Stop Talking to Yourself

On Monday I gave some tips for staying in third person with limited perspective. Today, I want to help you decide whether first person is right for you.

Staying it first person is a smidge easier than third. You’re obviously going to be limited to what your character can see, touch, smell, taste, hear, and suspect. You can’t jump heads unless you start a new chapter (or there is an obvious page break within the same chapter, but that’s still pretty jolting and not recommended). And if you do decide to have more than one character’s perspective, you need to decide early on in the novel.

I really don’t think there’s anything worse than getting part or all the way through your book when you realize it could have been written better in another point of view. So how can you avoid that? How do you know if first person is right for you? Here are some suggestions.

If the story cannot be told by anyone else.

This isn’t to say that a first person story is more personable than a third person story. It simply means that the introduction of a narrator, who can be seen as another character entirely, would stand in the way of your message. This is one of those questions that only you as the writer can answer. You have to be self-aware *gasp* enough to know how you can tell this story best.

If you want to keep your audience in the dark.

Of course any good story is going to have a certain amount of intrigue or surprises. But how much surprise do you want to have? And how do you want to deliver it? Yes, you can achieve something similar through a limited third person perspective, but if you want to truly get into your character’s head to deliver the impact to your reader, you may want to consider first person.

If something doesn’t feel write when you try to write any other way.

I promise this isn’t a cop out reason. Have you written a couple test chapters of your novel? If you haven’t go try it out now. Try it with a limited and omniscient third person narrator, and if that just doesn’t feel right, try first person. You’ll know it when you have it because your narrator will feel like an extension of you. You’re inhabiting another being, but there’s a bit of you in it, whether you like it or not (so hopefully it’s not a villain talking). Look at it from the reader’s perspective. Would they want to be in this character’s mind, or would it be better to have a buffer?

Overall, the best advice I can give is to remember that third person is going to have more freedom, whether they’re limited or omniscient, so decide early on if you need that freedom, or if the restrictions of first person will actually benefit you in the long run.

~Liz

Follow me @liz_tampa on Twitter and @wethewriters on Instagram.

Narration Encounters of the Third Kind

If you’ve been writing for at least 30 seconds, you already know how pesky your narrator can be. It always seems like you’re halfway through your story when you realize it would be much more dynamic from the first person point of view and the ensuing struggle with deciding whether to start over or keep forging ahead feels like murder.

Well, there’s honestly not much I can do about that.

But I can help you keep your narrator on track.

I’ve been working on my thesis novel and the narrator is from the point of view from the main character, which means it’s limited to only what she knows and can see or surmise. What I didn’t realize were all the little ways your narrator, who you think is firmly under control, can sound suspiciously like another character or like an omniscient narrator altogether.

Here’s an example. In my story, I have a character look back at the main character while they’re riding in the car. My sentence was something along the lines of “she looked back at her daughter.”

Woah woah woah. Red flag. Time out. No can do.

If the point of view is through the eyes of the main character who is the daughter, why would she say that someone else “looked back at her daughter.” Makes no sense right? It took my kindly teacher pointing this out to me for me to even realize how easy it is to slip into another character’s POV.

So here are some fun little tricks I developed to help with that. These are specifically for third person. More to come on first person POV in another post!

Can you replace the noun with the character’s name?

Let’s say our main character’s name is Fred and the sentence is “He grabbed the can of beans, knowing full well what would happen later that night if he ate them.” (Killer line, right?) Is Fred the he in this sentence? If so, then type away! Or is the he some guy named Steve and Fred just happens to be in the room witnessing the event? If that’s the case, how would Fred know that Steve is going to have a gastric explosion that evening? He wouldn’t, not worded like that anyway.

If the case is the latter, then your narrator would need to say something like, “He grabbed the can of beans. Fred shook his head, knowing full well what would happen later that night if he ate them.” All that needed to be added to turn this sentence(s) back to Fred’s POV is adding in his action. It suggests that he simply knows this fact about Steve and is relaying the information to the audience. See the difference?

Does your character know or suspect this action?

Say you have characters on either side of a door. The door is shut and they can’t see each other. You cannot say with certainty that Ashley knelt to the floor if we are in Kimberly’s mind. You can say that Kimberly could envision Ashley kneeling on the floor. Or better yet, add in a thud that makes Kimberly suspect Ashley of kneeling on the floor.

Does it stay true to your character?

Are you adding in detail your character would even notice? Of course you want to set the scene, but you also need to stay in character as well. If you’re writing from the first person POV, would Jamie notice the way Patty chews her gum? Maybe if he had a crush on her, or hated gum, or if the sound of her incessant smacking was driving him crazy. But if Jamie is rather unobservant and barely even knows Patty, why would he focus in on something like that?

Think back to your favorite book with a third person narrator. What about that story made the narrator come to life for you? Reread that book and take notes. That’s what you should be doing in your own story.

~Liz

Follow me @liz_tampa on Twitter and @wethewriters on Instagram.