I love writing in first person. My two favorite manuscripts are written first person. My favorite one is written first person male and that lead character is my favorite son. He’s also head strong, opinionated, and difficult to manage, but that’s another post!
Writing in first person comes with inherent risks. It’s such a turn off to some people, they won’t even consider a novel written in first person. Some publishers, editors, and agents have the same reaction. For those people, first person novels are a tough sell.
First person naturally limits the amount of information you can share with your readers. Because one character is telling the story, that character can tell only what he or she experiences.
First person also, therefore, challenges the writer by forcing him or her to find creative and believable ways to present necessary information to the character and, through the character, to the reader.
But there is another aspect of first person story telling that took longer to sink into my consciousness than all the regular ‘rules’. It’s also more of a personal and spiritual thought than a writing thought (that’s probably why it took longer to sink in!). It is this: Is there too much of me in the stories I write first person?
Neither the artist nor the author can avoid showing up in his or her work. The paintings I paint and the stories I write reveal who I am and what my world view is by virtue of the subjects I choose and the way I handle them. But the paintings shouldn’t be more about me than about the subject and the stories shouldn’t shout so loudly about me, as the author, that the characters are cardboard cutouts of me. Even if my life weren’t relatively boring (and it is), it wouldn’t interest most people.
Novels are also not ‘just another platform for the rant of the day’. Yes, I do often rant through characters, but those writings are as much about processing thoughts and reactions as they are about writing and most of them will never see the light of day. And I sometimes write rants for characters who believe differently than I do in order to explore important issues or to vent.
I do believe some things need to be said. I also believe some characters are more suited to delivering a good rant than others. And some stories beg for characters who feel strongly enough about something to rant.
Having said that, however, every writer needs to be careful that every character they create is unique and personable, his or her own person, and that they honestly and truly believe what they’re saying. Don’t put words into the mouths of characters just because you want to say them and need a platform to speak them. Every part of a novel has to fit the story world, the situation, and the characters or it becomes just another rant.
If you write in first person, you need to be especially careful of author intrusion, but it can happen in any voice and in any genre.
This is one of my struggles as a writer. I’m certain other writers face the same challenge. That’s okay, so long as you recognize the weakness and take special care to root it out of the manuscript during editing.
Q4U: How do you most show up in your novels?
