What do you prefer personally? 1st POV or 3RD POV.

[Ral_062]

Since i write my stories in a 3rd perspective, i began to wonder what is more appealing. I can see the perks of 1st person being able to express the character's feelings more than 3rd person can while i have zero ideas what 3rd person story telling can actually bring ? since im still a rookie.

But just curious of what the perks of either writing styles though.

 

[Envylope]

3rd person limited with the ability to zoom into 1st person.

 

[WriterTrek]

I'm not a fan of omniscient but limited/close 3rd and 1st are about the same to me.

Unless you have multiple POVs, in which case I prefer limited/close 3rd.

 

[TinaMigarlo]

Since i write my stories in a 3rd perspective, i began to wonder what is more appealing. I can see the perks of 1st person being able to express the character's feelings more than 3rd person can while i have zero ideas what 3rd person story telling can actually bring ? since im still a rookie.

But just curious of what the perks of either writing styles though.

When I was a reader only way back when, I noticed most of my paperbacks were third person. I naturally started writing that way as well. Felt natural. I had read a *few* first person books, but it wasn't the norm for me. I tried first person a couple times early on writing but I didn't like the results and stayed with third person. Late in my game, couple years ago. I had a special case, and I was experimenting with initiall;y third person. Results on the test chapter were lackluster. I then tried first person of the guy, and while it was better, I wasn;t thrilled. That test went great though, when the girl was first person. So with trepidation, I entered in with first person for my first real project.

I was surprised. It came easy, maybe because I was more experienced by that stage. It went really well, enbded up being my favorite thing I had made yet. Wow. I started using it, and I kept getting results. Its now my go to and replaced third person. I used third one time since, because test chapters with that writing went better with third. The big differences...

its intimate to the MC. Reader sees thru their eyes, hears what they hear, knows all they know. gets treated to their inner thoughts and deductions and guesses. I want the reader to not know something? Easy. MC don;t see it. I want them to see or hear or know? Just let MC around it. Its great. The only thing is, I cant hop around and show things if it isn't happening around my MC. But it also keeps me from going off on a tangent, too. Fair trade.

Now I finally did a cold open for a short intro chapter, before diving into first person for the entire book. That seemed to work really well. I can tell I'm going to sometimes "pull back" and let someone else have a chapter. Checking in on the bad guy, for instance. I find this my matured style and I like where I'm at.

People talk about "finding your voice" as a writer. And really, I think it just sounds really cool and people like hearing themselves drop that sage sounding sound bite. The hell is that anyways. When you like how its going? Whatever it is, there. That's you found your voice. You could just as easilyu have said "got good" or "gained experience" but no. Anyways, me finding first person and liking it so much. That was my own personal "I found my voice". Using a third person chapter then goping back to third, is a nice "gear change" and breaks things up. LIke doing a chord change in a song, or breaking into the "middle 8" if you know music.

I don't intend to mess with second or mixed person. I will keep POV through a chapter.

my two cents.

 

[Tetrahedron]

depends on scale. If you want to make it epic, do a wider omniscient third person POV. If you want to keep tracking on the protagonist but not to sound like you're narrating a self-insert MC, do a limited third person POV. If you feel like you want to make a believable protagonist i.e describing how they feel and their thought process, do a first person POV.

But again, it's entirely depending on everyone's taste on how to deliver a story

 

[TinaMigarlo]

the difference between 1st and 3rd, best way to see it easy.
think instead its a movie, not a book.
where is the camera? that's what will make the little movie in your head as you read.
3rd person, the camera is wherever you feel like sticking it at any moment.
1st person, its mounted on their forehead.

 

[CanOfTuna]

I've actually never noticed the difference between first person and third person until I started writing. Reading the posts debating which is better and watching writing videos made me feel as if I missed an inside joke or something.

First person: when the story is more about the internals of the protagonist
Third person: everything else I guess

 

[JordanIda]

As a reader I dread first person, because it is typically badly done. I'll occasionally kick the tires and rapidly conclude, "Yep. Blech." I can think of a few good novels written in first person. Moby Dick. The Great Gatsby. Cat's Cradle. But I can't think of a single one written in this century. Is it because untrained writers are making uninformed structural decisions for their projects, or is it because this is the century that the novel died? Perhaps a bit of both. As for poor structural decisions: Maybe first person is chosen by writers on the notion that it puts the narrator and therefore also the reader "in the story," or that it more directly conveys the inner machinations of the main character's gray matter. These are fallacious presumptions. Third person omniscient, if done well, puts the reader in every character's head.

As a writer I choose the narrative style that best suits the project. These days I'm using third person omniscient, because it is most suitable for the subject matter, the scope, etc. If tomorrow I'm working on a project that places the narrator in tightly constrained space and want to use the narrative conceit to intentionally withhold and gradually reveal information to the reader (as in Moby Dick), or if the narration calls for a journalistic style (Great Gatsby), or if the narrator is a chronicler who is best portrayed as vulnerable to habitual discovery and revelation (Cat's Cradle), then I might deem first person present more suitable.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

It depends. Both have their strengths and weaknesses - and if the story uses those well, it works. If not, the author probably picked the wrong voice.

 

[autumnsugar]

It depends on what I’m writing, for my short story I used 1st person because I really wanted to get into my MC’s head, but for my novel I am using 3rd person because I have multiple characters who’s thoughts and actions I want to explore.

 

[Worthy39]

I generally prefer reading in third person, but I did recently start writing a story in first person.

 

[DismaiNaim]

Some readers don't like 1st person. I've never met a reader who didn't like 3rd person, so there's that.

I write in 1st because years ago when I started this story I figured "maybe I want to do Roshomon on this thing" and figured isolating the POV to just the one MC's perception would facilitate that.

Then I ended up never doing that.

Then when I tried to rewrite it in third, it sucked big fat hairy balls.

 

[Rhaps]

When the narrator is technically also a character, I plan to do something about it...

 

[sodaliteskull]

First person is good for when you want to highlight the inner thoughts and feelings of your protagonist (or protagonists, if you're bouncing around different POVs), while third person is better when you want the broader external events to be the focus. The main drawback of first person is that not everyone is going to enjoy the POV they get stuck seeing the world of the story through. Taste is subjective, so there's no way to craft a protagonist that will appeal to everyone. And the main drawback of third person is that it doesn't allow for the same kind of emotional depth you can get through first person. It does, however, allow you to give the reader a larger view of the story as a whole. Playing with limited and omniscient can allow you to give the reader information the characters in the story don't have, which can be handy when you're trying to build suspense.

As the others have said, it's going to depend on what type of story you want to tell as to which perspective would be better to write from.

 

[tantrayaan]

I like multiple viewpoints.

Sometimes on certain chapters I have 1st person POV to show the person's inner monologues etc. Other times IMO 3rd person works best.

1st person though helps you enforce the show/don't tell philosophy. Same with 3rd - although it's harder to not fall into the telling part as you can slip into omniscient mode unwittingly.

 

[Joyager2]

First person can be really tough, especially for new writers. There's a tendency to be very...quipy? I suppose? Meta? Often, I find first person narrators remove a lot of the weight a story has by making light of everything around them. It's a desire to be very interpersonal stream-of-consciousness, like talking to a friend online, rather than narrating a story. Not always, though. I've read some very excellent first person narratives, though, usually, done by experienced writers.

 

[Zinless]

My story uses a two-person perspective .

Jokes aside, I like reading both perspectives, as long as they are done well. I personally think certain perspectives work best for certain stories. If the story is a fun, light-hearted story, a first-person perspective would fit really well. But having a first-person perspective in a serious, gritty story has a small chance of being cringey or edgy.

Not to say that 3rd person can't work in a light-hearted story or vice versa. They can totally work and are interchangeable depending on the author's preferences.

 

[MFontana]

Since i write my stories in a 3rd perspective, i began to wonder what is more appealing. I can see the perks of 1st person being able to express the character's feelings more than 3rd person can while i have zero ideas what 3rd person story telling can actually bring ? since im still a rookie.

But just curious of what the perks of either writing styles though.

Personally, I don't like reading first-person stories in fiction. (Autobiographies; or brief character interludes would be the only exceptions.).

Third-Person limited is my go-to, for both reading, and writing.