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First-Person Narrative, or Not?
I’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.
no subject
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…