First-Person Narrative, or Not?
Dec. 28th, 2019 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paulamcgI’ve just started writing two short stories simultaneously, one for Remus Fest and the other for HP Golden Age’s Salt and Pepper Fest. So far I’m using the third person in both – partly because I somehow enjoy this challenge, and partly because I remember (and saw in some sign-up comments at R/S Small Gifts) bias against the first person. I wonder how common the dislike of first-person narration is in the fandom.
I wrote my main fanfic, a long chaptered story, in the third person – but included letters in which the protagonist could narrate his backstory, and I allowed him to do it more and more in vivid scenes, using the present tense. In my short stories of the same period, too, I experimented with and developed my first-person-and-present-tense style.
That kind of first-person narration is still my favourite – particularly in slash fics with a lot of interaction between two characters of the same gender. But I want to also take the challenge of finding other ways to avoid clunkiness with pronouns and names. I doubt there’s much difference between my third-person and first-person short stories in how close I take the reader to the view-point character’s consciousness.
Having written this year mainly for my own indulgence, I at least pretend not to care too much whether the first person scares off readers. But now writing for fests, Ḯ’m more interested again in other writers’ and readers’ views.
I wrote my main fanfic, a long chaptered story, in the third person – but included letters in which the protagonist could narrate his backstory, and I allowed him to do it more and more in vivid scenes, using the present tense. In my short stories of the same period, too, I experimented with and developed my first-person-and-present-tense style.
That kind of first-person narration is still my favourite – particularly in slash fics with a lot of interaction between two characters of the same gender. But I want to also take the challenge of finding other ways to avoid clunkiness with pronouns and names. I doubt there’s much difference between my third-person and first-person short stories in how close I take the reader to the view-point character’s consciousness.
Having written this year mainly for my own indulgence, I at least pretend not to care too much whether the first person scares off readers. But now writing for fests, Ḯ’m more interested again in other writers’ and readers’ views.
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Date: 2019-12-28 05:48 pm (UTC)The specific complaints I've heard about it usually center around people's sense that it raises the bar for writing in-character, i.e. if it's the main character speaking directly to the reader, every sentence has to sound like their voice, and supposedly too many writers can't pull it off. Personally I wonder if this is understating the difficulty of writing in close third-person POV, which should be equally consistent in its character voice. Most fic is written in that POV and nobody seems to think it's an insurmountable barrier.
My experience with writing slash and femslash in third-person is that clunkiness can almost always be fixed just by using people's names, which readers hardly ever notice. (But readers do notice epithets like "the blond" and "the shorter man" and "the sexy Slytherin" and a little of that goes a looooong way, with overuse quickly becoming unintentionally hilarious!) However, I did recently write a time travel fic where both characters were the same person, and I did consider using first-person for that one, though I eventually decided on a different solution.
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Date: 2019-12-28 07:18 pm (UTC)It’s interesting to hear about the negative feelings towards first-person POV in other fandoms, too. It might be true that people are afraid to write – or it doesn’t even occur to them to write – in a technique they don’t see much of. But I’ve seen some Fest participants mention first-person (and second-person) POV specifically among their dislikes or “don’t want to receive” in their sign-up comments.
Yes, now I remember years ago reading such views that we’d better not write fanfic in the first person, because the readers have already read the canon character’s voice or imagined it themselves and can’t find the voice we’d write convincing. And I’ve always thought that I give a voice to my viewpoint character (not only in the dialogue, of course, but) in the whole narrative, no matter which grammatical person I’ve chosen. (That can be one reason why I couldn’t possibly be interested in writing fic in Harry’s POV.) (My style’s not been about the character actually speaking to the reader, but rather like stream of consciousness, although I think that in some short pieces my Remus has spoken in his mind to his absent Sirius.)
Oh, I’d forgotten about those green-eyed Gryffindors and the other men! There’s been so many intimate scenes I’ve been jerked out of enjoying when suddenly an epithet has made me think there’s actually a third man present and being caressed.
I definitely agree that it’s best to use the (same) names. I wouldn’t like to even write Moony instead of Remus only for a change. There must be a reason such as Sirius thinking about Remus as his Moony at a moment when he’s getting emotional in a certain way. And particularly the viewpoint character must be referred to by the name he identifies with. (Of course there can he exceptional moments… In a fic set on November 1, 1981, only the memory scenes are in Remus’s first-person POV and in the current-time moments he thinks of himself as “the fool”.)
But I think I couldn’t “translate” a first-person fic word-by-word to third-person POV, without making the prose less elegant and fluent. Now for a while I felt silly that I’ve said I find the first-person better for stories with same-gender interaction. Of course, there’s a lot of elegant narrative about characters to all of whom the writer must refer with the same pronoun. But slash fanfic is often for a big part about the characters looking at and touching and smelling each other’s body parts. Recently I’ve found it an interesting challenge to construct the text (and even the details of the interaction) in a third-person story so that there isn’t very frequent need to spell out the name of the owner of each knee, chest and hand.
You’ve inspired me to rambling about my writing, and I’d very much like to hear about the solution in your fic about a character interacting with him/her/themselves.
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Date: 2019-12-29 03:40 pm (UTC)I also wrote a fic that reads like (the much-dreaded!) second-person narration most of the way through, though the end reveals that there is an "I" that's been speaking to "you" all along. But that was an X-Files fic from the perspective of an alien, and it was definitely my intention for it to sound weird and inhuman. The fic went over well at the time, and I do remember getting comments (even in 2003) that people felt third-person narrative was normally best, but this was an exceptional case.
I don't feel like I have trouble keeping track of whose body parts are whose when I'm writing m/m or f/f scenes, but maybe I've just been writing third-person fic for so long that I'm not conscious of that process anymore.
As for the time travel fic, I eventually decided to introduce the time-traveling doppelganger as "the Hermione from two o'clock", as opposed to "the Hermione from one o'clock", then transitioned to calling them Two O'Clock and One O'Clock and finally just Two and One. I wasn't sure if it was going to work, but reader feedback claimed that it was fine and not confusing, so I guess it was all right! I've been meaning to browse AO3 tags and see how else people have dealt with characters meeting themselves.
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Date: 2019-12-29 05:37 pm (UTC)Now I think I’ll go and read that Hermione/Hermione fic. You’ve certainly given a try to unconventional solutions in exceptional cases.
I’m trying not to take myself and the reception of my fanfic too seriously. This discussion could make me start suspecting that I’ve done something completely wrong all this time (while fortunately not writing even close to a hundred stories since 2003). Perhaps if I’d stuck to the conventional third-person POV, I could have become a BNF and my life would have been different… or not! In fact, I’ve started writing (somehow, I hope) proper sex scenes only this year (after my eight-year absence), so lack of those could have been another reason, besides the first-person titles, why I always had limited popularity. And maybe I still have a lot to learn about not mixing up body parts. :)
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Date: 2019-12-28 06:46 pm (UTC)I think that when the canon is first person, like Rivers of London, it's a lot more accepted and often expected.
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Date: 2019-12-28 07:37 pm (UTC)It’s reassuring to hear that people can read first-person fic, too, without thinking that choosing not to click out of it is something exceptional.
Even though I’ve known that first-person POV is often not preferred and certainly not expected in the HP fandom, I’ve used it in the majority of my fics. As I always choose a phrase straight from the text to be the title, I often also shamelessly reveal this technique immediately and might prevent some people from clicking in at all.
I haven’t read any Rivers of London, not even any of the canon. Would you recommend?
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Date: 2019-12-29 05:39 pm (UTC)Solidarity. XD I have so much trouble thinking of titles, that I either pick one word or take a line. Same with summaries. Most of the time it's just a paragraph from the fic.
For RoL, the canon is pretty good! There's also a comic series, if you have a more visual mind. I don't like it myself because I'm not fond of comics - something about the format makes it difficult for me to parse - but loads of people do. RoL is sometimes referred to as "Harry Potter, but cops" and ... while there's aspects of that in it, it's not really accurate. Peter Grant, the lead character, is a police officer in London, and he discovers that magic and wizards exist, and gets involved in it.
For fanfic,
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Date: 2019-12-29 06:12 pm (UTC)In my early fanfic years I was tempted to write longer summaries, but now I try to make it only one sentence – but never one directly from the story text. My summaries are always written in third-person POV and they reveal at least the protagonist’s name and usually the time and place, too (not the theme but perhaps rather the topic or the situation at the beginning). Now that I checked some of my latest stories – those I’ve posted on AO3 – I noticed that most of their titles, either, don’t reveal the first person, after all.
I don’t think we should feel sad about our picked-from-the text titles! (Well, you’ve seen that I’ve got unconventional tastes, and perhaps this doesn’t comfort you, but…) I consider some such titles the best possible. After completing a fic I look for a phrase – preferably an unusual, ambiguous combination of a few words – which somehow refers to the theme of (and perhaps to something else, too, like to a central concrete element in) the story. If I can’t find one, I’m not so happy with the story.
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Date: 2019-12-28 08:09 pm (UTC)I say write whatever you want! I actually love second person, though I know everyone groans when they see it. Some stories just call for that imperative mood. M.
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Date: 2019-12-28 09:14 pm (UTC)Perhaps I ended up guilty of a black-and-white prohibition when I, above, laughed at the “other men”. I suppose “the other man” can work as a good epithet in some situations.
And you remind me that, of course, I mustn’t criticise people for stating whatever they don’t want in their gifts. At R/S Small Gifts I immediately ruled out those participants as my potential recipients who mentioned the dislike of first-person POV, and I wonder if I shouldn’t have. I ended up writing my official gift in the third person (taking the challenge of writing each of the five characters’ third-person POV in its separate section, two of those with rather intimate Remus/Sirius interaction and therefore need to construct the text so that I didn’t have to name the owner of each hand and other body part). But perhaps the ruling out was wise, because my third-person POV is hardly less close to the viewpoint character’s consciousness (in case that was what those participants actually dislike) than my first-person POV. However, I don’t think first-person narration needs to be – or that mine is (I hope not) – excessively introspective.
Now that makes me remember what I didn’t like in some of the first-person fics I read years ago. Perhaps some writers (perhaps particularly young, not so experienced writers, or those experienced in keeping a diary), when they choose the first person and the past tense, end up writing too much telling and too little showing, and just reflection and abstract descriptions of emotions – instead of showing setting and action and interaction and allowing us see and hear the characters and share the story through the viewpoint character’s senses, which is what I try to do with first-person as well as third-person POV.
Thank you for what’s always a good piece of advice. I must remember to write whatever I want.
I used to think (and now I mean almost fifteen years ago) that writing first-person POV well was an interesting challenge, and that was why I wanted to use this technique. I used it shamelessly – in my titles, too. But now I’ve started to think that perhaps first-person POV is the easier way of writing intimate same-gender interaction fluently, and that third-person POV can be more demanding, so that writing that well leads to more carefully constructed text.
As for second-person POV, do you mean stories in which the viewpoint characters form their thoughts about themselves in the grammatical second person? That’s a challenge I’ve never taken, and I suppose I’m agreeing with you when I say that there must be a good reason for choosing that technique. I’ve written one small fic in which I use the second person, but it’s Lily talking in his mind to new-born Harry, when she’s so absorbed in him that she’s sharing all her consciousness, including her interaction with someone else, with him.
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Date: 2019-12-29 03:53 pm (UTC)Good point, I agree this is a factor. I think many fan writers have anxieties about "doing it wrong", and when it's mentioned that some writing technique isn't the easiest to do well, people can feel safer just never trying it at all.
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Date: 2019-12-29 10:22 am (UTC)For me, unless the fic is <500 words or so, second person becomes tedious and kludgy, and for first person, if the first paragraph isn't absolutely spectacular in voice, I find myself backing out of it immediately out of secondhand embarrassment. Yes, it can provide more intimacy and putting the reader deeper in the head of the POV character, but it needs such a delicate hand to work well that all too often I get thrown out of the story by the first person voice being off. It also needs to strike the right mood. I can handle first person in memoirs because that is the author speaking, but for fiction, I don't necessarily want to be in a character's head so closely, I want to be in the midst of the story, which I find third person works best for.
As for present or past tense, I'm more flexible there, and usually don't pay too much attention to what tense a story is in. In fact, the biggest thing I learned in fanfic writing was keeping a consistent tense, because I don't notice it overly.
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Date: 2019-12-29 11:23 am (UTC)While I can’t remember seeing much of second-person narrative anywhere, I think it needs a very good reason. And perhaps it would still be hard to stop paying attention to the technique while reading.
In my view any device should become transparent, so that the reader only experiences the story. This can be more difficult when the reader is also a writer and aware of the choice of devices.
I wouldn’t mention first-person POV as a warning or in a tag, making readers pay unnecessary attention to it, even though maybe some fanfic readers would like to be warned. And my titles must have sometimes functioned as warnings, because I always pick a phrase from the story text.
I’ve had readers (years ago, and I hope you don’t condemn me for bragging) who’ve admired my first-person(and-present-tense) fiction voice, and some among them have pointed out that they’ve noticed only afterwards that I’ve used the grammatical person they normally dislike in fanfic.
Taking the reader to the midst of the story is my aim in both first-person and third-person POV, and I think I can make it work quite as well in both. Or perhaps not, if I can get no readers for my firs-person fics! And perhaps my third-person narration, too, would be too closely in the character’s head for some people’s liking.
I hope I don’t sound too defensive. Explaining all this to myself helps me make my conclusions. One is perhaps that I’d better not choose first-person POV for gift fics, at least not before asking the recipient if it’s okay.
Of course, for my own indulgence I write what I like best. But because I stick to my belief that fiction is interaction and I seek some in the fandom, I also read and review all kinds of fics, and not only those rare ones with absolutely spectacular opening paragraphs.
As for tense, I can’t help paying attention to any inconsistency when reading. That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes make mistakes, particularly when editing. What I’ve said about transparency should work for the tense, too, and sometimes I’m afraid that the present tense is bound to be less transparent at the very beginning of the story – unless the opening is so spectacular that the readers almost forget they’re reading. The past tense perhaps sounds more natural in most written stories, but if there’s need for telling a lot about what had happened before, it’s another challenge to balance between using the clunkier past perfect and shifting to the past tense for longer sections of such backstory.
Thanks again for giving me a chance to ramble on. (I’m glad this is my journal, so I don’t need to apologise for wordiness!)
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Date: 2019-12-29 12:02 pm (UTC)For my first paragraph comment, it has to be spectacular because that is the only way I "forget" it is in first person. Otherwise, I am paying too much attention to POV and get distracted by thoughts like, "This is totally not how I would think" or "these thoughts make no sense" or whatever. I can't as easily fall into the storytelling as you indicate above. For third person, I am not so stringent because it is easier for me to parse between the character and my thoughts/feelings.
I generally comment on all stories I finish and kudos them on AO3 to interact in fandom spaces as you indicated you also like to do, but as said, if I am thrown out in the first paragraph, then I never reach the end to comment. So third person is what I will comment on more.
But yes, interesting discussion!
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Date: 2019-12-29 01:35 pm (UTC)Of course, since I’m also thinking about the reception of my fic in particular, I can get sensitive and have to remind myself not to take this too seriously. All right, we agree about the importance of making the reader immediately stop paying attention to the first-person POV, and I understand there is quite enough of a challenge in using it. As I’ve said above, I’d started to think that first-person POV is the easy way of writing slashy scenes fluently, and that there would be new, interesting challenges in third-person POV. Perhaps I’ll choose to tackle those latter ones for a change in any case, when I can enjoy first-person writing in discussions :)
I’m not so happy about the kudos function on AO3. How can you thank for kudos? I’d prefer comments in words, even in one word. (And rambling goes on.) I’ve got kudos from people who don’t seem to be in the HP fandom at all. I could go and check if they’re from fandoms where the canon is a first-person narrative and first-person POV therefore more accepted in fanfic…
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Date: 2019-12-30 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-30 10:20 am (UTC)I’ve always enjoyed writing first-person POV, as well as various challenges related to it, also combining POVs, some of them in third-person voice. This year I’ve tried different options, sometimes also changed the grammatical person after considering which is more enjoyable to read. Of course, the reading experience must be different for other readers than myself. The betas (whose services I enjoyed for my five latest fics – fest fics) didn’t complain about the first-person POV (in four of those five), but they weren’t inclined to suggesting any other major changes either, and it didn’t occur to me to ask about this.
My problem now is that I can’t forget how much I used to enjoy also interacting with readers – and to always wish I could have more of that interaction. But even if I’ve now got confirmation that first-person POV is not a go-to for many (most?) potential readers, there’s no guarantee that my fics would be received even if I gave up writing them in the way I believe they can work best for readers, too.
Interaction like this here can help me carry on and simply enjoy my fiction-writing. Thank you again!
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Date: 2019-12-30 12:19 pm (UTC)Trying again:
I don't think it really matters what tense you use as long as you use it well. Fandom getting nitpicky over certain things is just part of fandom, and you can either let that dictate how you write, or ignore it and the people who want to read in the tense you're writing will show up. I guess it's different for challenges bc people will have specific requests, but if you're just writing for you, I'd say keep doing that. I do feel like the hostility towards first person is mostly arbitrary, and probably due to a lot of stories being badly written in that voice, but it's not the tense's fault. What did First Person Present ever do to anyone?
You notice a similar weirdness around tenses in Victorian Gothic novels, where people just couldn't accept a character talking directly to the reader for whatever reason, which is why Wuthering Heights has this convoluted flashback-within-a-flashback structure where the guy in the house talks to the housekeeper who used to work for the Lindens and somehow has ridiculously accurate recall for every interaction between Cathy and Heathcliffe from when they were children onward--it's absurd, and I think some literary conventions are still clinging to that a little.
Hm, that's an interesting blog series idea, come to think of it. "How Fanficcers Are Like Readers of Victorian Gothic Novels: Part 1, Being Extra About Tenses."
ANYWAY, if that's your favorite way to write fic, just do it. The readers who want it will show up, and those who dislike that tense will read something else.
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Date: 2019-12-30 01:49 pm (UTC)I’m thrilled people show up here and get interesting ideas on the basis of my post. (Perhaps There Is Some Hope – as the title of my latest published fic states – that someone will dare click on my fic, too.) It’s fascinating what you say about Wuthering Heights, literary conventions and fandom nitpickyness. You also make me realise that I shouldn’t stick to only my favourite combination of the first person and the present tense, but (while not giving up the pleasure of using what’s become perhaps my signature style) try to be more adventurous and innovative.
Even though you confirm my suspicion that there is true hostility against first-person POV, your comment has not left me feeling utterly sad about it. Thank you so much for the encouraging words!
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Date: 2019-12-30 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-30 03:10 pm (UTC)Third person limited seems to be the most common choice I get to see in the (HP) fandom. That preference could be partly due to the canon, and partly belong to this culture in general.
One reason why I’m so attached to my old style is that I actually keep writing the same story: short stories which are all part of the same JKR’s-first-five-books-compliant universe and my Remus’s life in it. For instance I’ve almost always written Sirius’s voice in the first person. And now I remember that it all started because in the very first short stories, set post-Azkaban and pre-OotP, he was unable to think of Remus’s name, which had to be replaced by (the only) “he” in the text. When I wrote my first James/Lily-centric fics I decided to give them third-person voices, partly because, unlike in slash, I didn’t have to fear confusion with pronouns or too frequent mentions of names. Such fears have probably been stupid, as I’ve understood when above talking to someone who’s written even self-cest in third-person POV with no such problems. :)