Making First Person Better? Hmmm? Scott's Thoughts

I was scrolling through social media earlier this week and saw a post of why a person hated 1st person (already liked this person) but then she noted how she recommended solutions to make it so that she would like the writing. OK, so she had me hooked so I kept sweeping to see what she said. 

Her complaint was the excessive use of sentences starting with "I". It was simply over-kill was her argument. While I totally agree with this statement. I would also argue that it is a problem with pretty much any word that authors tend to use when they write. I find myself doing that time and time again when I write. There are days when I write and find myself using the same word starting paragraphs, or I use the same phrase repetitively in that day's writing. How do I notice this? I pay attention to what I write. My words don't just dump on the page. It requires paying attention! There are days, even here on the blog that I catch my self starting sentences with "So". (Must be something in the coffee?) Who knows. In any case, let's get back to her 1st person argument. 

Her only complaint about 1st person was the use of "I" so all she did was change the beginning of the sentences. To her, wordsmithing on a sentence level fixes the issue. And that, my friends, is where too many authors are making mistakes. And that is also why it is not going to fix my biggest issue with 1st person for so many authors. 

First of all, changing sentence structure is just cosmetic. It makes a sentence sound different. That is all it does. Changing a word does not change the context. Secondly, one of her suggestions was just starting with an action, which again, is just cosmetic. All that she is recommending is changing the sentence around from a basic sentence to a complex sentence (moving the subject later into the sentence with dependent clauses in the beginning...[lost you, huh?]). 

But my real issue with 1st person is the lack of depth that 1st person provides. Again, this is something I bring up here on the blog whenever I talk about it. This is the same example I provide, but it is a good one. If I want to describe a room to a reader and I want to describe it in third person, I can describe the carpeting, the wall paper, the temperature of the room, the china in the cabinet, the lighting, the history of the room, etc. I can add all of that depth. If there are people in the room, I can add in who the people are, their history, brief bio's of those people, their actions, their appearances and so forth. If it is in 1st person and I am just rushing into the room with the groceries and it is my own home, I only have one thing on my mind. To get those eggs to the counter and I don't give a rip about Gradma Eunice's Christmas plates in the China hutch that reminded me of the festivities of the season, or of the smell of the tree in the corner. I want to get the damn eggs to the counter because I am tired. 

In simple terms, too often, writers stick to 1st person because A) they think a genre is supposed to be written that way because that is what they have seen or what they have been told; or B) they are comfortable writing dialogue and writing narrative is hard. 

Remember, just changing words will not fix the problem.