Writing 1st person POV

[birdsofshore]

I love to write in 1st person. I think I am a little bit hooked on it, tbh. I have been writing 1st person Draco for ages, but last year I wrote a lot of alternating 1st person, and really enjoyed that, too, and then this year I felt compelled to write 1st person Harry. With debatable results, BUT, I still very much enjoyed writing it, and wouldn't rule out doing it again.

My dracotops_harry fic was quite a long 1st person Draco POV, and I noticed a real trend in the comments to talk about the fact that people had liked it despite it being 1st person. This came up again and again, as if it was a complete rarity to enjoy a 1st person fic. Someone also left a bookmark which really made me laugh:

Usually first-persons are stinkers, but this wasn't.

WOW THANKS :D

Anyway, I mentioned to Mr Birds that apparently people felt mistrustful of 1st person, and he was surprised as well. We googled for a list of novels that were written in 1st person, and what do you know, a ton of my favourite books are 1st person. Catcher in the Rye, Jane Eyre, Lolita, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, To Kill a Mockingbird, Breakfast at Tiffany's, A Clockwork Orange, The Perks of Being a Wallflower are all 1st person narratives. As a reader I find it a stunningly immersive experience, and if the narrator is unreliable or twisted or damaged then I enjoy it even more.

As a fanfic writer, obviously I'm not aiming for anything approaching those novels, but I find writing 1st person an easy way to make a connection, first with the character I'm writing, and then with the reader. I find writing other POVs distances me and the reader from the story that I'm telling. Maybe it's become a lazy habit and I should attempt to get that immediacy by other means, using 3rd person? I don't know. But I feel conflicted - I want to go on writing 1st person whenever it seems appropriate, but readers are telling me that they actively avoid 1st person fics.

Do people mistrust / dislike 1st person in original fic, or just in fanfic? Do you agree that 1st person fics are usually "stinkers"? If so, why? Do you enjoy reading 1st person? In fic? In original novels? Do you write it? Do you avoid it? I have all of the questions and none of the answers!

Comments

[chickenpumpkin.livejournal.com]

Oh, my god, this is gonna be such a rant, you don't even know ;D There's a tl:dr at the end if you wanna. (Also, you have excellent taste in 1st person literature, Birds, seriously.)

I loathe 1st person with the fire of a thousand suns--in general. More specifically...I'm incredibly picky and judgmental, and I can turn into a total jerkface about it. Again, there's seriously a tl;dr at the bottom. Feel free to make use of it.

In grad school, we devoted an entire semester to 1st person, which seemed excessive at first, although by the end I felt like it was warranted. The teacher was amazing, though, as when she said that technically speaking, ALL 1st person fics are unreliable narrator fics--or they should be, because we all view the world subjectively, with varying degrees of accuracy and honesty. Every single word is filtered through a character's internal bullshit, and since we're all colored by where we come from and how we got here, and most of us give our behavior about as much thought as we give a sitcom, we're all a skewed reality, or at least, we should be. (Which isn't as problematic in 3rd person--which we spent another entire semester on, ffs). It takes a lot of skill on the part of the writer to offer readers an objective look at an inherently subjective person.

Obviously, this broke my brain, and it made me aware of the flaws of a lot of 1st person narrators, which made me hate hate hate it, because all I did was think--is this the narrator I'm hearing or the author? In 3rd, we expect some authorial interpretation, but that shouldn't exist in 1st at all, and it's so terribly hard to weed it out. And then there's the fact that no one thinks as orderly as fiction must write--we're all a mass of intruding thoughts and emotions and it's rare to come across a book that captures the unwieldy nature of inner thought while also still being readable. Which is sort of the fourth wall of fiction, I suppose--in that we all know that's not really what thought is like, but we pretend we're all organized thinkers because no one really wants to read that stream of consciousness shit or else Ulysses would be more than an exercise in elitism for undergrad lit students. But it can feel disingenuous to me in 1st, whereas in 3rd, I'm just grateful to the author for putting shit in some semblance of order.

The exception to my jerkface, though, is books with a very distinctive narrative voice--including pretty much every book you listed, which is why they work for me. Lolita is one of the most brilliant fucking books ever--pun both intended and not, I suppose--because Humbert Humbert is basically the definition of 1st person done right. Every time I read it, I think "I will never write that well and I should give it up now to go do glassblowing or some such." I can read some Draco 1st person fics--in the hands of a good writer, the sneer, sarcasm, and vulnerability, all add up to a very distinctive personality. And everybody in this fandom knows Draco, uh, intimately, ahem--we know when someone gets Draco wrong, and we know when someone gets him right. This is why your 1st person fics are some of the very few I don't automatically back-button--you get Draco, so you do him right. And then you have Harry do him right. XP I can only think of a handful of 1st person fics with Harry as narrator that I've made it through, though. He tends to suffer from generic narrator syndrome, where the voice is so bland that we might as well let the wallpaper narrate the story.

Um, this is probably way more than you were looking for, wasn't it? Like way, way more. Why do you have to make me think so hard, Birds? WHY? (Actually that's a front-- I love stuff like this and you're awesome for having deep writerly thoughts and asking us to have deep writerly thoughts in return.).

tl;dr: First person is complete horseshit unless it's done really well, and that's really hard, so...yeah, usually horseshit. And Birds is cool. ;P

[birdsofshore]

Ahhhhh, this wasn't tl;dr at all! This is interesting and informative stuff - and also, you said I was awesome, so it's automatically a FASCINATING comment :D

You know, I do have excellent taste in 1st person literature, but it's not like I had to whittle the list down very much. When you google "1st person POV novels" you basically get a list of awesomeness! It's true! I was like, "OK, so THAT'S why I think it's a good idea to write this way."

But I am really intrigued (and jealous) about all of the study you did on POVs. The conclusions are bending my mind a little, too, but there's so much there to ponder on.

And Lolita: Every time I read it, I think "I will never write that well and I should give it up now to go do glassblowing or some such."

aaaaaahhhhhhh yes. How true. I know. But so inspiring, too, don't you think? That people exist who can DO those things with words. That there even are such words to play with. Do you like Flaubert? He makes me feel that way, often.

you get Draco, so you do him right

Golly, this makes my heart sing, coming from you. I think maybe I was looking for a little reassurance that it's OK to carry on writing 1st person sometimes. I'm so glad you enjoy my Draco. I really feel I relate to all of the shittiest parts of him, and then I have great fun writing id-fic about all the most excellent parts of him. So I do hope it works.

And THANK YOU for getting all enthused and deep about my vague and bewildered questions. I always beam when i see you've commented on an entry of mine, because I know it's going to be something interesting.

[chickenpumpkin.livejournal.com]

Aw you're sweet ;D As for studying POV--it was entirely fascinating, and not nearly as ridiculous (or difficult) as the class I took on character and authorial voice, which took a simple concept and deepened it to the point where all my thoughts about it were completely dismantled and which I still haven't recovered from.

As for pondering...getting my MFA made me a much more thoughtful, aware writer, even if it also made the process infinitely more complicated and uncertain. It's probably just as effective to read a great many textbooks and classical novels and then get drunk with a bunch of highly-analytical writer friends at a bar to argue about what you've read (definitely much cheaper, even if you're drinking top-shelf). Although nothing really replicates the sheer soul-destroying misery and terror that is The Workshop. There's nothing like having your story torn to pieces by people who are equally invested in watching you get better because they need you to return the favor and watching you fail so they can be the best. It was excruciating, but I produced some of my best writing while I was there, so it's hard to fault the process. Plus, there's really nothing that anyone can say about my stuff now that I can't blow off.

I think Draco appeals to the part of all of us that can be petty and mean despite the fact that we're not petty and mean people, and he's completely id-enjoyable, if that makes sense. Plus, in some ways, he's very reassuring as a character--no matter how shoddy we are as people, he's done worse, and if he's redeemable, then so are we. Besides, he does have his compensatory qualities, doesn't he? ;D

And I adored Madame Bovary! It was beautiful and sad and Flaubert writes the most perfect sentences. I read it in about 2 days and felt completely insignificant as a writer for like, a week afterwards. The bastard. (And yes, then I had to go try to do all the things he did, albeit with rather less-stellar results). Another one that I found myself in awe of was East of Eden. Have you read it? I'm not actually a huge Steinbeck fan, but I couldn't put that one down.

[birdsofshore]

I sort of love the fact that the class dismantled your thoughts. It's a scary thought, but I'm LOLing, too.

And this! Plus, there's really nothing that anyone can say about my stuff now that I can't blow off.

OMG, that's brilliant. Kind of like kill or cure? I think it would have killed me.

And your thoughts on Draco being redeemable - YES. I keep coming back to this. Here's a quote from the DTH fic Late Bloomers that really resonated with me: He could love Draco Malfoy, probably, not in spite of his flaws and contradictions, but because of them. And that meant that he, too, could be loved for all the dark inside himself in turn.

It's just - UGHHHH. Yes.

And Madame Bovary asdfghklsdfghjklfghjklfghklfghjkl. YES. YES. Can I just say yes to everything in your entire comment? Except East of Eden, which, no, I haven't read. I may have to try it. The annoying thing about Madame Bovary is that I originally read a translation which apparently is out of print now and I can't find my copy. I think I sold it to buy tobacco when i was an impoverished student. *sob* What a dork. And a lot of the lines in the translation I remember were better than the ones in my current copy. It's a bit tragic! Not that the newer translation is anything other than amazing, but still...

[birdsofshore]

....and, while musing on translations, I found this nice article about translating Flaubert which you might be interested in:

Madame Bovary: the Everest of translation

[chickenpumpkin.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's so sad that you gave up your copy! But on the plus side, this new translation sounds potentially brilliant! I want to read it. I don't recall who translated the edition I have, but it was well done enough that it made me fall in love with Flaubert's language. It's so important to get a good translation though--I remember trying to read the Aeneid in high school and hating it, but then reading a different translation in grad school and loving it. Thanks for the link! =D