First person is one of the most common perspectives to write your story in.
This means using the pronouns 'I', 'me', 'my', etc.
So why write in the first person?
The first person seems to give us some sort of special insight into the mind of the main character. We are privy to their thoughts, feelings, and emotions in the most explicit way.
It works really well if you just want to focus on one main character - though this isn't to say that you can't change who your main character is throughout the story.
For example, the book One Of Us Is Lying is written from the perspective of four different characters, each section in the first person. They simply change perspectives by writing the character's name, and the date and time at the beginning of each new section. This works really well because it helps build a sense of mystery as we don't have a character bias (ie. one character who is telling us what to think and who to be suspicious of). Each character is allowed to tell their own side of the story, meaning we feel their innocence equally.
Is the first person perspective right for my story?
In the next few days, I will be discussing use of second and third person narration as well, so don't worry if you aren't convinced this is right for you.
First person is probably the most widely utilised perspective, because it allows a sense of closeness to your characters. Provided you've followed my advice on characterisation, this should work well for you as you should know everything about how your character thinks and acts.
We get an intimate knowledge of how they see events, what they do and where they go, etc. This might mean we feel more empathy towards them.
You can also utilise the unreliable narrator. They might lie to us or cover things up in a way that they couldn't in a third person narration. This might be particularly useful for a mystery or a character with a mental illness.
But the first person isn't perfect.
We get a limited perspective on events and other characters. Of course, you can solve this to some extent by introducing other characters and their perspectives as discussed above, but you can't write from the perspective of every character for every event - there will still be some character bias in your story.
You are also limited by what your character can do or see. If they are on holiday, they don't know what's going on at home, etc. This could potentially cause you problems for explaining things. Say their house gets broken in to and something happens, we might miss out on the most important event in your story. There are, of course, certain ways around this, such as cameras, etc. if your story is set in the modern day, but this could cause further problems.
It might also be hard to describe your main character's appearance. Unless they are looking in a mirror and describing themselves, unlikely, or again describing a picture, it won't be easy to capture their whole appearance.
One way around this is if your character is comparing themselves to how they used to be - this works better if your character is older. They might look back to a time when they had no wrinkles, or their eyes were brighter, or their hair shinier, you get the drift. But I'd say this works better in a longer piece of writing, such as a novel, as this takes up words and could be seen as clunky.
Happy writing!
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