to see the world through that character’s eyes. It can be limiting.
Third: The voice part is trickier. You can follow the character around, but you aren’t really the character. But that also works better when you don’t necessarily want to see the world solely through the main character’s eyes.
The best writing I’ve ever done was on Teen Ghost. Now, I don’t know if this was because I’ve had practice or if the switch to third person had a large part in it. Maybe a combination of both. Maybe it was just the passion for the story. Whatever the reason, I’m having trouble deciding the POV for Clash. This would be a cool book to do in first person, but if it would come out better in third, I want to go with that. So, I’m going to do a test. I’ve decided to finish the first chapter as it is in first person. Then, I’m going to go back and write it in third person as well. Whichever is better wins. I figure I can get this done over the weekend and finally get on with this thing. I’ve been stalled in Chapter One for weeks.
May the best POV win.
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Comments
It’s funny. Almost all my writing college and before was done in third-person. However, now, with blogging taking up a serious amount of time all my works of fiction have been presented in first-person. I definitely see a correlation there.
My first stab at a novel was only completed as much as it was because the first-person perspective made telling the narrative that much simpler without the excess I often ran into when I was stuck in third-person.
At any rate, good luck with the writing. I’m curious as to which direction you end up going.
This sounds like an inventive way to solve the old POV problem. I’m also interested to see which you end up going with.
I love reading first person (mainly hardboiled mysteries), but like you said in your last post, what you like to read and what you like to write aren’t always the same. I like being able to jump around from one character to another. I like being able to follow both the heroes and the villains (man, it is so much fun to write from inside the villain’s head). Part of me has always felt that first person is too limiting–that I couldn’t possibly describe everything accurately through a single person’s eyes.
Although, now that I think about it, I feel like my dialogue is so much stronger than my description…maybe limiting POV to a single character might be a good way to strengthen my descriptions. An interesting experiment, and one for which you will receive full credit.
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