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.

Novel Structures - 1st Person Issues

There are a lot of times when authors will submit stories to me that sound amazing, but when I start reading the partial or the full, things completely fall apart. Sometimes, it is simply due to the fact they hyped up the proposal so much, they were literally describing a completely different project. In other cases, it comes down to the approach in narration, and that is writing in first person.

Let me say, from the start, that I am not against writing in first person. I do believe, however, that too many authors think this is easier to write and attempt it, missing the fact that this approach is a lot harder to be successful with than in third person. 

For authors who think the story is easier to write this way, it is due to the fact that the author is really writing their book as if they are seeing it on a movie screen or hearing it in an audio book. When they take this approach, it is all about dialogue and hearing people talk. Of course this approach is going to be easier. You are just focusing in on what the people are saying. 

But now, let us look at the difficulties.

When we are talking, we describe things when we feel the information is necessary to what we are doing at that moment. We don't describe things around us or react to things we see on a regular basis. Think about it this way. When you come in to your home at the end of the day, do you look around and admire the artwork, or the way the furniture is set up? Probably not. Along the same lines, when you come in and see your significant other in the kitchen cooking, do you immediately launch into a narrative about all of the great memories, or how someone looks? Again probably not (although we probably should). When writing in first person, the character is only going to describe things and say things out loud that matter at that given moment. 

The issue then, with writing in first person, is two-fold. First, if the author does have the characters talking about these random things, it will feel really weird and forced. If your character does not include this information, then the reader will be lost and have to attempt to fill in the gaps on their own. 

When writing in third person, that is where the narration comes in. It is the chance for the author to tell the reader, through the narration, what those characters are thinking and feeling.

Another issue with writing in first person is head hopping, and/or, inserting emotions and feelings into the head of the person not talking. The head-hopping should make sense. Only one person can talk in first person at a time, so if a second  character starts talking, the author has to remember to see it only through the first speaker's eyes. Often they miss this. It is the second part that becomes the problem (and yes this also happens in third person). If I am writing in first person, I cannot tell the reader what the other character is thinking. I can "assume" I know, or react to what I see in their behavior and take a guess, but I cannot add that emotion into the story as if it is true. Writing in first person tends to have authors doing this frequently.

When we do see a story told in first person well, it is because the author has really thought it through and fixed those issues, because they knew how to. 

If you are getting rejections where people are telling you the writing is forced, or the writing is lacking depth, and you are writing in first person, these might be the reasons for those rejections.

Just something to think about for a Monday.