A Rant On: Part One, First Person
Oh first person, how I loath thee. (Presenting Irony by Harker.)
Okay, that’s not entirely true. I am, admittedly, not a huge fan of first person but I’m hardly going to turn my nose up at a book just because of the narrative perspective. Many of my favorite works have been written in first person (see: Dracula, The Hunger Games, Protect Us, etc.) but so have many loathsome ones (see: Twilight, Night Huntress, 50 Shades, etc.). Do the latter condemn the former? No, of course not. I don’t get pissy with quotation marks for hanging around dialogue like “Don’t you like the butt drawer?” (I’m never not going to make fun of 50 Shades.) Because it’s not the quotation marks’ fault, the dialogue’s fault, or even the first person narrative’s fault. It’s all in how it’s used.
And I’m about ready to call PETE (People for the Ethical Treatment of English) to come rescue first person. This poor narrative perspective is being used like a catch all by a lot of people when it should be used like a scalpel. There is always a time and a place for first person. Here and now is an excellent time and place for first person as I, Mina Harker, am talking about things directly related to me and my opinions. First person is also a powerful, beautiful tool in a lot of poetry. In fiction, however, it’s a much trickier thing.
In the last decade or so it feels like the Sci-Fi & Fantasy genres have been positively flooded with first person. And it’s being used as a crutch. It’s being used to avoid dealing with more than one character in any kind of depth and for self insertion via Marry Sue (I’m looking at you, Twilight, and your Shady bastard offspring). One of the things I love most about reading and literature is character development. I adore being able to follow characters through growth and change, good times and bad. I want to become attached to the characters authors create. I want to love them and be genuinely invested in their futures, in every choice they make. This can and has been done with first person not infrequently for me; but it’s not an easy thing. It takes a great deal of skill, patience, and most importantly, the right story to make first person work.
Generally speaking, first person narrative can be tackled in one of two ways; multiple narrators (Dracula and Protect us) or single central narrator (The Hunger Games, 50 Shades, and Twilight). As a general rule, especially if you’re just starting out, I would recommend using multiple narrators for your first person narrative. There’s no guarantee your reader will like your main character enough to want to jump into their head. I didn’t want to be in Bella’s infuriatingly simple mind and I sure as shit did not want to be in Christian “I like to rape chicks and be an abusive dick in the guise of BDSM” Grey’s newest victim (whatever the hell her name was). There was honestly nothing that could save 50 Shades in my opinion (besides maybe a massive amount of red ink and a consult from someone actually in the BDSM community) but Twilight could have be vastly improved by alternating perspective between Bella “my life is run by the whims of my high school crush,” Glitter Boy Cullen, and Wolf Boy “I’m going to sex up my high school crush’s kid one day” McGee. It would have added a lot more depth to the story to get insight into these main characters. Instead, the only breaks in Bella’s narrative is, if I can remember correctly, once when she’s doing that whole catatonic for a few months because “What’s His Face didn’t text me back” thing and possibly at the end of one of the books after Ms. Nondescript gets married or turned or something? Both of which I think were Wolf Boy’s point of view which is a bit disappointing since he’s kind of a throw away love interest.
My point being that over the three main, popular/best selling books I’m covering (because I’m really not into first person and no one can make me read it anymore, suck it book reports), the only one of these that uses a single narrator that really works is The Hunger Games. Mostly, I think this comes from Collins’ skill as a writer but it also has a lot to do with the story and character itself. Katniss is the sort of character you would want to be in real life. Not because she has hot guys fawning over her or because she’s magically impervious to everything life throws at her but because she’s skilled and smart and fierce as hell. We all want to be at least one of those things. So it’s quite fun to be in her head. Moreover, instead of the author letting us wear the character like a fictional people suit (again, looking at you Twilight), Katniss very much feels like her own person. We’re listening to her and watching her story through her eyes, not becoming her. Which means that when she makes decisions we wouldn’t have, there isn’t this sudden need to put the book down and just spend a few minutes facepalming. The story itself also very much lends itself to a great single first person narrative. This is not really a love story, it’s Katniss’ story of survival. It’s her struggle through all the shit the games throw at her. There are points where I really, really wish I knew what was going on in other character’s heads but instead of being utterly frustrated with not knowing 100% of the story, I’m left secretly delighted/terrified at knowing exactly as much as Katniss does.
The bottom line is, first person written from a single perspective is a very delicate, tricky thing that should be used with care, with the right character, and for the right story. (Imagine if Sherlock had been written in first person from Sherlock’s perspective. It wouldn’t be nearly as thrilling or mysterious if we knew who did it five pages in.) First person from multiple characters, however, is a bit easier to use and works on a wider range of stories, romance especially.
Now, earlier I mentioned Dracula as one of the two books I adore that uses first person from multiple perspectives; and when I say multiple, I mean basically everyone involved in the horror show gets a chance to voice themselves at one point or another. It means we get to see the same situations and even some of the same scenes from multiple points of view. This is something I adore. Everyone sees the world differently and with a narrative like Dracula, that is brilliantly highlighted. It adds dimension and its very own texture to the story. This isn’t something you’re along for the ride for, this is a pile of letters and news paper clippings you must sort through to find the truth of the matter. This means, however, that the way first person is handled in Dracula is rather different from the way it’s handled in the vast majority of other first person with multiple narrators. It would be a hard thing to successfully mimic without the precisely right story.
Which brings me to Protect Us. Protect us tells its story through alternating perspective. And it works. It’s not as complex or laggy as Dracula and holds closer to The Hunger Games in the way it deals with narration, just with an extra narrator. We get to know Yumi as much as we get to know Chris. We feel their pains, their longings, their conflicts, their fears. In addition and very importantly, the characters around them are not left feeling flat. Instead, because we are reading from the perspective of people very close to the rest of the cast, we learn to love the others just as much as we love our protagonists. Moreover, like in The Hunger Games, Protect Us is told from the point of view of characters that are very much their own people. We aren’t wearing them to be dragged through a story not our own; we’re allowed to follow Yumi and Chris through their own trials and adventures, learning of their most inner thoughts, their most intimate emotions. Frankly, if Protect us or Dracula or The Hunger Games hadn’t been written in first person, I’m not sure they would be as captivating as they are.
And I think, in the end, that’s sort of my point. There is a time and a place for first person. There are characters that are going to tell you their story through “I”s and “they”s. But there are a lot of stories that lose something in first person. A lot of really good stories that become two dimensional just because an author is young or inexperienced or just hasn’t had access to any good second or third person literature to be reminded that it’s a thing. If you’re an author with something down on paper, write a throw away version/scene in another narrative voice, feel the limits of the dimensions of your work, listen to your characters. There’s always room to grow, to change, to improve. Don’t let yourself be limited by familiarity, by your comfort zone. Don’t let fads and a list of popular books make decisions about your story for you. Hell, don’t even let my rant cow you into changing your story’s perspective. That’s a decision you and your character and your story have to sit down and decide for yourselves. Because at the end of the day, that’s who you should be writing for; yourself.
©Mina Harker 2016
