True confessions

My name is Sarah A. Hoyt and I’m a first person pov writer.

For many years, I’ve been driven by society to hide what I am and not to be true to my own self. You’ve heard the hateful lies, as well as I have: first person is an amateurish way to write; first person sounds contrived; first person means you’re just writing yourself; first person limits your scope.

For years I forced myself to write third person and hid my light under a bushel. But since my last two series forced themselves on me as first person, and since both Darkship Thieves and the Daring Finds mysteries are doing better than anything else I wrote, it is time to admit... I’m sorry. I simply write first person better than I do third. It’s easier for me.

Now, I know it’s not easier for everyone, and I’m not going to advocate doing it for everyone. I read and enjoy a lot of third person, just like I read and enjoy a lot of first person. It seems to be only third person writers who are determined to make sure that no one writes in a pov other than third – but perhaps that’s my perspective.

Most classical SF was written in first person. I grew up with Heinlein and Simak, both of them doing the bulk of their work in first person. Most UF is first person. A lot of legendary mystery – some Christie, most Rex Stout – is written in first person. Very few of these sound like the first person is a reflection of the writer.

There are some things you can only do in first person, such as bring the character’s personality across full force. Oh, sure, you can have some of this with third person in dialogue or direct thoughts. But if you pause a third person narrative to convey such interesting insights as Athena’s “A girl’s best friend is a high powered weapon,” say, you’re as likely as not to annoy the reader. While because a first person story reads as “narrated” there is space for some explanation done in a quirky fashion.

Now, mind you, narrated is not the same thing as told. How do I explain this? If you tell your friend what happened to you today, you’ll condense, ellipse and make it shorter and higher-level so you don’t tell him a story that lasts three days. Your concern is not so much with making him FEEL what’s happening as with getting done with it and moving. But when you’re selling a book with a story, you’re selling the experience.

Consider one of my free stories, here: http://cornerbooth.sarahahoyt.com/Download1.html Neptune’s orphans.

If you’re telling that story to a friend you’d say “Dude, we were asleep in our dorm, and these guys came in and started killing everyone.”

If you’re showing the story to a reader, you ARE there, you immerse yourself, you narrate each event, action, reaction, as if it were happening to you at that moment, so the reader can feel it too: Before the first burner singed the air, I had jumped. * I didn’t know why. Perhaps I wasn’t truly asleep and heard strange steps in the hallway. Or perhaps a voice whispering what was planned for us. I don’t know.
Whatever warning there was fell into my sleeping mind and made my body react.* I woke up half way through my jump-and-dive, dragging with me my brother Pol, who slept in the next bed. We thudded together into a too-narrow space between his bed and the wall.
It saved our lives, because the blinding flash of the burner swung in an arc which sliced my bed in two, setting it on fire. Still half asleep, dazzled by the brilliance of the light, the acrid smoke in my nostrils, I pushed Pol further back and down, shoving him right next to the wall and pressing close to him, close, my heart beating a deafening rhythm.
“Cas, what–?” he said, his voice barely audible, because in addition to the sizzling sounds of the burners there were now screams and gurgles, moans and cries for mercy. *I recognized the voices of my dormitory mates, and I didn’t want to recognize them. I’d never heard them sound like that.*

Note the bits between asterisks are “narration” or what I’d call explanation sentences. They’re essential for you to get the narration, and they can be used – if your character is mouthy like Athena – to convey the personality of the character.

There are first person weaknesses: Like... describing your character; or showing something your character doesn't know; or having your character lie. Do you have any questions about how to overcome first person weaknesses? I’ve worked at all of them and might be able to answer. Or we might be able to figure it out together.

I, Writer

I, the writer, a singular person, locked in my own head attempt to reach out to the reader and tell my tale in a way so convincing that he’ll feel he lived it.

That is the goal of writing, and the one thing that writing still has over movies, games, assorted other forms of entertainment becoming ever cheaper, more realistic and more portable. Reading can transport you into someone else’s head better than any of those. It can make you feel what he feels, live what she lives.

Which bring us to technique, point of view and various other things that writers talk about and which couldn’t interest the reader less unless they’re so badly done that they make you notice them. Which is, in fact, true of any other element of writing.

So, why is Sarah picking up her lance on this bright, sunny morning (this is put in purely for a cheery effect since I’m writing this at five am my time and it’s dark as a copy-editor’s heart out there) and tilting at this particular windmill?

Well, I’ll tell you why. (I know this shocks you, since I’m of such a shy, retiring and reticent disposition that it is an herculean task to draw a word or two from me.)

Lately it has come to my attention that there are readers who refuse to read writing done in the first, singular person and beginning writers who are terrified of using it. You see, they’ve heard it said, high and low, and, yay, verily, proclaimed with a megaphone from the four winds too, that writing in the first person is bad. Baaaaaaaad. Baaaaad, nasty, a disgusting habit that shouldn’t be practiced, even in private and even if you wash your hands afterwards. Possibly it makes you go blind or causes hair to grow on your palms – who knows? I know – because any number of writers, theorists and critics have informed me of this – that it is the mark of an amateur.

To which I say bullspit. (I say this, you understand, because I’m a lady – on odd days and Wednesdays, of which today is one – and wouldn’t stain my dainty fingertips by typing another ... product of the bull.) First person singular has not only been used extensively by most of the greats in the field: Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury but is still used for the currently-best-selling sub-genre of our field: Urban Fantasy. And it’s not JUST our field, either. Agatha Christie wrote in first person singular. Rex Stout wrote in first person. Any number of current bestsellers write in first person. Romance is a little different as it seems to prefer not just third person but shuttle-cocking between the heads of protagonists I guess so that you know the guy who seems cold and distant isn’t. It’s a specialized technique, which suits the narrative needs of a special form.

Which brings me to narratives and different needs. Those of you who have their hands up may put them down. I do remember that I’ve used third person singular (I’ve also used second person singular, occasionally third person plural and on one or two very rare occasions first person plural. Because that’s the kind of indiscriminate verb-orgy kind of writer I am!) Early in the morning though it is, and caffeine deprived though I am, I do indeed remember that the shifter series and the Magical British Empire series and even the Musketeer mysteries are third person, multiple POV. Can a bright boy or girl tell me why I used third person in those books?
Right, you, the young lady on the third row from the back, savoring a fresh dish of adverbs. (I hope you brought enough for everyone!)

I used third person singular in many – most – of my published novels (though not short stories) because it suited the story I wanted to tell which, for reasons of suspense, plot and pacing required that I follow multiple story threads, something that is difficult to do with just one person unless he has a slight teleporting problem, amnesia and multiple personality. And because first person, multiple pov’s is hard as heck to use. Even Heinlein didn’t do it better – or very well. (Even if, as a fundamentalist Heinleinian, unreformed, unrepentant and unashamed, I MUST inform you I’ll defend my right to enjoy The Number Of The Beast to the death, if need be.)

Other stories – Darkship Thieves comes to mind – are single-thread, single narrative and frankly dominated by such a larger than life personality that the only way to do them justice is first person. First person in effect locks the reader in a small room with this in-your-face character and lets her experience the character as a close and personal friend.
So, why do so many writers rail against first person? (Yes, I know. Editors, agents and critics do too, but those people have to have an opinion. It’s their reason for existing. Writers, in fact, do NOT have to have an opinion about any tool they choose not to use, so the fact that they do sticks out, rather.)

Well, my dears, I have two answers, the impolite and the polite. I’m going to give you the impolite first, because it’s early in the morning and I don’t have any caffeine in my veins. The impolite answer is that these writers, for whatever reason, don’t tell first person stories. Or perhaps were bitten by a first person story in their childhood and therefore hate them. Or even because someone told them first person is bad, they believed it and are therefore afraid of it.

They are, in fact, driven by the thing that drives most critics of other people’s choices: The terror that someone, somewhere is having fun. Mrs. Grundy, having been banished from the sexual arena by our modern, enlightened and permissive times, feels the need to hate something that others are doing and at which they have fun. First person it is.

The polite answer is that first person is both the narrative voice of choice of the raw beginner and the most difficult voice to write well. Most writers when they first start writing try first person and – frankly – suck at it. There is a tendency – though I never suffered from THAT because of my peculiar approach to storytelling – to make the character you call "I" exactly like yourself. Most of us JUST aren’t that interesting. It is also far more difficult to plot a first person story – and this I did suffer from – because you’re either stuck following a single line of plot (which means you might not know what the bad guys are up to, so that each attack comes without foreshadowing) or you have to give hints, foreshadowing and inference with a LIGHT brush, around the edges, through rumors, innuendo and the actions of other characters.

Particularly if you’re dealing with an unreliable narrator, which unfortunately most of my characters are. (The person who just made the wisecrack about creating them in my image can go and sit in the corner for half an hour.)

But because a technique is difficult, it shouldn’t be taboo. And there is absolutely no cause for the reader to feel he’s slumming if he’s reading first person. It can be a very powerful, vibrant way to tell a story. If you don’t believe me, go and read Friday (an unreliable narrator) or Puppet Masters or even Simak’s They Walked Like Men, or Barry Hughart’s Story Of The Stone. And there is absolutely no cause for the writer to shut this tool out of his toolbox.

Some writers might choose not to use it. Maybe they don’t think in first person but in collective unconscious. I wouldn’t know. It is their right, their prerogative, their way, and I’d no more tell them they must use first person than I would allow them to tell me I couldn’t. I’m just not my brother’s keeper.

Sure, you might fall on your face the first time you use first person. Or the second. Or the tenth. But that eleventh might be the best thing you ever wrote. Learn all the tools of the craft and use them. Invent new ones if need be. Treat each story as your best work and use the best tool for shaping it. Not the tool someone else told you to use.

And next time Mrs. Grundy sticks her big ol’ nose in your business, tell her to go meditate on the voices of humanity and their infinite variety and, yes, individuality. "I don’t like....." is a valid critique (at least as far de gustibus non est disputandum). "No one should do....." isn’t.

I notice I’ve had one of my customary attacks of word-incontinence and this is running rather long, so I can’t really take on the other "thou shall nots" of science fiction, fantasy or just writing. Excess adverbs? Too many adjectives? Aliens who act human? All of them have been used to great effect by a great writer. Since I presume this blog is read only by great writers – and readers – tell me what your least favorite prohibition is, and if you can of a masterpiece that broke it with elan and style.

Rewrites

Here's some of my photo inspiration for the Shallow Sea book that I'm rewriting.

Originally I had three first person VPs, but my ROR colleagues felt they weren't differentiated enough. The reason I'd used first person was because I had invented a person called a Twisted, who was small and genderless. I wanted to tell one of the narrative threads from this Twisted's VP. This meant I had the problem of finding a non-gender specific pronoun, or writing those scenes from first person.

Inventing a non-gender specific pronoun is a very SF thing to do and I've read several short stories and books where the author has done this. I've never found it very successful, because every time I come across the invented word it throws me out of the story. This doesn't happen with invented nouns, but for some reason the invented pronoun jarrs, at least it does for me.

So I've compromised and left the Twisted scenes in first person, while rewriting the other two narrative threads in deep third person. Note, I've said 'deep' third person. I want to immerse the reader in the character and their struggles so they will identify and empathise with them. Even though I've gone from first person to deep third person, it's surprising how many subtle changes this makes to the narrative.

I think it is working really well. I know I've come across other books where some of the narratives threads are first person and some are third person. I found once I was immersed in the story it didn't worry me.

How do others feel about it?