So I’ve decided to change my short story and make it a novel instead. Now I’m toying with the idea of changing the point of view from 3rd person to 1st person. I think if I made it 1st person would enforce my main character’s control over the story. Also since it’s a horror/thriller, making it 1st person would add a lot of inner depth about my main character. Or maybe make it 3rd person omniscient.
It’s something I need to think about and may do moving forward and change what I have now to 1st person when I do the edit. The reason I want to change point-of-view is because my main character will be going through a profound change, but I want the reader to pick up on the change through the main character’s own thoughts and feelings. And I think using I would be a lot more powerful that using he/she which will be providing me with an unreliable 1st person narration.
5 responses so far ↓
nymeria87 // March 5, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Hey, that’s funny. I just did the opposite thing with my novel. At first I was really convinced that this story would work perfectly as a first person narrative, but then again you need to consider exactly what you just wrote about in your first vs. third person narrative post.
First person narratives are really centered on your main character. You wouldn’t be able to describe how a friend of this character died by just switching into third person (I agree here with many people that you can only do either/or. You either have more than one character’s perspective in your story, or need to limit it in many ways to what your main character would know and how his emotional reactions to actions of other characters are. You can also have your first character reflect on their sayings or actions, but he/she will never exactly know what happened if he/she hasn’t seen it him/herself etc.)
I personally love first person narratives, but they have to be done well. If you’re already doubting if your story will work out that way, go with 3rd person instead
Don // March 6, 2008 at 10:21 am
I have seen some novels break the first person rule, but attach the other narration to the story line by stating that the person went to the press afterwards.
My intent was to screw with the readers’ mind by making the first person make the reader sympathetic to them even though that first person is actually becoming a serial killer. Kinda like The Devil’s Rejects at the end.
But I started doing my outline and I’m starting to think that I will leave it in third person.
nymeria87 // March 6, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Interesting concept, but the problem still is in the transition from first into third person. I too have read several novels that did it rather well, but it has to be done really well and fit into the overall outline to work in the story. I personally probably just don’t particularly like hopping from one perspective into another.
It’s different if you take for example Geoge R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. I don’t know if you’re a fantasy reader, but I’d definitely check it out, it’s great! He writes his chapters from alternate characters’ point of view and so has a rather large spectrum of characters. Another example would be Patrick Rotfuss’ The Name of the Wind. He tells everything that happened in the past from the maincharacter’s PoV in first person, while switching into third person for interludes that concern the present.
A good fiction example would be Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind, who does basically the oposite thing: the present is in first person and covers the main part of the book, while past events, told by secondary characters are written in third person. Excellent book, one of my all time favorites
Don // March 6, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Ha ha. I think you read my other post: http://orbis-writings.com/2008/03/04/first-person-narrative/
I’ll look into those books someday; when my pile gets smaller. But yes, I do read fantasy, although it’s been a while. I have read Bram Stoker’s Dracula which is written from many first person point-of-view via journal entries each of the characters make.
Right now I mostly read adult novels, not that fantasy/sci-fi isn’t, like Stephen King, reading Meg Gardiner now which is contemporary. And I like how they approach every day situations within their novels when the character runs into friends and people that almost have nothing to do with the storyline, and so had some kind of realism to the story.
232 // November 4, 2008 at 3:57 pm
LOL!!!!!!!!!!