I'm sure this has been brought up a zillion times on here but I get really concerned when I read about agent hatred of first person (past tense. Extreme hatred for first preson, present). For example, see http://blog.wylie-merrick.com/2009/01/roberts-needs-list-as-of-109.html (you need to scroll down quite a bit) - okay, it's an American agent but he says he will not even LOOK at first person POV! OMG!

I just don't get it - and I want to cry because I LOVE writing in first person and my first novel, and the next one, is all in first person (past tense). And I LOVE reading first person.

Am I doomed? Or is this just a handful of agents who dislike it? Can't they just base it on the darn writing and plot? *sigh*

And wasn't one of the biggest selling book series of recent years (Twilight series by S. Meyer) first person? Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Please don't send me anything written in first person. A first person narrative is possibly a good place for a beginner to start, but to be at the level I seek-- IMO, a finely finished author should have moved past this point of view. The only time I'll consider FP is if you are using both a first-person narrator with a third-person, limited omniscient narrator in your work. First person is just too limiting for the character development I seek.

That is that Agent's personal opinion. All it means is don't sent him/her a manuscript written in the first person. I doubt it's a view shared by all agents, across the board.
Personally I think it's a prejudice against First Novels, per se, (which a lot of Agents share) because first novels are often practice novels, full of beginners mistakes in technique and structure. If you are confident that your novel is free of such mistakes, then go ahead and submit it.


- NaomiM

Oh, I think it's bunk. But I suspect Naomi's right, that because it's such a common way into writing, an above average number of first novels are in first person, and actual first novels are very, very rarely good enough to get a deal. So, numerically, it's probably true that an above-average number of not-good-enough novels are in first person (hope I've got the logic of that right). So the agent's sort-of right, but he's attacking the wrong end of the logic: logically, what he should be saying is 'don't send me anything that isn't good enough' only of course he can't.

Anyway, at least you know who not to submit to, now...

Emma

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The trouble is, of course, that, faced with the mountain of submissions, agents do resort to any reason they can think of to reject things quickly. If their experience of first-person writing is poor, if you see what I mean, they'll be doubtful from the beginning.

But actually this agent's shooting himself in the foot, because who knows what he'll miss? Jane Eyre? Bridget Jones? As you say, Twilight?

Emma

My first and second novels were both written in the first person.
My third is in third and I've gone back to first for my fourth (confused? You will be...)

Anyway - got an agent and a publishing deal on book one with relatively little effort and certainly had a great deal of interest in it.

Of course the genre I write in (contemp women's fiction) does seem to favour this approach.

I'm sure that there are many agents who love first-person, just as there are many who don't. Just write the book you want to write, I'd say.

So that means this agent would have ditched Jane Eyre, Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye etc etc because he thinks good writers will have moved beyond this and it's too limiting for character development.

Piss midget.

It's a weird prejudice of this agent's own, I'd say. Maybe he has seen more rubbish first person novels than rubbish third person ones. So what, if your first person one is good?

Rosy

A fair amount of modern bestselling lit novels are written in first person too: The Lovely Bones, Notes on a Scandal etc. The first person can encompass so much, from Nick's dispassionate account of Gatsby to Barb Covett's unreliable account of her friend's downfall.

I am convinced that we are most likely to succeed by shutting our ears to shoulds and oughts, and writing precisely what we mean to write, the way we want to write it, to the best of our ability. The finest thing I've read in years is a novella fifty pages long, A Day Meant to Do Less by Kyle Minor. The author had the sense not to spin it out into a novel or contract it to a bare bones short, or chop it into several shorts. All of which would have worked and been good but not great.

It makes sense to keep an eye on the market and have respect for the views of those who are experienced in the trade, but it makes equal sense to utterly commit yourself to what you want to write, to allow the exact structure, length, tone, mode to be determined by your material, not prevailing market moods.

I suppose the real point is that since the starting-point for many first novelists is the pressing need to express themselves & get something of their life, experiences and thoughts down on paper (as opposed to the desire to craft a finely wrought work of art & all that entails) & since first person narrative appears tailor-made for that job, the likelihood of being lured into writing bad autobiography in the flimsy guise of a novel is extremely high.

At any rate, most of my own early attempts at novels were bad autobiography (and then I gave up).

So what this agent is really saying - behind the irritatingly snotty tone & wonky logic of that excerpt - is (perhaps) don't send me bad autobiography posing as a novel. Or even good autobiography.

Hi Trixie,

I started submitting my first attempt at a novel (written in first person) just over a year ago.

Out of about 17 submissions, I got 2 full manuscript requests, but no offers to take me on. The feedback that I got concerned the fact that the agents couldn't relate to the narrator and did not have enough empathy for her, with one of them stating that empathy with the main character is particularly important in first person novels.

From this I gather that there are many agents out there who are not opposed to first person BUT that first person can be very difficult to do well and maybe this is the reason why some agents have this aversion to it ( and because they have seen so many bad ones). Your choice of first person may not stop you getting over the first hurdles – most agents will still be willing to read it – but you might find that agents demand/expect more from a good first person novel.

Good luck with your submissions,

Livi

Interesting thoughts here. I agree with Livi. I think, if you do write in first person, it comes down to ensuring the narrator is a character that readers are happy to spend a few hours with. I hope my main character is - only time will tell.

I do agree that first person looks as if it would be easier, and is often harder - not just from the plotting point of view, but also perhaps because the writer's more likely to be caught inside the PoV, and not be able to see the character from the outside. If an editor finds it hard to empathise with an MC, it's often because the writer's so identified with the first-person narrator that they just haven't given the reader enough to imagine them with. They're so close that they only need the tiniest hint to fill in the full psychological portrait, whereas we, starting from zero, need a lot more. (I know I've said this before on WW, but another version of a similar problem is when the writer evokes all the places in the novel very fully, except the one based on their home town...) It's incredibly common in all kinds of aspiring work, but perhaps most obvious - and most disastrous - in first-person narratives because the reader has no one else to latch onto instead.

Emma



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Oh, and TMOL and ASA are all first person, FWIW - admittedly, two PoVs and three PoVs respectively, but still. I agree, I love writing in first person - all that scope for different voices, all the fun of trying to convey things the narrator doesn't know they're seeing, all the challenge of plotting from one PoV. What's not to like?

Oh goodness I don't know what to do now with my "first novel."

I was going to do a chapter on each main character's (two main characters in toto) story up to when they meet. I wasn't too sure about 1st or 3rd myself.

Do you think it would be better to write in 3rd person if I am going do this style of chapter?

Sorry to crash

Bev

Don't worry too much. I would try both versions (say 1 or 2 chapters in first person, 1 in third) and see which works best. Remember, this is only one agent's views. Good luck!

My first novel was/is first person and I'm not ashamed to admit it! I'm not. I, I, I!!!

JB