Understanding POV: First person or Third?

I had a former student/current friend recently ask me about “person “and how it works in deciding between writing in first-person vs. third-person, so I decided to try to answer that. But, keep in mind, POV is probably the most technically difficult part of writing fiction and there  is a LOT to say about it; this is just a jumping-off place.

Second-person narration is also an option, but second person is still largely considered an “experimental” treatment of POV (though I hate the word “experimental” in this context), and it has its own particular set of problems, which I might get to in a later blog.

Also, if POV is the most difficult of all the fiction writing puzzle pieces, then third-person is the most difficult of POV considerations. In other words, third-person has many, many moving parts, and I’m only really talking about it in generalities today.

But we have to start somewhere.

So my student/friend asked something along the lines of “Why is third-person so hard? Can I just take my first-person story and change every “I” to “he?”

Yes and no, but mostly no.

First-person is limited, and for that reason it’s easier to write. Things in general get easier if our choices are limited. For a thought experiment, imagine I hand you a piece of paper and whisper “I want you to make something  out of this,” and then I hand a piece of paper to someone sitting beside you and whisper, “I want you to make a paper airplane.” Neither of you hears what I whispered to the other. Who is going to finish first? Obviously, your friend—while you are sitting there wondering what you should make, she’s already finished with her airplane. No choices = no real thinking about it.

So, in first-person, choices are limited. That’s not a bad thing. The narrator is the main character, always. We (the readers) are always in that one person’s head. We are privy only to her thoughts. We know only what she is thinking, see only what she is seeing, hear only what she is hearing. If she goes somewhere, we go with her. If a story is set in Ohio and something important to the plot happens in Texas, the narrator either has to go see it, or else hear about it some way (a text, phone call, the news, etc.).

Not so in third-person. Your narrator and main character are different, separate people, and you could argue that a third-person narrator is just an off-stage “presence,” and not a person at all. Your third-person narrator can have some level of omniscience (but not necessarily; that’s a choice you make as writer), so that your narrator might know the past of your MC, going back 1000 years. Or your narrator might know how and when your MC dies, 50 years from now, or how many great-great-great grandchildren your MC will have. All of this is info that your MC has no way of knowing.  If something happens in Texas, your third-person narrator can just tell us about it.

There are multiple other considerations related to third-person, but this is a major one, and one you will have to “handle” if you are writing in third. More choices sounds good, but it also means more decisions.

So, first-person is super easy and everyone should always write in that, right? Well, no. I mean, you might. There are some very well-known writers who have pretty much spent their whole careers writing just first-person (or conversely, just third-person) fiction, and that’s fine, and it might be fine for you too.

But, even though first-person is relatively simpler, that does not make it “super easy.” Because to use first-person narration with any level of success, there is one tricky part that you have to get right:

Voice.

First-person narration depends on voice, and that voice needs to be dripping with personality. We ought to feel like we are getting to know and understand that narrator not just by what he says, but also by how he says it.

Have you ever had a friend who is just naturally funny without even trying? They could be telling you how they had to change a tire yesterday, or even just reading off their shopping list, and you can’t stop laughing, because that person is just, somehow, funny.

First-person is like that, but it doesn’t have to be funny (it can be, though). Maybe the personality that’s leaking through the words is prickly, or angry, or odd, or insane, or depressed. Might be any of those, and it doesn’t matter, as long as that feeling is there along with any information being conveyed.

A couple of examples:

First, Holden speaking in Catcher in the Rye:

“Anyway, it was December and all, and it was cold as a witch's teat, especially on top of that stupid hill. I only had on my reversible and no gloves or anything. The week before that, somebody'd stolen my camel's-hair coat right out of my room, with my fur-lined gloves right in the pocket and all. Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these very wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has-I'm not kidding. Anyway, I kept standing next to that crazy cannon, looking down at the game and freezing my ass off. Only, I wasn't watching the game too much. What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.”

Do you hear it? We get some information important to the plot, but mostly we get his voice. What do you hear? Cynical? Lonely? Depressed? Quirky? All those and more.

Another, from Raymond Carver’s story “Cathedral”:

“This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife’s relatives in Connecticut. He called my wife from his in-laws’. Arrangements were made. He would come by train, a five-hour trip, and my wife would meet him at the station. She hadn’t seen him since she worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago. But she and the blind man had kept in touch. They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.”

Again, information is given, but what do you hear under that? I hear closed-mindedness, bigotry, cold-heartedness, a lack of curiosity.

Paying attention to all of this in your reading will also teach you a lot about tone.

So what about third-person?

Third-person can have a voice that is dripping with personality, but it doesn’t have to, and generally it doesn’t. Mostly, we want third-person narration to disappear, so that we aren’t constantly being reminded that we’re reading something. We don’t want to see the cables making Peter Pan fly across the screen, do we? So, if you want to successfully write third-person narration, your writing needs to be clear and clean.

In class sometimes I ask students to look at the window and tell me what they see. Invariably they say “A brick wall….a tree….people walking by….rain falling down.” Ah-Ha! I say (not really). I told you to look at the window, not at the outside. But they saw the outside because the window is doing its job. The window is being clean and clear. In fact, if they did notice the window, it’s because something is wrong with it—it’s cracked, or dirty, or covered with duct tape.

I often refer to the prose needed for third-person novels or stories as “window-pane writing.” And pretty much anyone can learn to write that way.

Here is an example from Richard Yates, who might be crowned King of Window-Pane Writing:

“He found it so easy and so pleasant to cry that he didn’t try to stop for a while, until he realized he was forcing his sobs a little, exaggerating their depth with unnecessary shudders….The whole point of crying is to quit before you coined it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted.”

See it? The emotions of the character are explained, but we don’t really notice much about the writing. It’s not odd or funny or full of fireworks. The writing is basically a beige Toyota Corolla. But that gets Yates everywhere he needs to go.

Another example, from Anne Tyler:

“The Garrett family did not take a family vacation until 1959. Robin Garrett, Alice's father, said they couldn't afford one. Also, in the early days he refused to leave the store in anyone else's hands. It was Grandfather Wellington's store, was why—Wellington's Plumbing Supply, turned over to Robin's care only grudgingly and mistrustfully after Grandfather Wellington had his first heart attack. So of course Robin had to prove himself, working six days a week and bringing the books home every Saturday for Alice's mother to examine in case he'd slipped up somewhere. Face it: he was not a born businessman. By training he was a plumber; he used to buy his parts at Wel­lington's just so he could catch a glimpse of young Mercy Wel­lington behind the counter. Mercy Wellington was the prettiest little thing he'd ever laid eyes on, he told his children, and all the plumbers in Baltimore were crazy about her. Robin hadn't stood a chance. But miracles do happen, sometimes. Mercy told the children she'd liked his gentlemanly behavior.”

Beautifully plain, like Shaker furniture.

So, it doesn’t make much sense to write in first-person until you have found that personality in the voice, no matter how weird or complicated it is. Once you have found that, you are 90% of the way toward finding your main first-person character.

If you are writing in third-person, let your sentences be clear, clean, direct, and no-nonsense. In fact, if you try to fancy them up too much, you are likely committing what we call "purple prose."

Clean and clear will do—in third-person you have enough else to worry about.

Usual caveat: yes, there are examples that violate everything I said above. That will always be true.

Watch for future blogs featuring #writingtips for younger or beginning #writers. Comment below—I’d love to hear your thoughts!