A Closer Look – First and Third Person

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The First Person Perspective


When you relate a story in the first person, it means you are talking about yourself. The sentence, “I saw her going into the police station” is an example of this form of narrative. It denotes a thing or an event expressed from your point of view. If the speaker is part of a group, then the sentence would be transformed to, “We saw her going into the police station”.



The advantage of using this type of ‘voice’ is that an immediate connection is made from the reader to the character. The reader is ‘in their head’ and experience the adventure and chain of events as they unfold to the main character. The drawback is that you cannot bring in any other perspectives from other characters (called ‘head hopping’). An exception to this is in the popular Young Adult novel, Divergent. Each chapter alternates from the First Person viewpoint of one of two main characters. However, as you are starting out, keep in mind that using First Person may limit the amount of details that you will be able to work into your narrative.






The Third Person Perspective


When you opt for a third person narrative, the pronouns he, she, and it are used together with the gender-specific objective pronouns him and her. There are two main types of third person writing: omniscient and limited. In omniscient writing, the writer can jump from one character to another and disclose more information, giving the reader more data that is beyond the coverage of the protagonist’s actions. In limited writing, the writer offers only what the protagonist is aware of.



The advantage of writing in third person is that the insertion of details and back story are easier to integrate than in a first person voice. Additionally, there is more opportunity to create tension between multiple characters. Likewise, when writing in third person, the burden of creating a believable character that the reader will like and identify with becomes more necessary as the reader may or may not be privy to the interior landscape of the protagonist.



In most schools, instructors usually promote the use of the third person narrative instead of the first person perspective. The first person perspective is deemed as informal and unsuitable for academic audiences. It can only be considered acceptable in academic writing if the teacher requires a personal informal approach on a specific article.



In fact, even though the first person perspective in writing is common when writing a person’s autobiography, some works use this perspective when telling a story using the point of view of a character that is part of the story.