POV (Why I Write in First Person)

Added to the list of things I didn't know when I began writing fiction was that one could write from different points of view. All the novels I ever read were written in third person (limited? omniscient? What do those terms mean?)

While I was ignorant of the specific terms, I wrote my first novel in (what I now know was) third person limited. Third person limited, to my mind, isn't all that different from first person, except it's more like watching a movie. In third person limited, you see the character's reactions, and done right, you can tell what she's thinking. In first person, the reader is kind of forced to "become" the main character.

Shortly after starting my fiction journey, I joined a writer's forum, which taught me approximately a million things I had no clue I even needed to know. Occasionally I'd read snippets of another member's writing that they posted for feedback, and I found it really weird that they'd written it in first person. Seriously, I found myself thinking, does this writer actually think they're the character? It read as foreign to me, because I'd never before experienced it.

Flash forward to my first baby step into writing again. I'd stopped, given up, when my third novel failed to attract an agent. "Attract" is a nice way of framing it; all three of my novels were dismissed out of hand. But as writers do, I found myself itching to write again. This time, of course, would be different. I had my ground rules, which consisted of "no more submitting to agents". In fact, I didn't even know if I'd be able to tap out a whole story; my plan was to just write and see how it went.

It went okay, but I wasn't really feeling it. Then I remembered those long ago posted snippets and thought, why not give first person a try?

Shazam! Suddenly I was interested! I liked getting inside the main character's head. I liked becoming the character. It made writing the story so much easier. She acted and reacted the way an actual person would. Granted, my MC's aren't me. For one thing, they're all much more impulsive than I am, but without their impulsivity, I wouldn't have much of a tale to tell. I'm relieved that I'm much less impulsive, because every one of my characters gets into major trouble because of it.

Since that first novella, every one of them, and now my new novel, Running From Herself, has been written in first person. I honestly can't imagine doing it any other way. I even went back to my third novel, The Apple, and revised it to first person. And when I decided to trash my horrible second novel, I turned it into a novella, and again switched the point of view. There might be no rescuing it, but I still like it better now. 

With first person, there is, of course, the temptation or fallback of writing too many "I's". One columnist mentions that. In the article, he admonishes writers to stop writing in first person, but goes on to call it a "wonderful device". Nothing like hedging your bets, guy. I..I..I don't think I've ever overdone it, though. The key to avoiding it is sentence structure, and looking outward sometimes, rather than the MC only living inside her head. Here is some more advice.

"I'm" not advocating for a particular point of view. Writers need to feel comfortable in the style they choose. Comfort breeds writing freedom. I will say that my writing career might well have stopped completely if not for discovering my joy of writing in first person, and I suggest that if you're feeling stuck or just "not feeling it", give a different POV a try. 

I'm a firm believer in trying things.