I'm currently in the last stages of the first draft of my novel Feeling Gravity's Pull and will shortly start going over it again to try and tighten it up and rework a few areas.

Something I've been thinking about lately is the limitations of the first person narrative. I'm currently reading Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and it suddenly occurred to me that ideas and thoughts presented in the first person can seem somewhat crass in comparison to those represented in the third person.

In writing in the first person the author is representing themselves as the character, speaking through the character as it were. Whereas in the third person, whilst it is also true that the author is speaking through the character, the author is also removing themselves somewhat from the scene, in essence distancing themselves from the character. To me this somehow lends an extra level of validity to the voice and philosophical meanderings of the character.

Just wondered what other people thought about this.

Geoff

With first person, you're tied into their head, for better and for worse. With third, you can chose exactly how far - or not - you are. There are third person novels with no hint of a narrator separate from one or other character, or you can be the kind of narrator who offers opinions about the character, and indeed the world at large. The latter does tend to sound old fashioned, I suspect, and from what I remember of The Corrections, which I loved, the narration doesn't have a personality of itself, but is merely a neutral voice that takes on more or less of the different protagonists' characters.

Emma

Hi Emma,

I guess the main issue I have is that I wrote FGP in the first person because I wanted it to be very 'in your face'. The trouble is I think when I try to introduce issues and themes that fall outside the direct experience of the character i.e. his ideas or conclusions they're either a little tooin your face or they come across as preachy.

There are a few things I've tried to take the edge off like submerging the 'I' and introducing ideas as a one way conversation the MC has with an anonymous prank caller.

I guess I'm just wondering how the reader will take it and is this a common problem people have in writing in the first person. To be honest I've made things difficult for myself in choosing to have only a handful of lines of dialogue in the entire novel.

Geoff

I think you've hit on the core difficulty of first person narratives. I won't say 'limitation' because limitations are so often fruitful, but certainly for a lot of aspiring writers first person looks easier and is actually harder to handle, or even downright impossible if you've got a complicated plot.

Yes, you're limited in voice, tone, viewpoint both practical(plot) and philosophical (ideas), language, and no doubt there are others. Those are quite some limitations!

There seem to me two kinds of book where first person narrative works. One is what you could call the American Psycho line (well, you could, but I couldn't because I haven't read it). But anyway, a character either so incredibly compelling and possibly horrible that half the pleasure of the novel lies in inhabiting their head. That's a pretty 'literary' kind of pleasure.

The other kind which works is when the 'I' is a fairly nice, normal person who can be the reader's representative in the story. They have a character, sure, and a life which is interestingly different from ours, but much of their motivations and feelings are things that the reader can understand and empathise with. A nice literary-ish example that comes to mind is the MC in Vikram Seth's An Equal Music, and obviously a lot of genre fiction would come under that heading too, whether the space-ship lieutenant is trying to hide his terror at confronting the aliens, or Bridget Jones is agonising over whether to wear magic knickers or a black lace thong. I always remember a Mills & Boon guideline which went something like, 'You can describe the hero in every detail, but don't be too specific about what the heroine looks like, because the reader needs to imagine herself in the story.' QED.

I often write in 1st person (TMOL is two 1st person narratives in parallel) and I relish the technical challenge of getting things across to the reader that the narrator doesn't understand or know he's telling. But that's in the region of feelings and relationships; every time I try to get in some facts or ideas, it's a disaster.

when I try to introduce issues and themes that fall outside the direct experience of the character i.e. his ideas or conclusions they're either a little tooin your face or they come across as preachy.

I have to say I think this is the giveaway: you've understood your character, entered his head, and now you're trying to use him for things which your instinct is clearly telling you you can't use him for. Characters aren't mouthpieces for things the author wants to say, they're 'people'. If you're reading it like that, you can bet your bottom dollar a reader would. Part of the problem may be the very unrelenting tone of his voice, if there's so little dialogue, but I have to say that I can't help wondering if there's more to it than that. You may find you have to either give up on him, or give up on the things you want to say that he wouldn't.

Emma

There are limitations with both povs; I'm writing a novel, for the first time in third person and finding it hard to render thoughts without using the same tags over and over - he remembered, he recalled, he imagined, he thought etc. If you're writing in first you can drop memories and lines spoken by a character's internal voice straight into the middle of their speech (only outside the speech marks) and their true reactions will be clear and immediate.

Geoff, I'm a great believer in a story telling you how it wants you to be written. I always feel, to an extent, the pov chooses me. If you've completed a whole novel in this person, then my guess is it's probably right for the story. Is there any mileage in having some sections written in third person? Plenty of novels do switch pov, and you could match it with a change in tone for those sections too.

finding it hard to render thoughts without using the same tags over and over - he remembered, he recalled, he imagined, he thought etc.

Yes, I think it can be. There is 'free indirect' as David Lodge calls it, as invented by Jane Austen. She has such a strong sense of people's voices that she can slide from one character to another via a neutral narratorly voice, all in about five sentences, and without a 'he thought' to show for it, as I remember.

Though I'm also having that very trouble at the moment, with first-person present tense:

I suppose, I think, turning over laboriously yet again, I suppose he didn't feel able to tell me the truth.

What is the relationship between 'I suppose' and 'I think' in that sentence? Excellent argument against present tense narration, of course, but as Lammi says, this part of the story just did need to be present tense.

Emma

Hi Geoff

In writing in the first person the author is representing themselves as the character, speaking through the character as it were.

I know you're probably getting at the whole 'all fiction is biography and all biography, fiction' but I'm not sure I agree. The author is always presenting the character - and that's it, no? I don't think that Salinger was Holden Caulfield, or that Melville was Ishmael, or that O'Toole was Ignatius, or that Nabokov was Pnin or, indeed, Humbert. I do think that to put your own views through your character is fine, and loadsa writers do this, but then does that mean that it's your opinions that are 'too in your face' or 'preachy' - is that your concern? And even if they are, as long as it's consistent with how you've drawn the narrator then it's no problem - it's truthful, the book has integrity and will be better as a result. Cos that's it, isn't it? The reader has to believe in the truth of the character - that, yes, this is how they would speak, behave, respond. The reader will then understand and go with you anywhere. And you can draw understanding for even the most loathsome narrator (i kinda think it's one of the things novels are for) - the way O'Toole did for Ignatius (okay, I know it was strictly first person, but it was as near as goddammit).

I've tried to take the edge off like submerging the 'I' and introducing ideas as a one way conversation the MC has with an anonymous prank caller.

OBVIOUSLY I HAVEN'T READ IT but this sounds really forced. Sounds like you're trying to add ideas and themes onto the novel that maybe shouldn't be there? I call it authorial vanity (just made that up) and I suffer from it as much as anyone. If you can write a really good story by, as Emma puts in, staying inside this guy's head - make us know what it is he thinks, feels, why he reacts in the way he does, perhaps even elicit our sympathy, then why risk diluting all this good stuff by tacking on ideas that might jerk the reader out of place? It's a bit like stretching a really great miniature painting in order to get it to fit an oversized frame. It can all end up looking a bit grotesque.

Hi Sammy,

I can see where you're coming from indeed the feedback I often get from people who read my work is "Are you depressed?", "Are you feeling suicidal?" and then I end up banging my head against the wall after failing to explain that I'm a writer of fiction and that it's not autobiographical at all.

What I meant was that as the writer you are the director, indeed you are god as far as your character is concerned so everything is you in a way, even if it's complete fabrication.

As far as submerging the I goes I think it's a fantastic device that can remove some of the monotony of a first person narrative and tends to improve the flow of the piece. Compare the section below (which was taken from a discussion I read a while ago.

"In the summer in Tucson, kids would hike down to the dry washes. Those places were littered with the shells of abandoned cars. Tucson had a lot of thunderstorms for being a desert. There was that back-of-your-mind possibility that you could be killed in a flash flood. One time I almost was."

vs.

"I lived in Tucson, where kids would hike down to the dry washes in the summer. I always saw the rusted shells of abandoned cars in those places. Tucson had a lot of thunderstorms for being a desert. I was always secretly afraid that I could be killed in a flash flood. One time I almost was."

The introduction of information as a one way conversation with an unknown and unseen character is kind of a way of introducing dialogue without actually using it (if that makes sense!), and the prank caller eventually turns out to be central to the plot.

To be honest it's probably just me being way too analytical and worrying too much about these things but it's always useful to get other peoples perspectives on the issue.

If you want to read some of my stuff try comparing the two pieces below. The first I think works really well but for some reason the second one although it's almost exactly the same format doesn't 'feel' right somehow.

Dead Air

The Truth

Geoff

"In the summer in Tucson, kids would hike down to the dry washes. Those places were littered with the shells of abandoned cars. Tucson had a lot of thunderstorms for being a desert. There was that back-of-your-mind possibility that you could be killed in a flash flood. One time I almost was." vs. "I lived in Tucson, where kids would hike down to the dry washes in the summer. I always saw the rusted shells of abandoned cars in those places. Tucson had a lot of thunderstorms for being a desert. I was always secretly afraid that I could be killed in a flash flood. One time I almost was."

I think this really nails the differenc. Is it because when we think or talk colloquially about something external, we don't actually use 'I' most of the time? If you [see?] need a pronoun to be general it's 'you'. 'I' only comes in for a specific event.

Raymond Carver's one of the masters of this kind of voice, to my mind. And of course there's Alan Bennett's Talking Heads.

Emma

Hi Geoff

I enjoyed reading your pieces and thinking about the issues on this thread.

A thought - just because you are using the first person narrative doesn't mean that there is no authorial attitude. And perhaps that is something we need as readers - to know how we are to view this character. This can be done through relationships with other characters, and even juxtaposition of thoughts that can show a gap between how the character wants to present him/herself and what they are really thinking underneath. A good example of the latter would be, as Emma mentioned, Alan Bennett's Talking Heads where characters often present themselves as thinking one thing but are revealed through subtle language and juxtaposition to be thinking another - for example the antique dealer pretends to herself and to us that she cares about her neighbour for altruistic reasons, whilst really she is motivated by greed and selfishly eyeing up her antiques and hoping to make some money.

I think the first section you posted works better for me because the "preachy" stuff as you call it is in the context of a relationship - with the stranger on the telephone which makes it more intriguing. It reveals more about the main character - that he is desperate to reach out and make a relationship with someone - which immediately makes the reader engage more and sympathise. It asks questions - why he is doing this and what is the attitude of Sick Fuck? It also makes sense of the "preachy" stuff as we get the impression of a character desperately trying to make sense of something and trying to communicate to someone, but emotionally cut off from the "real world" so to speak. We wonder why.

Whereas the doctor scene has no relationship and we do not know how to read the ideas - are they the character's or the authors? I would have liked to hear what the doctor was saying even if the protagonist didn't reply. How does the doctor respond to the protagonist? I want some hooks of normality/ordinary situations to judge the character by - what is our attitude to him supposed to be? Where is the author on this? I suspect it is because of this authorial attitude not being totally defined in this section that leads people to mistake you for the character sometimes as you were saying earlier.

So I suspect this issue is more about thinking about the character and how you reveal this and the attitude you want to create towards this character rather than thinking about how to present the ideas. Looking at some drama might be helpful for this.

Don't know if this at all useful for you but its been very useful for me as it gave me something to think about as I am unable to sleep with a rotten cold! Hope you work out these issues and good luck with the second draft.

Hi Rosy,

Thanks for taking the time to read the two pieces and comment on them. You've certainly given me something to really think about and I've already come up with some ideas for changing the second piece based on that.

Hope you're feeling better.

Geoff