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.
no subject
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. :)