PART THE FIRST, In Which I Lay Out Terms and Background
It’s well known to those who spend even five minutes talking about writing with me that I am moderately anti-1st person (despite a plethora of enjoyable books written in it, including at least one of my absolute favorites, Nine Princes in Amber).
So I said, “Self, let’s do some analysis of it and see if we can figure out where your problem is.” Because maybe it’s just that I’m an old grump who grew up reading in an era when 1st person narration wasn’t common? Except first-person narration of fantasy has been around at least since Dante, and the aforementioned NPIA was published 45 years ago, and I read it when I was 13 years old.
First, a quick glossary of terms:
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POV: point of view. Whose eyes we are looking through to see the action of the story.
First person narration (1stP, 1PPOV): narration of a story by a person who refers to themself as “I”
Third person narration (3rdP, 3PPOV): narration of a story by a person who doesn’t refer to themself directly at all
(Second person narration is beyond the scope of this discussion.)
Narrative distance: how close the narrator is to the inner thoughts of a character. A distant narration will tell you the where, when, how; it will give bird’s eye descriptions of landscapes and musings on the world’s history. A closer narrator will tell you what a character thinks of the situation, often with direct internal monologue. Note: narrators can move closer to and further from a character at different times.
Limited POV: narration restricted to a close narrative distance, and usually the POV of a small number of characters (often just one)
Omniscient POV: narration spends at least some time at far distance, and is not restricted in where it may focus or how many characters’ POVs may be shown
Intrusive narration: When the narrator acknowledges they have an audience; they directly address the reader, or speak in a way that strongly implies they are aware someone will read their words. Reporters often do this. Note: an intrusive narrator isn’t necessarily speaking to the reader of the story. An epistolary novel might have an intrusive narrator(s) who is speaking to the fictional recipient of the letters.
Transparent narration: When the narrator “disappears” and just lets the story wash into the reader. Usually this is a technique to have the reader vicariously experience the story events. The opposite of intrusive narration.
Note: there is a broad continuum between Intrusive and Transparent narrators. Also note, this dimension of narration is not particularly related to narrative distance.
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Limitation of scope: This series of posts is specifically intended to address commercial fiction, with a primary focus on SF/F. By “commercial” fiction, I mean novels intended for a broad audience. No slight to the experimental and literary folks, but you’re not who I’m addressing here. I’m talking to the writers whose books are aimed at a mass market.
Okay, let’s do this thing.
A few weeks back, Charlie Jane Anders wrote a column at IO9 [link] about writing “rules” she wants to see broken more in SFF books. #1 on her list was “No 3rd person omniscient.” She correctly notes that some of the finest classics of the genre are written in 3rdP omni. (I’ll add to her list: Dune. You are in everyone’s head, swapping around from paragraph to paragraph.)
It was funny timing, because for days weeks I’ve been working on this blog post (which has now evolved into a multi-part blog series). Really, I’ve been stewing on this topic for YEARS, at least since Sarah Prineas asked me what I meant by first person narration not bringing the reader closer to the protagonist. (Or something like that. I can’t find the link.)
I think about 1st person narration a lot.
I am not a huge fan of it. Don’t get me wrong--done well, it is awesome. (Later in this series I do detailed discussion of three books where 1st person narration is essential and done marvelously.)
Done adequately, it is neither here nor there, though sometimes I think it’s a missed opportunity for a writer to pen a richer book if they had used a wider POV.
Most of the time these days, a 1st person narrator is the protagonist, and the story is told almost claustrophobically from their POV. It’s not just 1stP, it’s a very tight narrative distance.
The narrative distance of 1stP doesn’t have to be tight. For starters, if the narrator isn’t the main protagonist, we usually have a more distant narrative vantage.
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Times when the 1stP narrator isn’t the main character:
1. When she’s a framing device. “Let me tell you a story of how your grandparents saved the world. I was about nine years old when...”
2. When he’s a companion of the real protagonist. This is so commonly associated with the Sherlock Holmes stories that such a narrator is called a “Watson.”
3. A narrator who talks directly to the reader as a reporter, telling about something that happened, not all of which they were necessarily present for. Examples: Neal Stephenson’s first novel, The Big U; Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle.
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An interesting thing about this sort of not-the-main-character 1stP narrator is that 99% of the time they are intrusive. They are openly aware of an audience. In this sense, such narrators are very much like a person telling a story to a friend.
I will also note that such narrators are extremely similar to a 3rd person omniscient narrator. The main difference is they participate in or are personally present for much of the action of the story (perhaps less so when they’re a framing device).
Also note that these sort of narrators almost always operate in past tense. Often the conceit of the narration is that they are relating history.
(This last bit is interesting, because the natural voice of people talking to their friends is intrusive 1stP present tense. “So I go to the bar and there’s this guy there and hoo boy he is scary looking...”)
But nowadays, most of the 1stP narrators in the genre are the protagonist, talking about events strictly from their close POV. I discuss this concept at length in the next post.