Writing in first person can be a very effective story tool. My favorite book, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, employs this method. All the world is seen from Jane’s perspective with her life experiences influencing how she perceives it. The tension is built by Jane’s interpretation of other people’s words and actions as well as strange sounds. Because we are inside her head, her insecurities become ours and her fears speed up our pulse rates.

While I am no Charlotte Bronte, I decided to try my hand at a short story using first person. I have enjoyed the work involved in staying in my main character’s head. I am weaving a story with three important characters, two human and one environmental. I have to develop my character arcs using nothing more than how the main character sees, feels, desires the world to be. It is proving a daunting, yet rewarding stretch of my skills.

Care should be taken when using a single point of view. “Head-hopping” is disastrous to even a story with a great premise. Recently I began reading a book recommended by someone on my Twitter feed. She promoted is as “a great Friday read.” It was on Amazon for only 99 cents, so I bought it. The synopsis seemed intriguing enough for a light weekend read. Since I was feeling unwell and bored with television offerings, I clicked ‘buy.’ I am not going to do a review of this book here for there is too much to cover about what needs revising. (Book lover’s note: Always, always have someone skilled proof your work even, or maybe especially, if you self-publish!)

The story is about four young ladies who interact with each other constantly. It begins in first person and shortly jumps to third person. I got only about 20 minutes of reading in before I turned off the Kindle… It was way too much work bouncing in and out of view points. It was hard to determine who was thinking/speaking. I tired of rereading each paragraph to figure out who was doing what.

I did get benefit from my brief time in that book. I have been extremely diligent in keeping my story in one point of view. This is the first time I’ve written fiction in first person and I think I will definitely use it again although I will have to become much more skilled before I attempt a book-length story with it.

WritersDigest.com is my favorite go-to spot when I need help with the craft. Nancy Kress has a great article how to choose the point of view for your story. In 6 Tips to Choosing the Right Point of View, she explains the different ones and gives these guidelines on how to use them:

• If you want to write the entire story in individual, quirky language, choose first person.
• If you want your POV character to indulge in lengthy ruminations, choose first person.
• If you want your reader to feel high identification with your POV character, choose first person or close third.
• If you want to describe your character from the outside as well as give her thoughts, choose either close or distant third person.
• If you want to intersperse the author’s opinions with the character’s, choose distant third.
• If you want low identification between reader and character, perhaps because you’re going to make a fool of your character, choose distant third.

~

Another great source I got from WritersDigest.com is Alicia Rasley’s The Power of Point of View. Alicia goes into great detail and explains which points of view are best with each genre. This one I keep on my desk.

“From a dog’s point of view, his master is an elongated and abnormally clever dog.” ~Mabel L. Robinson