First, third, or another person? What writes best?
Introduction
We can write a story in different narrative situations. The most well-known are the first person (the ‘I’ style) and the third person (the ‘he/she’ style), but other narrative situations (‘styles’) are also possible. All styles have their advantages and limitations.
In this article I will mainly describe the narrative situations from the first and third person. What writes best, or not, in given situations? I will give an example of converting between the first and third person. I will also briefly discuss other, less common, narrative situations.
First person
I always wrote my first stories in the first person. I wrote as ‘I’. I had good reasons for that. I had just started, the writing was still a bit difficult, and I actually started with stories about myself, which simply wrote best in the ‘I’ style. It gave me something to hold on to, I dived ‘into myself’, as it were, and in that way my first stories rolled out as it were automatically.
The strong involvement as a writer in the story can easily be transferred to the reader. And that is immediately a great advantage of writing in the ‘I’ style: it is a natural way to involve the reader more strongly in the story. When reading a ‘I’ story, you as a reader can, as it were, get into the skin of the ‘I’ person and thus experience the story yourself, as if you were right in the middle of it. This is especially true if the ‘I’ person is the main character, as is usually (but not always!) the case.
Writing as ‘I’ also has its limitations.
First of all, it can evoke unwanted associations in the reader. The reader might think that the story is completely autobiographical, while in reality this may not be the case, or at least not the intention. Even if the story is (partly) autobiographical, the writer may have reasons to disguise this, for example to not reveal himself completely, or to avoid recognizable situations with family or acquaintances. This can even be a reason to convert an original ‘I’ story into a story in (usually) the third person.
A story in the ‘I’ style also has limitations, inherent to the ‘I’ perspective. If this perspective is consistently implemented in the story, the observations also remain limited to ‘I’. For example, if ‘I’ meet someone for the first time, I cannot describe what this person thinks about me at that moment. After all, ‘I’ cannot read minds (unless I am writing fiction, in which supernatural powers are introduced). There are solutions to work around this, if that were necessary. For example, the ‘I’ person would have information from someone else, for example: “This person has been in love with you for months.” Another solution can be chosen in the form of: “It would only become apparent much later that this person…” In that case, we do deviate from the chronology. I hope to write an article about this in due time.
The third limitation I want to mention here becomes relevant when the ‘I’ person dies. For the sake of convenience, we will limit ourselves to ‘death at the end of the story’. Opinions are divided. I myself believe that this is only possible to a very limited extent in ‘I’ stories without supernatural fiction. For example, the ‘I’ person cannot be shot dead and then quickly finish writing the story. A slow death would theoretically be possible, in which the writer still ‘writes’, or for example dictates, until death occurs, but even then, death itself cannot be described. Some writers have solved this by writing a kind of epilogue from the perspective of someone else, but then the principle of the ‘I’ person is abandoned.
Despite a number of inherent limitations, I myself very much like to write in the ‘I’ style.
Third person: two main variants
When writing in the third person, I follow two main variants that are also adhered to by many authors and literary experts. These main variants are the personal and the authorial narrative situation (whereby the narrative situation should not be confused with the narrative perspective).
Third person: personal style
When writing in the pure personal style (narrative situation), the story is told through the eyes (the perspective) of one person. The reader is, as it were, ‘in the head’ of that one person and experiences the story as such, with that one person. I myself believe that writing in the ‘I’ style (see above) is a specific form of the personal style. Both forms can even be so close to each other that the only real difference is the first versus the third person in which it is written. Sometimes writers also experiment while writing, at the beginning or at a later stage: continue with the chosen style, or convert to the other style?
The third person, personal style is often seen as more objective than the ‘I’ person, but that is a misunderstanding. The third person can also be subjective and often is.
The writer can also choose to describe the story from the perspective of multiple people. If this is applied consistently, without introducing additional matters that each of the perspectives cannot ‘know’ at that moment, then this is still the personal style.
The advantages of writing in the third person, personal style is that it largely eliminates the inherent limitations of writing in the ‘I’ style. As mentioned before, I myself like to write in the ‘I’ style, but sometimes I convert my story after, or already during the writing, to the third person, usually in the personal style. Reasons why I sometimes do this are:
The story is not autobiographical, or I do not want to give the impression that it is autobiographical. By transforming the ‘I’ person into a ‘he’ or ‘she’ I want to avoid the impression that the story relates to my own life. Strictly speaking, it does not matter whether this is true or not.
In a number of stories, the main character dies. Some other writers have found creative ‘I’ solutions for this. I personally find it more realistic to choose the ‘he/she’ style in this case.
I have not experienced any real limitations of the story itself in the third person. If the personal style is too ‘narrow’ for the story, we can possibly choose the authorial style (see the next paragraph). My personal limitation lies more in the writing than in the story. But, as mentioned above, sometimes I choose to write in the ‘I’ style first and later convert this to the ‘he/she’ style.
Third person: authorial style
When writing in the authorial style, the writer uses a narrator who knows more than the characters in the story. In the extreme form, we call this the omniscient narrator.
The dividing line with the personal style is often very thin. So thin, in fact, that sometimes, consciously or unconsciously, this line is crossed. In a story in the personal style, for example, the principle can be deliberately deviated from in one or more places, in order to introduce an element of suspense. Example: ‘She crossed the dark road and focused on the man who crept past the bushes towards the gate.’ Let us assume that this is a story in the personal style. If we add to this: ‘She did not notice that, from the roof, a sniper had her in his sights’, then the story becomes, at least temporarily, authorial. Again, this can be a conscious choice of the writer. However, we also often see that the writer unconsciously crosses the line between personal and authorial. This can be at the expense of the consistency of the story. The narrator in the authorial style can be ‘more knowledgeable’ (the narrator knows more than the characters, but not everything) or even omniscient (the narrator knows everything about the characters that is relevant to the story, for example the background, the life story, or even the thoughts).
In the authorial style, the writer can also apply changes of perspective, whereby the story is experienced alternately from the perspective of different characters. The narrator can be more knowledgeable or omniscient for all these characters. Strictly speaking, this is not necessary, but it can make the story complicated and even inconsistent.
The advantage of the authorial style is the greater freedom in writing. The narrator floats above the story, as it were, and the writer can use this to create strong elements of tension. In certain situations, the reader ‘knows’ more than the character(s). What will happen? Will the trap snap shut? Or will the person find out in time what the threat is?
The advantage of the narrator floating above the story can also be a disadvantage. The reader floats along with the narrator, as it were, and may therefore find it more difficult to identify with the characters in the story, especially the main character. It depends on the strength of the writer whether he or she can create sufficient tension in the story. I myself have little experience with the authorial style. But that may also have to do with my preference.
Example
The following example clarifies the difference between the styles described above: first person, third person – personal and third person – authorial.
First person
On the polder dike I picked up speed. Three minutes to the tunnel, I knew. After the bridge at the end of the dike I made a sharp left turn, tacked my Kawasaki down the slope, jumped full throttle over a ditch and landed on the road. Two hundred metres to go. I opened the throttle wide and ten seconds later I tore into the tunnel.
Third person – personal
On the polder dike she picked up speed. Three minutes to the tunnel, she knew. After the bridge at the end of the dike, she made a sharp left turn, tacked her Kawasaki down the embankment, jumped full throttle over a ditch and landed on the road. Two hundred meters to go. She opened the throttle wide and ten seconds later she tore into the tunnel.
Third person - authorial
On the polder dike she picked up speed. Three minutes to the tunnel, she knew. After the bridge at the end of the dike, she made a sharp left turn, tacked her Kawasaki down the embankment, jumped full throttle over a ditch and landed on the road. Two hundred meters to go.
She would never have dared to choose the road through the tunnel if she had known that at that moment a tanker truck loaded with explosives was driving through the tunnel at a snail's pace, like a monstrous predator waiting for its prey. But it was too late. She opened the throttle wide and ten seconds later she tore into the tunnel.
The above fragments are different styles of the same paragraph from one of my stories. When I started this story, I wrote in the ‘I’ style. My main reason was that this was easier for me to write (but that can be different for everyone). After a few chapters I changed my mind and converted the story into the ‘she’ style. I had a number of reasons for this.
First of all, I wanted to break any connection with myself. Readers who know me personally (at the moment the largest circle of readers) would come across a number of subjective improbabilities. For example, they would immediately notice that I would never, ever climb on a Kawasaki. Now this does not have to mean anything for the story, but still various prejudices could arise here. ‘He fantasizes a lot’ (which is true) and ‘is he trying to write off dissatisfaction, frustrations etc. here?’ (which is definitely not true).
Furthermore, at that time I did not yet know how I would end the story. A long and happy life for the main character? A tragic end? Keeping all options open was another reason to switch from ‘I’ to ‘they’.
I deliberately did not make the step to ‘authorial’ for this story. The storylines are already complex enough and at the moment I still lack the writing experience to add an extra complicating factor.
I will not reveal the reason why it became ‘they’ and not ‘he’. Read the story in due time, when it is finished!
Hybrid styles
There are numerous hybrid styles. Various writers have used them to their heart’s content. Without elaborating on these hybrid styles here, I will mention a number of them:
• Alternating first person with third person.
• Various third persons with their own perspective, but no omniscient narrator.
• A narrator who does not know everything, but more than the person(s) in the story.
Other persons’ styles
Writing is not limited to the first or the third person style. Other styles, with some examples, are:
• Second person (you, you): for example: a poet dedicating his poetry to his (silent) lover, but also: an assembly manual for a cupboard, or a recipe.
• First person plural (we): for example: the report of a match, an adventure, or a war.
• Second person plural (you): we see this regularly in religious books, in which humanity is addressed, for example about certain rules of conduct. The 'you' style can also be used in a pep talk by, for example, a CEO or a football coach, although I myself believe that in such cases the 'we' style is more effective.
• Third person plural (they): I can think of few examples. This style could, for example, be used to record a description of a hostile invasion of a country: 'From the wild sea they came sailing up the river in their ships with dragon heads. They plundered every city, every village, to the bone and all they left behind was total chaos.’
Try it yourself
Many writers tend to stick to paths they once chose. You can be successful in this. However, I recommend that you experiment as a writer. Throughout your writing life. No matter at which level, it will give you a lot of satisfaction as a writer.
Good luck!