When I recently shared (on Facebook) my post about the issues I personally have with first person narration a lot of the time, it sparked a great discussion. Some great points were raised.

I wanted to share the insights I took away from that discussion, reading all the comments.

I still don’t trust myself to be able to write first person well. But were I ever to try it, this is what I would keep in mind:

• Am I writing in MY voice? Or my character’s voice? In first person, you need to write in your character’s voice, which should absolutely be distinct from yours, the author.
• Is this detail something my character would tell? Is this the way my character would describe such a thing? Do people actually talk about themselves this way? This, right here, is why I can’t write fiction in first person, and why I personally think first person is difficult for anyone to write well. I can’t get past these questions. So many things seem to feel forced and awkward in first person fiction, because someone talking about themselves or telling a story about something they experienced just wouldn’t describe “my long blond hair billowing in the wind behind me as I ran to catch up to him.” (Paraphrase of a great example used by someone on Facebook).
• In what ways is my narrator naturally going to be unreliable? I have always held, and still hold, that first person is AMAZING to tell the story of a character with an agenda. Unreliable first person narrators, especially in thrillers or mysteries, are so much fun!
• What is my narrator’s agenda? This is a natural follow up from the previous question. Why is this character telling his or her own story? How will that agenda impact the narrator’s tone, what the narrator reveals and conceals, etc?
• What perspectives or details am I sacrificing by using first person? Whether first person is a good choice for a story or not depends largely on the story you are telling, I think. If it’s a story that needs a more expansive or panoramic perspective, first person would be very limiting. First person limits you to one individual character’s knowledge of what is happening.

The fact is, fair or unfair, fun or difficult, these questions are front and center whenever someone reads a story written in the first person.

They ARE applicable to third person narrators, especially from the perspective of the writer. But the fact is, these questions don’t tend to come up as much in the mind of someone reading third person narration. It is generally assumed to be an objective account of someone’s subjective experience (or multiple someones).

With first person, you get nothing BUT the subjective.

So, what are your thoughts? If you write first person, what do you love about it? What do you find most challenging?