First or Third? · 11:05pm Oct 31st, 2015
A Certain Point of View: First or Third?
So, the comments on my last post successfully predicted where I was going next, so let’s just dive right into that (he says, already a day late).
It would be foolish to approach the matter of first-person versus third-person in terms of which is better, but what we can do is take a look at each and understand their advantages and thus when they are the appropriate choice.
I’ll leave off the discussion of psychic distance until I broach it as its own topic, but I do need to clarify exactly what it means. Psychic distance is an abstract way of quantifying the intimacy of prose. At maximum, it means the prose is completely neutral and not coloured by any character’s experience or voice, and at minimum, it means writing explicitly from that character’s perspective – that they see, think and feel, and only those things.
It would be easy to say that first person automatically qualifies as a zero (absolute minimum) psychic distance because the narrative is from the position of ‘I’, but the one way in which that not quite true is what gives us the greatest insight into the limitations of each perspective: the narrator can be fully immersed and experiencing the narrative in real time, or the narrator can be telling the tale after-the-fact or even devoid of any specific timeframe or context.
Real-time first-person narration is assuredly set at a psychic distance of roughly zero. The narrator does not know anything outside of the character’s current experience and personal memories. Exactly how much detail is given away can be used to effectively replicate the effects of varying the psychic distance of prose, but the choices involved in that still pull a reader in to be fully intimate with the character. This is by far the easiest form of first person to write since it comes with a hard and fast set of rules: if you character doesn’t know it, you can't say it; if your character doesn’t see it, you can’t describe it. On the upside, you can dish out opinions like they’re candy on All Hallow’s Eve.
While a story could jump out of first person to add in external details, it will more than likely come off as cheap, lazy, and a result of using the wrong perspective in the first place. The most common variation I’ve seen on this is using first-person narratives from different characters in different chapters. I’m not a fan of this, but that’s probably more to do with seeing it used badly so many times – giving away a second (or more) perspective means your abstract conflicts (i.e. the plot) has to be an awful lot tighter and more intuitive.
The other angle you can use first person in, however, is the retrospective: retelling the story after the fact. While such a narrative still can’t mention things the character does not know, it does open the door for the narrator to mention details that were unknown at the time. This increases your storytelling opportunities, but any deficiencies in your character’s voice will likely stand out like a neon-yellow 80’s throwback.
Both kinds of first person (in fact all, if you want to include any variants I haven’t considered) allow the narrating character to talk to you, the reader, directly, whether it’s in a conversational sense or just bluntly telling you what you need to know. It’s easier to make it sound natural in a retrospective since immediate first person is prose from that character’s perspective not literal narration, but also loses some of the intimacy, since it is also more akin to listening to the character rather than sharing his experience.
The majority of this can be replicated in third person by a thorough understanding of interior monologue: prose that directly represents a focus characters thoughts and feeling without being direct thoughts. While direct thoughts are on the table, that the only way a third-person narrative can address the reader directly is to employ a narrator in much the same way as a retrospective first person. This option suffers from a limit on how intimate the narrative can be with anyone character because the narrator needs an excuse to do anything more than guess at a character’s true thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
Usually, a third-person narrator’s voice is no stronger than the prose explicitly requires to have a distinct style. That narrator isn’t a person (beyond it being an expression of you) and thus can know exactly as much or as little as benefits the story. But though this lacks the ability to readily address the reader, there is very little else that cannot be mimicked from a first-person narrative. A little creative reconstruction and the appropriate substitution of pronouns and immediate first and third become essentially interchangeable. The associated problem is that ‘creative reconstruction’ involves turning direct telling that is normal in first person into something a little more showy and more apt to third.
To say that this is something of a spike in the difficulty curve is an understatement, and if I had to pick one reason why people choose a first-person perspective, this is it. But that single issue is a whole post of its own for later. The point is that it can be done, and in doing so an author is freed up to add whatever details are necessary to fill out the plot as needed, which is vital to establishing a lot of abstract conflict.
Now, all of this establishes us some parameters for two potential axis. On the left–right axis, we have first- vs. third-person narration, and on the up–down axis we have intimacy, or psychic distance.
Behold my rudimentary skills:
In many way, the ‘easier to write’ aspect of first person is largely encapsulated by the ease which which as author can minimise wordcount. Since emotional exposition is frowned upon in third person, conveying the same information effectively takes takes a lot more skill and a lot more words – trying to do it in as few words is probably the path to a self-inflicted aneurysm.
If, however, you tend to think cinematically and your stories involve cut-away scenes and multi-character plots, third person will likely pay higher dividends as long as you brush up on your show-vs-tell and authorial voice.
And for those who are exceptionally daring, you can always tell a third-person story with first-person narrator, but only if you're a masochist.
What’s easier is more or less what fits most naturally. Know the advantages and disadvantages of each position and think carefully about your story requires to work.
-Scott ‘Inquisitor’ Mence
I'd add the point that while so-called "telly" language is more excusable in first-person narration, there's a similar spectrum within that: it's much more excusable for the first-person narrator to be telly about his own emotions than about those of other characters that he observes. It' similar for a third-person narrator, depending on how limited.
Now I know why I find first person present tense the easiest to write: cause it's the easiest. Duh.
Great article! Looking forward to the next.
1st person past can be tricky when the narrator's voice is older and more experienced than the same person in the story. James Joyce's short story "Araby" is a good example of an old person telling a story of when he was a boy. You have to be careful to keep the two versions and voices of the same person both present and distinct.
2nd person arguably has less psychic distance than 1st person.
Some other considerations:
- 1st person lets you hide things the narrator doesn't know from the reader, but usually you can hide these in 3rd person anyway
- 3rd person lets you hide things the main character does know from the reader, and these are harder to hide in 1st person
- Present tense lets you hide more things from the reader, as you mentioned
- 1st person lets you use an unreliable narrator, to hide even more things from the reader
- 1st person makes it easier to convince the reader that the narrator isn't hiding anything
There's also the Watson, when you use a first-person POV as a third person narrator, describing the actions of the protagonist.
Personally, I prefer first person narration. I've always found it to be far more engaging and interesting than third person narration, especialy when done in the present tense. That's just me though.