First or Third person?

 

When creating stories I often throw around the idea of writing from a different perspective. I wrote my first novel in the third person and it took me a long time to finish the story compared to books I've written recently. After finishing that novel and moving onto another story I wrote from a first person perspective, I realised what my problem was. I can't connect with my characters while writing for the character.  While writing in third person, I'd often come up with a scene that made sense to the story, but wouldn't pull the reader in. I was too far away from the character and in turn pulled myself away from the story. Writing from a third person perspective is like giving someone an air hug, while a first person perspective is more of a long embrace full of affection. I felt like I limited myself by writing in the third person and left a lot of the character out of the story. So I finished plotting my next story, then wrote a scene in both first and third person. The story made sense in the third person, but it felt real in the first person. I wrote as my character and unlocked the potential of my story by doing so. Every emotion my character was meant to feel, was now an emotion of mine. She was no longer just giving an insight on her day to day life, I was right there with her while she was doing everything. Writing in the first person allows me to get lost in my story, as if I'm recollecting my own experience. later down the line I wrote a short story in the third person and it worked amazingly. It's a murder mystery and I found that the third person is great for a story that has multiple characters involved. It allows you to give everybody a side in the story without having to waste time going back and forth between characters. I'm sure all of this is something you've already known for some time now. I guess it's fairly obvious which perspective works best with whatever story. It wasn't obvious to me, I've always done far better through trial and error. I just felt the need to share my experience using different POV's and provide a simple explanation on how different they are when it comes to connecting. Neither perspective or worse or better than the other. One just happens to fit a story far better than the other. There is no mandatory way to write a book and you should always write in the way that suits you. I'd like to end this by expressing my appreciation for you reading my nonsense post. I had yet another opinion that I didn't want to keep contained. I am very appreciative of your time.