I’m so glad you came to comment, too! And, of course, I’m inspired to ramble on.
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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timeasmymeasure
no subject
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.