Writing in First Person

[Plagued_Bun]

I'm typically used to writing in the third person, and am trying to expand into first person. My main issue I'm stumbling across right now is that I'm finding it difficult to not start every sentence with "I..." Or "My...". Is this a normal thing or are there ways I can rely on those words less?

 

[Eldoria]

The use of "I," "my," "me," and "mine" is inherent in first-person POV. If you don't want to use those words, switch to second/third-person POV.

 

[Plagued_Bun]

Apologies, I should elaborate. It was moreso the quantity of the word usage, is it normal for it to be almost every sentence? (Excluding things such as describing a scene)

 

[Eldoria]

Apologies, I should elaborate. It was moreso the quantity of the word usage, is it normal for it to be almost every sentence? (Excluding things such as describing a scene)

It's fine as long as your narrative portrays the MC as the first POV. First POV rarely uses a narrator, as the point of view is limited to one character. Therefore, the use of "I" and "my" is unavoidable. However, if you still want to minimize the use of "I," you can combine the first POV and other POVs to enrich the perspective.

 

[GwynLordofTinder]

I'm typically used to writing in the third person, and am trying to expand into first person. My main issue I'm stumbling across right now is that I'm finding it difficult to not start every sentence with "I..." Or "My...". Is this a normal thing or are there ways I can rely on those words less?

Its totally normal, something you have to work around, just like starting every sentence with a character name, 'he' or 'she' in 3PP. I find sometimes dropping the article entirely makes sense in context if you've been using it a lot, and can make things feel more like natural speech.

 

[SirContro]

I and my should be some of the more commonly used words in your first-person POV. We're looking at that character's thoughts. It's by design that when not describing a scene or using dialogue, the rest of the book is thoughts of the main character, and words like I and my make it clear when said character has an opinion or thought, which will happen a lot.

That being said, it's not necessary, especially if the MC is observing the actions of another. "He was utterly barbaric" does the job just as well as "I thought he was utterly barbaric" and foregoing "I thought" for as many paragraphs as possible does break the paragraphs apart from one another

First-person descriptors are a lot more natural when describing the actions of your character. "I took my bow, loaded an arrow, and fired at the beast, square in between the eyes." Even here, it is possible to get rid of some of the descriptors, but you'll never get rid of all of them when referring to an action done by the narrator, so there isn't a need to trip over yourself trying to make everything feel different.

 

[L1aei]

I'm typically used to writing in the third person, and am trying to expand into first person. My main issue I'm stumbling across right now is that I'm finding it difficult to not start every sentence with "I..." Or "My...". Is this a normal thing or are there ways I can rely on those words less?

Just my opinion: you could start sentences with what is seen or experienced first, then follow it up with the POV's reaction or response. If shifting the focus to the scene or the sensory experience first can (this doesn't mean it will) pull the reader deeper into the moment, then you can do it before revealing the character's thoughts or actions.

Ah, for example: Instead of "I feel the cold air on my face. I shiver." you could write "The cold air bites at my face, sending a shiver down my spine." to avoid that "I", "My", and other First POV sentence ignitions. Looks sharper, no?

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I'm typically used to writing in the third person, and am trying to expand into first person. My main issue I'm stumbling across right now is that I'm finding it difficult to not start every sentence with "I..." Or "My...". Is this a normal thing or are there ways I can rely on those words less?

Heh. In two stories I wound up having to go back and rewrite entire chapters after realizing I'd shifted into First Person (Between Worlds - no longer here, sadly - had to pull it to put up on PocketFM) or out of it (there were three whole chapters of Strange Awakening where I slipped into third person ... and caught it as I was posting one of them!)

Ah, for example: Instead of "I feel the cold air on my face. I shiver." you could write "The cold air bites at my face, sending a shiver down my spine." to avoid that "I", "My", and other First POV sentence ignitions. Looks sharper, no?

Or:
"The air was cold, the wind biting, causing involuntary shivers," if you really want to avoid the "I/Me/My" thing.

 

[Anonjohn20]

I'm typically used to writing in the third person, and am trying to expand into first person. My main issue I'm stumbling across right now is that I'm finding it difficult to not start every sentence with "I..." Or "My...". Is this a normal thing or are there ways I can rely on those words less?

There are a few ways to avoid starting a sentence like that.

• Start sentences with a setting: Across the room, my boss stared me down for an uncomfortable amount of time.
• Start sentences with an action: Removing the blade from my thigh, I yelped in pain.
• Start sentences with some dialogue: "That's not fair," I muttered, "he had more time to finish his task than I did."
• Describe what the character is feeling: The footsteps grew louder, and I knew that my pursuers grew closer. rather than I could hear my pursuers getting closer.
• Use internal thoughts: "Could I mend this friendship if I apologized?" rather than "I thought about apologizing to try and mend my friendship."

These can help make it feel less repetitive, but don't worry if some sentences still end up starting with "I" or "My"; it's okay.

 

[Joelle]

I also struggled with the same problem but after seeing the solutions, I think I'm gonna try them out

 

[Fox-Trot-9]

You don't have to start every sentence with first person pronouns, b/c that gets really repetitive very quickly. In fact, just b/c your story has a first person narrator, you don't always have to make every sentence refer to said narrator. It's good to throw in some third person pronouns or veer off on a third-person tangent for a bit when the narrator is referring to someone else or to some other event before coming back in w/ first person. Examples include the openings of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Stephen King's It, and Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Scandal in Behemia" from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym. He was Spider Kelly’s star pupil. Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like featherweights, no matter whether they weighed one hundred and five or two hundred and five pounds. But it seemed to fit Cohn. He was really very fast. He was so good that Spider promptly overmatched him and got his nose permanently flattened. This increased Cohn’s distaste for boxing, but it gave him a certain satisfaction of some strange sort, and it certainly improved his nose. In his last year at Princeton he read too much and took to wearing spectacles. I never met any one of his class who remembered him. They did not even remember that he was middleweight boxing champion.
I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I always had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion, and that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I finally had somebody verify the story from Spider Kelly. Spider Kelly not only remembered Cohn. He had often wondered what had become of him.
--Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, Book I, Chapter I, p 3-4

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years—if it ever did end—began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.
--Stephen King, It, Part 1: The Shadow Before, Chapter 1: “After the Flood (1957),” [scene] 1, p 1

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen; but, as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
--Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Adventure I: “A Scandal in Bohemia,” [chapter] I, p 3

All of this is just to say that your choice of POV need not restrict you in how you tell your story, so throw caution to the wind and put some variety in it. It'll make your storytelling more nuanced and interesting for you, I think.

 

[PJ_Redacted]

Apologies, I should elaborate. It was moreso the quantity of the word usage, is it normal for it to be almost every sentence? (Excluding things such as describing a scene)

I felt the same way when I started writing in first person, so I listened to my favorite authors that also wrote in first person. Turns out it's pretty normal and you're probably only noticing it because you're the one writing. I wouldnt worry too much.

 

[Golden_Hyde]

I'm typically used to writing in the third person, and am trying to expand into first person. My main issue I'm stumbling across right now is that I'm finding it difficult to not start every sentence with "I..." Or "My...". Is this a normal thing or are there ways I can rely on those words less?

You will never escape it, because essentially, it's a way of telling a story in your protagonist's view. There'll be so many "I" and "my" across your writing phase. Unless you'd like to go Shakespearean and uses the phrase "this one" then go ahead

 

[JayDirex]

Man, just write third person limited. First Person is for Young Adult trash and self centered teen readers who want to "iDenTiFy" with the protagonist. but in the end all you will do is LIMIT your story telling to the self centered POV, and for the STRAIGHT AMATEURS who post up here, there will be an unending litany of VERB TENSE mistakes, sometimes in the same paragraph. and what's worse THEY DON'T CARE

So I have no problem calling their writing what it is, STRAIGHT TRASH!!

and for anyone offended for their favorite story "that did a wonderful job in first person, I loved that story" guess what. That story you loved would have been 10 times better in Third.

I said what i said.

 

[Fairemont]

I love writing in first person. It does take a bit of focus to shuffle the sentence structure around, but I'd say not to dwell on it too much and just write your draft however it comes out. Once you've got it down, you can take a look at how things flow together and figure out where to change sentences and such.

It's a good time. I also write in present tense, so it's double the fun!

 

[FRWriter]

Personally, I really dislike first-person stories, but I have seen a lot of them, and some were highly rated and had thousands of readers, so there really isn't a right or wrong. Just do what you feel like, as long as your story is great, the technical things don't matter much.

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

Learn how to spot and adapt uses where self-identifying is ignored.

It is time that I...
Time to...

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Man, just write third person limited. First Person is for Young Adult trash and self centered teen readers who want to "iDenTiFy" with the protagonist. but in the end all you will do is LIMIT your story telling to the self centered POV, and for the STRAIGHT AMATEURS who post up here, there will be an unending litany of VERB TENSE mistakes, sometimes in the same paragraph. and what's worse THEY DON'T CARE

So I have no problem calling their writing what it is, STRAIGHT TRASH!!

and for anyone offended for their favorite story "that did a wonderful job in first person, I loved that story" guess what. That story you loved would have been 10 times better in Third.

I said what i said.

Ever hear of Dashiel Hammet? H. P. Lovecraft?
They did not write young adult trash (though HPL did frequently call his own work amateurish rubbish).
And then there are writers like Peter David who manage to mix first and third person sometimes (Howling Mad has some third person chapters narrating the events, and then switches to first person for the two main characters to leave commentary).

And my stuff here may be trash but it is not young adult trash. The YA trash goes to PocketFM - and is all 3p...

 

[Anonjohn20]

Ever hear of Dashiel Hammet? H. P. Lovecraft?
They did not write young adult trash (though HPL did frequently call his own work amateurish rubbish).
And then there are writers like Peter David who manage to mix first and third person sometimes (Howling Mad has some third person chapters narrating the events, and then switches to first person for the two main characters to leave commentary).

And my stuff here may be trash but it is not young adult trash. The YA trash goes to PocketFM - and is all 3p...

First-person haters are people who have zero empathy/sympathy. People who are just incapable of putting themselves in another person's shoes. A good story can be third-person or first-person, so just ignore him.

 

[Our_Lady_in_Twilight]

Robin Hobb's Fitz stories are some of my favourite works of fantasy, and all in first person. And they're a little maudlin in tone, perhaps, but far from trash.

I'm actually toying with trying a first-person myself next time out and I'll likely prepare by re-reading those books and making some style notes as I go. OP - perhaps find some first person content that you enjoy and keep a critical eye out to see how they avoid sounding repetitive.