Me, myself, and I
Aug. 11th, 2012 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ann_leckieYou can always tell when I have lots of things I'm supposed to be doing--that's when I write long LJ posts! I've got a long, long list of things to accomplish, subs that need reading, emails that need responses, household chores that are begging for my attention. So instead, I'm going to talk about first person.
This is partly triggered by the recent Mind Meld on POV over at SF signal, but not by anyone's particular response there. It just tripped over a sort of built-up annoyance over a few totally different discussions of first person POV.
So. I have already ranted over the "first person allows no suspense because we know the narrator has to have survived to literally tell this tale" thing. For convenience I will summarize my objections thus--life or death is not the only, or even necessarily the best, sort of suspense, and genre conventions mean the reader generally knows going in that the main character will live*, even though we all pretend we don't. And suspense isn't about not knowing what happens next, it's about caring what happens next and that's a totally different thing.
That disposed of. I have also recently seen it asserted that first person makes it difficult to depict any but the main character.
The first time I read that I boggled. Then I saw it pop up a few other places and boggled more.
First person doesn't make this any more difficult than tight third. And it's not really that difficult. I hesitate to ever say that any given writer is taking a "wrong" approach, because, you know, nine and sixty ways and the only thing that matters is if what you're doing works. But if you're seeing characterizing non-narrator characters as difficult or even impossible because of the inherent limitations of first person, I'd like to suggest you're looking at the problem from an unproductive angle.
It's true we only have access to the narrator's thoughts in first person. But unless that narrator is incredibly self-absorbed (a possibility, certainly), they're going to be seeing and noticing other people as they move through the narrative. And thoughts and emotions directly expressed are not the only way to give the reader access to character. Actions, the speed or hesitancy with which those actions are performed, small gestures, facial expressions, a few small, well-chosen details of dress or physical description, all these things and more add up to make a character solid in a reader's mind.
And it's the reader's mind that counts. The observed actions, that make for characterizing non-narrator characters, it's not for the narrator, it's for the reader. The narrator can think whatever she wants about the people around her, that won't necessarily match what you, as the writer, are meaning to convey to the reader about those other characters. The most obvious examples of this are those stories where the first person narrator is completely oblivious to what's actually happening, completely misinterprets what the other characters are doing and saying, but the reader can see what's really going on. You can get various levels of this, from flat out laughably unaware to mildly ironic. But the very fact that you can do that tells you right off that the characterization of non-narrator characters in first person isn't about what the narrator observes so much as it's how reporting what the narrator observes hits the mind of the reader.
Try looking at it that way. Not "I'm limited to the thoughts of the narrator!" but "How do I convey the thoughts and observations of the narrator in a way that's true to her character but tells the reader what I want them to know?" I suspect you'll get better results.
And don't forget that you actually don't need an internal monologue, or reporting of thoughts or feelings, to convey character. Yes, having that gives you a sense of intimacy and immediacy, yes that does make the job easier, but you can draw a convincing character with absolutely no information about that character's thoughts and emotions beyond what she says and does. Seriously, you can. And it's a skill worth having. If you're not sure how to do it, pay close attention to how non-POV characters are handled in almost anything you like--any story or novel that you really admire or love. Or try a "classic" that's in first person. Great Expectations, The Great Gatsby, there are more (even ones that don't have Great in the title!). Knowing how to do that will actually help you make even your POV characters more solid.
In short, I suggest that if your writing with first person narrators consistently comes off seeming like the narrator is completely self-absorbed and the other characters are hardly there, the problem is not the first person POV, but your not having paid enough attention to those other characters to begin with--and perhaps also not paid enough attention to how your narrator's character is going to affect how she sees those other characters. Working on that will, I'd bet, even vastly improve the characterization of your narrator, and that's all to the good, right?
____
*Except when the main character doesn't, in which case the reader is generally prepared for it in advance, very deliberately, by the writer. When this preparation is absent or insufficient, readers often react with feelings of anger and betrayal. Indeed, their expectations have been betrayed. That's not possible unless those are, in fact, default expectations.
This is partly triggered by the recent Mind Meld on POV over at SF signal, but not by anyone's particular response there. It just tripped over a sort of built-up annoyance over a few totally different discussions of first person POV.
So. I have already ranted over the "first person allows no suspense because we know the narrator has to have survived to literally tell this tale" thing. For convenience I will summarize my objections thus--life or death is not the only, or even necessarily the best, sort of suspense, and genre conventions mean the reader generally knows going in that the main character will live*, even though we all pretend we don't. And suspense isn't about not knowing what happens next, it's about caring what happens next and that's a totally different thing.
That disposed of. I have also recently seen it asserted that first person makes it difficult to depict any but the main character.
The first time I read that I boggled. Then I saw it pop up a few other places and boggled more.
First person doesn't make this any more difficult than tight third. And it's not really that difficult. I hesitate to ever say that any given writer is taking a "wrong" approach, because, you know, nine and sixty ways and the only thing that matters is if what you're doing works. But if you're seeing characterizing non-narrator characters as difficult or even impossible because of the inherent limitations of first person, I'd like to suggest you're looking at the problem from an unproductive angle.
It's true we only have access to the narrator's thoughts in first person. But unless that narrator is incredibly self-absorbed (a possibility, certainly), they're going to be seeing and noticing other people as they move through the narrative. And thoughts and emotions directly expressed are not the only way to give the reader access to character. Actions, the speed or hesitancy with which those actions are performed, small gestures, facial expressions, a few small, well-chosen details of dress or physical description, all these things and more add up to make a character solid in a reader's mind.
And it's the reader's mind that counts. The observed actions, that make for characterizing non-narrator characters, it's not for the narrator, it's for the reader. The narrator can think whatever she wants about the people around her, that won't necessarily match what you, as the writer, are meaning to convey to the reader about those other characters. The most obvious examples of this are those stories where the first person narrator is completely oblivious to what's actually happening, completely misinterprets what the other characters are doing and saying, but the reader can see what's really going on. You can get various levels of this, from flat out laughably unaware to mildly ironic. But the very fact that you can do that tells you right off that the characterization of non-narrator characters in first person isn't about what the narrator observes so much as it's how reporting what the narrator observes hits the mind of the reader.
Try looking at it that way. Not "I'm limited to the thoughts of the narrator!" but "How do I convey the thoughts and observations of the narrator in a way that's true to her character but tells the reader what I want them to know?" I suspect you'll get better results.
And don't forget that you actually don't need an internal monologue, or reporting of thoughts or feelings, to convey character. Yes, having that gives you a sense of intimacy and immediacy, yes that does make the job easier, but you can draw a convincing character with absolutely no information about that character's thoughts and emotions beyond what she says and does. Seriously, you can. And it's a skill worth having. If you're not sure how to do it, pay close attention to how non-POV characters are handled in almost anything you like--any story or novel that you really admire or love. Or try a "classic" that's in first person. Great Expectations, The Great Gatsby, there are more (even ones that don't have Great in the title!). Knowing how to do that will actually help you make even your POV characters more solid.
In short, I suggest that if your writing with first person narrators consistently comes off seeming like the narrator is completely self-absorbed and the other characters are hardly there, the problem is not the first person POV, but your not having paid enough attention to those other characters to begin with--and perhaps also not paid enough attention to how your narrator's character is going to affect how she sees those other characters. Working on that will, I'd bet, even vastly improve the characterization of your narrator, and that's all to the good, right?
____
*Except when the main character doesn't, in which case the reader is generally prepared for it in advance, very deliberately, by the writer. When this preparation is absent or insufficient, readers often react with feelings of anger and betrayal. Indeed, their expectations have been betrayed. That's not possible unless those are, in fact, default expectations.