Defining Point of View: Part 1 - First Person Point of View

Thanks for stopping by! As promised, today’s post will concentrate on the first of three points of view.

Before I continue, I want to mention something. It seems that the interpretation of points of view varies mildly from one person to the next. That is to say, the main points of view to me are: first, second, and third (with variations in between). To others, the main points of view may be: first, third, and omniscient (with no mention of second). Get my point? I’m not sure why this is. It may just be my ignorance or lack of experience. The following information is my understanding or my interpretation. As always, take it with a grain of salt.

Some of the research for this post was accomplished through the following sites:

The Writing Gym and The Blue Quill

First Person Point of View

First person point of view involves a character in which first person pronouns and first person possessive pronouns are used to tell the story in a narrative format. This is popular for many writers and is something that can be hard to accomplish correctly. I'm sure this is due to the fact that first person point of view requires an incredible sense of focus in order to convey what is happening (in an interesting manner) to the reader.

Also, you should take caution to avoid using your personal voice through the narrator, as you’ll want your characters to have a personality of their own. Make any sense? Ella Quince, from The Blue Quill, explains it better than I can:

"The challenge of writing in the first person is to capture the voice of a particular character, determining what kind of words they would use, the cadence and rhythm of their speech, and their attitude toward life. No two people sound alike, even in their thoughts, so the personality of the character — NOT the author of the story — should be reflected in the narrative style."

Now, there are different variations to the first person point of view (as if it’s not hard enough). I’ll start out by listing a few of these, and then concentrate on two that I think are most important. The others are used, but not as often.

Some variations include:

• First Person Protagonist/Subjective
• First Person Objective
• First Person Re-teller
• First Person Witness
• First Person Collective

First person protagonist - This writing style is accomplished through the main character’s narration of events that occur to him or her, past or present. This is probably the most popular variation of the first person point of view. Here’s an example from one of my short stories (not the best in the world, but should suffice):

I remember standing in that small, dimly lit room. There was no air circulation. Each breath I took felt like a mass of congealed soup slipping into my lungs.  The ripe smell in the air lingered around; silently mocking and tormenting me with its invisible tendrils of death and decay.  My mind forced me to look away, yet my eyes kept gravitating back with an impossible will of their own.

First person witness - Unlike the first person protagonist point of view, first person witness involves a secondary character (or witness) that is narrating the main character’s story as certain events occur to them. For instance:

I couldn’t believe John was standing there, facing the body. He told me earlier that he knew who it was before coming to the scene, but he decided to come anyway. I imagine it won’t be long before he turns on his heels and hauls butt.

Notice how, in both of these examples, that the narrators’ focus is only in their span of awareness. As focused as their attention can be towards any character, they cannot enter the minds of others, or view what’s outside their immediate area.  For instance, in that last example, the narrator notices John’s behavior, but may not notice that someone else is watching her instead. Allowing the narrator to do so breaks the idea behind first person point of view and will only serve to confuse your readers.

First person protagonist and first person witness are what I would imagine to be the most popular usage of first person point of view. I do want to mention two more, briefly; first person collective and first person re-teller.

First person collective simply involves a group of characters acting as one. For example:

We watched him move across the boundary of the forest, scavenging for food. Our first instinct was to attack, to drive him away, but we decided not to. We would wait for a better opportunity.

First person re-teller involves a character that narrates based on a story he or she has heard second-hand. Just think “gossip” in this case.

They were pretty brief, weren't they? Go ahead, breathe that sigh of relief.

That’s it for tonight’s post on first person point of view. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Let me end it by asking you a couple of simple questions: Do you enjoy writing in the first person point of view? Do you find it difficult to do so? Does this post clear a few things up for you?

Drop by tomorrow to catch the second part of three posts in which I will discuss the second person point of view. Don’t worry; this one will be quick and painless, I promise. It’s not a popular point of view and therefore will not be much to talk about.

Comments

[seven jaxon]

thankyou for having google because i have a book report coming up and i had to look up persons point of view.My Teachers said if i had one thing missing i would get an F+ and that's not good because i'm an A\B student last week i had an 100 AND I DROP IT TO A 98 bacause i had something missing. Thanks any way