The Big Question: First or Third

[Victoria]

Because no one cares about second person.

My big problem with writing a novel, or short story, is that I get hung up on the stupid mechanics. As of late it's been whether or not I should write from first or third.

I met a couple local authors, and they themselves have been published, their works being in first person. It made me wonder: is first person more successful?

Is a person more willing to pick up a novel and dive in if the first line reads:

"I walked into the..."

I've written third person since I started this whole writing thing back on Assassins.

I get that, in first person, the reader can connect more, but you have to sacrifice part of the story. You can't tell the writer what Joe Shmoe is doing three doors down. You have to stick to one perspective and encase the story in a more restricted way, giving twists that only the main character can view and reveal...

Some would say that's better, as third person can be almost TOO much.

So, what do you guys think?

My opinion is that, for romance, or fiction, it's better to write in first person so a reader can relate to the story.

As for what sells or gets published more than the other, I'm thinking with the blow-out of Twilight and it's first person narrative, a lot of the market is revolving around first person romance literature.

Fifty Shades of Grey, anyone?

[Sigfried Hunin]

Writing in first or third person will dictate how much information the reader has. 3rd person allows more control, but first person might restrict exactly the information you want to without the use of obvious deception.

In either case, you can't just change a previously written book from first person to third person by changing a few words. A first person narrative and a third person narrative are totally different.

I would write the narrative that the story demands. If you didn't start a book with first person in mind, I'd advise against writing in first.

[Jonathan Meer]

First if your focus is a particular character

Third if your focus is an overarching plot

[Victoria]

A note, this isn't for anything I've already written. I have at least 7 great ideas for books, just always get stuck on how to start it.

[Piper Juunanagou]

I prefer writing with multiple 'main'/'point of view characters,' and I tend to do 3rd person limited.

With a few exceptions, I've never been into first person. I feel like it has its uses for telling certain stories (and I have an idea or two for a first-person story), but I've never been a big supporter.

[Sigfried Hunin]

You should write in second person.

[Piper Juunanagou]

Sounds good, I'll call it: "Piper Juunananagogirl n' Friends - A True20 Campaign!! Revised Edition"

[Kaden]

It should be a decision tailored to what you want the reader to relate to. Generally, being able to use multiple characters and obfuscate the information that any given character has or knows, is useful for getting the reader to relate more to the setting and the plot because you have a lot more room to just talk about something at "random" (quote because it shouldn't be there at all if it has nothing to do with the story).

Like you hinted at, the first person thing is better when you want the reader to step into another person's emotional shoes. The extreme of that is Twilight (though I would argue that Bella has no actual emotions, so the reader is actually just being the character if they buy into that kind of tripe) but anything with a strong emotional component (horror) works well.

The other thing first-person does well is let you play around with a character's world view undergoing a significant paradigm shift, where they're eyes are opened to what the human condition truly is and so on. An ok example of this is actually Far Cry 3, dunno if you played it. I was talking to Meer, actually, about the use of first-person in the game when it seems like it was a decision made at random rather than for its artistic meaning. As I thought about it, though, I saw what they were trying to do with it. The story, essentially, is about an entitled, self-absorbed, first-world-problem-having group of American twenty-somethings flying around the world, spending their parent's money and "experiencing life" when things go awry and they're thrown into the middle of a world where things aren't comfortable and cozy and they don't have the luxuries they've always known. Amidst this, the main character comes to find meaning in being able to fight back against the corruption and villainy that tore him from the life he thought he was happy with. Ultimately, it's about searching for and finding your place in the world, something that everyone is familiar with to some degree. On paper, that's a perfect place for the use of first-person. You let the player experience what the character is going through and how they deal with the situation they've been forced into.

That said, the execution is absolutely horrendous, but it's a good example of intent.

Personally, I like third-person because I think people engage better with characters and settings and as long as the plot isn't ridiculously awful or cliche, will be fine with whatever. Multiple characters also gives an author multiple hooks to grab the reader with, so that's cool. EDIT: A good example of that is Harry Potter. While the books are, ultimately, about the story of the Boy Who Lived, they probably spend more time creating this fascinating world-within-a-world that lets people experience these fantastic people and things while still being anchored in "reality." It's the combination of a fantastic setting and gripping characters that really made the series such a success.

[Orion]

Because no one cares about second person.

My big problem with writing a novel, or short story, is that I get hung up on the stupid mechanics. As of late it's been whether or not I should write from first or third.

I met a couple local authors, and they themselves have been published, their works being in first person. It made me wonder: is first person more successful?

Is a person more willing to pick up a novel and dive in if the first line reads:

"I walked into the..."

I've written third person since I started this whole writing thing back on Assassins.

I get that, in first person, the reader can connect more, but you have to sacrifice part of the story. You can't tell the writer what Joe Shmoe is doing three doors down. You have to stick to one perspective and encase the story in a more restricted way, giving twists that only the main character can view and reveal...

Some would say that's better, as third person can be almost TOO much.

So, what do you guys think?

My opinion is that, for romance, or fiction, it's better to write in first person so a reader can relate to the story.

As for what sells or gets published more than the other, I'm thinking with the blow-out of Twilight and it's first person narrative, a lot of the market is revolving around first person romance literature.

Fifty Shades of Grey, anyone?

It depends on what you're aiming for, like most people say, but from what I understand, it's much harder to sell first person (as in to a publisher) than it is for third person. If it's romance then first person is viable, but if you read around most books are third.

[Jonathan Meer]

There's no real discovery, though, in the third-person omniscient narrative. One of the reasons the first-person narrative is frequently used in great literature is because the act of agreeing or disagreeing with the first-person narrator is reading at its most engaging.

That said, first-person narrative is very hard to do well, and the third-person omniscient narrative is very easy to do passably.

[Mal Nova]

Not to sound sexist, at all, but just by taking a guess, most first person novels are usually read by females, whereas third person novlels are more towards male, or both genders(Mostlikely this one). This is a guess on my own part of how statistics roll.

Also you have to factor in age, the percentage of readers by sex and so much other things as well as what you are writing.

I'm assuming that thats what publishers do...

SO it's kind of like saying what the others have said, but in a different way...

[Kaden]

There's no real discovery, though, in the third-person omniscient narrative.

Definitely doesn't have to be omniscient. Look at, basically, the whole "whodunit" genre. Most good plot-twists happen because you're lampshading the presumption of omniscience, imo. If you keep knowledge of the world relative to the character you're focusing on, you don't have to make everything transparent. You could do something like have Character A see Character B as some kind of extremist bigot until the end of the book/scene/act you kind out that his whole family was killed by... I dunno... koalas. So all the previously mindless hatred and violence against koalas seems much different when the reader thinks back on things that have already happened. It's kinda like using first person, but without using first person.

Definitely agree about engagement, though.

[King B]

I'm also all about the third person limited because I like to control the flow of the story and want the people reading to engage exactly the way I want them to.

I'm not going to be able to offer any more insight to what anyone else has said thus far but I think some of the most effective books ever have been written in first person. I know for me the one book that will always have an amazing spot in my heart will be SE Hinton's The Outsiders because it really took a hold of my emotions. (And I was exposed to it at an young age.)

I guess when it comes down to it, it's just how you want to express yourself in your art work.

[Super Buu]

I like first-person sometimes for roleplaying. Funnily enough, I find it kind of weird that so many roleplaying sites don't allow it. But by and large, and what I want to write in for my books, is third person. Meer laid it down in that first post. I think it's better for a group of characters who all have a portion of the story's focus.

[Ashe]

There are numerous times that I want to roleplay in first person. I actually regularly think about various ideas that I would do with the perspective. For Ashe, from messing around with stuff, it seems to be a better fit for her than third person.

[Ander]

The people above have made fair points about either writing mode, but a weakness I find fairly irritating about first person is that it limits your use of language. You have to constantly speak using words, mannerisms, and emotions that the narrator uses and feels. And, while it can be used as a positive, I often find that first person narrative tends to color the perspective and opinion of everything, which forces you to accept things from a myopic point of view. If you happen to agree with the narrator, this is fine. If you can't relate to it at all, you'll turn off your audience. Using the Twilight example once more, if you're not a naive tween/teen girl or sexually repressed adult woman, you absolutely do not give a crap what Bella has to say because she's a masochistic moron. I cannot fathom for the life of me why the series has a male audience unless they're imagining themselves as Edward or Jacob. With third person, you can make up your own mind.

[Sigfried Hunin]

I don't think that that's a weakness in all cases. Again, both first and third are equally strong writing styles but the story should really demand either one. The selection of view is probably the most important one that you'll make in a story and it should really be incorporated into the overall vision of the tale.

I really strongly think that their both equally well used by various authors and that 1st person is very underused. I would even look into the idea of an "aggressive narrator," where the storyteller intentionally withholds information from the reader. I very much enjoy that kind of storytelling every now and then.

[Jonathan Meer]

The people above have made fair points about either writing mode, but a weakness I find fairly irritating about first person is that it limits your use of language. You have to constantly speak using words, mannerisms, and emotions that the narrator uses and feels. And, while it can be used as a positive, I often find that first person narrative tends to color the perspective and opinion of everything, which forces you to accept things from a myopic point of view. If you happen to agree with the narrator, this is fine. If you can't relate to it at all, you'll turn off your audience. Using the Twilight example once more, if you're not a naive tween/teen girl or sexually repressed adult woman, you absolutely do not give a crap what Bella has to say because she's a masochistic moron. I cannot fathom for the life of me why the series has a male audience unless they're imagining themselves as Edward or Jacob. With third person, you can make up your own mind.

Third-person limited has the same perspective issues.

Third-person omniscient (ie, perspective-less 'narrator') doesn't have any perspective issues (in theory), but it's also disembodied and weird. When we tell one another stories, we have perspectives, and our experiences color those stories. Purposefully removing that coloring makes it squicky and alien. It also abandons what's interesting/somewhat-unique about written word. If you really want to make a compelling world and plot for someone to discover for themselves, free of any guiding set of values, make it interactive.

The written word just isn't well-suited to a perspective-less story. We used it for years because that was the best we had, but now we can plant someone in a world and tell them to explore and make sense of it. I can't remember the last time I found a third-person omniscient narrative genuinely compelling, but I liked the shit out of Skyrim.

However, the narrator of the game will never be as powerful as the narrator of the text. The text's narrator colors everything about the text; she is, for us, the god of the story. Games just can't get at that. The best a narrator in a game can do is chime in on every phenomenon in the world (a la Cortana), but the experience of the user will always be more fundamental.

If you write because you like to write, and you like third-person omniscient, then go for it. But you just can't compete with games or film. The best you can hope for is making something so awesome that your fans hope desperately that it would get made into a quality game or film.

tl;dr: If you must write, embrace perspective; it's text's greatest strength.

[Ander]

Ultimately it comes down to personal preference. I love books, movies, and video games, but I get something different from each one. For me personally, there will always be something books can do that movies and video games can't. Books often give you more room to individually imagine the details that are left out, while films and video games fill in more of the blanks. Then again, I'm sure it's also partly a generational thing. While a good chunk of my childhood was spent playing video games, I logged more hours with a paperback than I ever did a controller.

EDIT: For the record, my previous post was not at all referring to video games. It was strictly about books.

[Sage]

So... how exactly does one differentiate 'third-person omniscient' with 'third-person limited?' I feel like I agree with what you're saying, but I also feel like I don't quite understand the concept.

How does one appropriately 'limit' the scope of a detached narrator? Is it, for instance, by using a character who's telling you, the reader, the story from his/her perspective, though he/she wasn't there for it (or for most of it) and is therefore detached?

Or is it something else entirely? I've noticed a lot of debate on the subject, and to be quite honest, I feel a bit dumb; I'm not really sure what to make of it. So, help me understand, CDBZ!