The case against multiple 1st person POV
by The Pecman
Elsewhere on the net, there was recently a debate on another writer’s story, a work of erotic fiction that had a good idea, good characters, and (arguably) a good plot. But after I tried gamely to get through the first chapter, I was put off by the author’s use of no less than five (5!) different points of view, which I felt was confusing, obvious, and gimmicky.
For the uninitiated: 1st person means you’re essentially hearing the story as told to you by an observer.
"I walked down the street and saw Jimmy crossing at the intersection. His eyes met mine, but he looked away and began to run in the opposite direction. I was perplexed, because we had been friends for years..."
And so on. You’re experiencing life through one person’s eyes.
3rd person implies an "omniscient" point of view, using an unseen narrator (usually the author’s own voice) describing several different people and events. For example, the above scene could be like this:
"Ralph walked down the street and saw Jimmy crossing at the intersection. Their eyes met, but Jimmy looked away and began to run in the opposite direction. Ralph was perplexed, because they had been friends for years..."
And so on.
One advantage of 3rd person is that you can instantly leap from inside one character’s head to another, revealing thoughts and details that are known to only one person:
"Ralph walked down the street and saw Jimmy crossing at the intersection. Their eyes met. Oh, no, thought Jimmy. I can’t talk to Ralph now. I’ve got to get to the hospital, before anybody finds out about what happened.
Jimmy began to run in the opposite direction. "Wait!" cried Ralph. "Hold up!" He was perplexed, because they had been friends for years..."
OK, maybe that’s lame, plus I elaborated a little bit, but believe me, almost anything that you can do in 1st person can be duplicated in 3rd. And yet there are sometimes advantages to writing in 1st person:
1) a memoir, like an autobiography, where someone is looking back on his or her life and telling their own story.
2) when you need to deliberately omit or obscure key plot details -- secrets, crimes, motives, unseen characters, or what-have-you -- so that the reader only knows what’s going on from the lead character’s viewpoint. For this reason, most detective fiction is told in 1st person, like Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.
3) a "fish out of water" story, where a character is suddenly plunged into a dramatically new place and struggles with adapting to their new environment.
and 4) a personal story, where the writer wants the reader to feel the emotions of just a single character, and identify solely with that character.
There may be others, but those are a few reasonable ones.
I just picked up Nancy Kress’ new book Characters, Emotions & Viewpoint, and here’s what she has to say about multiple 1st person POV:
"How many points of view are you allowed? A general rule of thumb is to have as few points of view as you can get away with and still tell the story you want to tell.
"The reason for this is... we’re used to experiencing reality from one POV. Each time you switch from one fictional viewpoint to another, the reader must make a mental adjustment. If there are too many of these, the story feels increasingly fragmented and unreal."
This is exactly the point I was trying to make.
Later on in the book, Kress admits that a few major authors (such as Ursula LeGuin in The Left Hand of Darkness) have experimented with two or more points of view, but that it’s best done with characters from radically different cultures, "giving us more intimate looks into these two mindsets than if either character had been the sole narrator." I could see where this might work if one was, say, a human male, and the other was an asexual alien. I call that radically different.
Kress goes on to say: "Jumping from inside one head to another, especially repeatedly, may fragment reader identification so much that the story may be ruined. It seems to work best where there is a great contrast between the characters and the author wishes to emphasize that wide gulf."
I can see that, maybe, with two characters of different races, different cultures, and so on, particularly in a science-fiction or horror situation. But not in a romance or relationship novel, which covers 90% of the stories on this site.
The story that started this discussion had no less than five points of view in the very first chapter, and I was so annoyed, I had to grit my teeth just to make it through those few pages. I’m too frightened to go back and see if fewer points of view were done in later chapters, for fear that there might be even more.
I think 1st person is a terrific way for beginning writers to start writing short stories and novels, because it’s the easiest way to tell the story. "I woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head." Got it. That’s a pretty straightforward, direct method, as if you’re telling a tale to friends gathered around a fire.
3rd person works better when you need to show scenes more objectively, reveal details that the lead character(s) don’t know about, and show when a character is lying (and only this character and the audience know it’s a lie). 3rd person also allows the author to make observations about the setting (the building, the town, the climate, etc.), the characters, and so on. The narrator can also know much more than the characters, foreshadowing tragedy that lies ahead, and have free rein in establishing the mood and time for each scene.
I say all this because I believe multiple 1st person point of view is a very difficult, messy technique in which to tell a story. It calls a lot of attention to itself, snapping the reader out of the story; I made a case that I get "literary whiplash" whenever the author jumps back and forth and says, "JOE’S POINT OF VIEW," or "JOE," followed by more dialog. It’s clunky, ugly, and interferes with the smooth flow of the story. It constantly reminds the reader that he or she is reading a story, rather than just letting the story seamlessly happen.
I think if you’re William Faulkner or Ursula LeGuin, that’s one thing; each has written at least one novel with two or more points of view. But I have yet to read an author on the net who writes at that level. My opinion is that it takes only a little more effort to write the story in 3rd person. Otherwise, you’re just putting yet another obstacle in the path of the reader, making it harder for them to appreciate the story and identify with your characters.
If anybody can give me a passionate argument as to how a multiple 1st person story would be superior to the same story told in 3rd person, I’m all ears. And I’m still willing to take 1000 words from anybody and rewrite it, to prove my point.
[originally posted on the Writers’ Workshop section of Awesomedude.com <http://Awesomedude.com> in April of 2007]
