First or Third - your preference?

[oggbashan]

I use both but tend towards 1st person because I think it provides more immediacy and pace to the story. There are significant limitations with 1st person in that you can't include the thoughts and impressions of others, unless you swap from one 1st person viewpoint to anothers. When I have swapped 1st person viewpoints I have been unhappy with the results.

When stuck with a story, I have tried switching the whole thing from 1st to 3rd, or 3rd to 1st. It is a technique I use to get me to examine where I'm going with the story. I always keep the original draft as well as the revisions because I might revert to the original viewpoint and edit.

There are several variants of 3rd person such as omniscient, but fewer styles of 1st person. Some authors have used unusual 1st person such as detective stories written from the 1st person viewpoint of the murderer, or the corpse. If they work, they can be very effective.

But with all POVs, what matters is whether it works for that particular story...

 

[Kurokami]

Personally, I prefer, or at least find it easier, to write in third person. I've got no specific bias against first person, and I'll write in it occasionally, but mechanically I find third person a better fit. I like to flit around between multiple characters that are in different places, doing different things that may or may not connect with or impact on other characters. That's just the narrative structure I like to employ, and I just find first person a bit limiting in that regard.

But first person does have its merits in terms of intimacy and characterization; I feel like I should try writing that way a little more, truth be told.

 

[AlmostAlice]

Third, unless you're really very good. Otherwise it's an ego trip. I've written one halfway decent first, and the other got bombed to hell-an-gone (probably rightfully); first gets self-indulgent real fast, except in expert hands.

I don't know, in my experience first-person stories are more likely to be better (or at least more enjoyable) stories than third-person ones, at least on Lit.

Usually I prefer both reading and writing third-person, but for erotica (again both reading and writing) I prefer first-person. As someone else said, the intimacy really comes through in a well-written first-person story that is much harder to do in third-person.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

I tend to write in first person when I am wrting from a male point of view, and third person when the main character is a female. At this point, it is easier for me to get inside the mind of a male character than a female character.

As for reading, it makes no difference--so long as the author is effective.

 

[PennLady]

I don't know, in my experience first-person stories are more likely to be better (or at least more enjoyable) stories than third-person ones, at least on Lit.

Usually I prefer both reading and writing third-person, but for erotica (again both reading and writing) I prefer first-person. As someone else said, the intimacy really comes through in a well-written first-person story that is much harder to do in third-person.

I tend to write in first person when I am wrting from a male point of view, and third person when the main character is a female. At this point, it is easier for me to get inside the mind of a male character than a female character.

As for reading, it makes no difference--so long as the author is effective.

These are all interesting points. I have to disagree with Alice, but it's obviously just a personal difference. I much prefer third person stories, although I will read first person. I myself do not find first person any more intimate than third.

I've wondered if perhaps I prefer that degree of removal that third person sometimes provides. Or, it could be that prefer to read about people in a more neutral way, as opposed to the "I" narrator and any biases there may be.

But I would not say that 3d or 1st was better or more difficult than the other. They each present different challenges and options.

 

[LunaEroticaMystica]

Typically I write in third person POV. The only first person POV story that I've written here was my Valentine's Entry "Heart's Tempest." I didn't really set out to make the voice first person and didn't realize that I had done so until I finished writing it. It worked in that situation. I wouldn't say that I have a preference so much as I go with what flows most natural to the plot and story as a whole. As far as if first person worked for readers, I didn't get a whole lot of feedback regarding POV.

As far as reading, as long as the author can make it believable for me, especially in first person, I'm not too picky either way.

 

[Ann Vremont]

All very interesting. Most of my (erotic romance ) publishers have had (at least back when I was still submitting) a general prohibition against first person stories (though they would bend it). I think, on some of the shorts I've self-released, that I've been shooting myself in the foot by noting in the description when a story is 1P. I do that because of what I perceive as a bias against first and I'm just trying to avoid returns or unfair reviews (ones too highly influenced by a generic hate of 1P), but reading the replies here makes me think I'm shooting myself in the foot.

Oh, and a (sincere) shout-out to the great Ogg for gracing us with his presence and wisdom. I have popped in and out of lit since 04 and you, sir, have proved to be the only writer and poster I can keep firmly and favorably in my mind.

 

[oggbashan]

Thank you, Ann for the compliment, but my ratings do not support your suggestion that I am 'great'.

Not for nothing am I the instigator of the Authors' Hangout Last Place (tm) Contest. Too many of my stories remain firmly in the 3.xx area.

 

[Ann Vremont]

Ah, I am one of those whose largest, most developed and most excitable sex organ is her brain. I've found your stories very witty. (Although I temporarily forgot Dr. Mabeuse - he, too, is one of the Lit denizens I favorably remember regardless of the length of my time away.)

 

[Jake Marlow]

Wow, a little surprised by all the 1st person hate. I think it tends to be most popular among readers in erotica because it seems more confessional. And female 1st person is really popular with guys because it seems like a sexy confession.

Personally, the story dictates it for me when writing. I like the easy, almost conversational flow when I write 1st person, but I don't like being locked in to one person's perspective. 3rd omniscient is my favorite to in.

 

[DG Hear]

To show how bad a writer I am, I never knew what I wrote in. I just wrote my thoughts and sent it to a good editor. Eventually I found out that mowt of my stories are written in first person. I put myself in the storytellers shoes. That's why Imusually in up in first person.

Other times I will write a story about the life of a person that was told to me by said person. Have no idea if that's Ist or 3rd. I just have fun writing. I've always been lucky enough to find editors that know their thing and always inprove my stories.
DG

 

[Spacefender]

Thank you, Ann for the compliment, but my ratings do not support your suggestion that I am 'great'.

Not for nothing am I the instigator of the Authors' Hangout Last Place (tm) Contest. Too many of my stories remain firmly in the 3.xx area.

Literotica ratings are not accurate predictors of how good a story is. Way too many stories I've seen on various toplists have cardboard cut-out characters busy inserting tab A into another piece of cardboard's slot B.

The fact that your stories are not highly rated may actually an indicator of good writing. I know Scouries thinks that votes, comments, views, and ratings are fool-proof ways of finding a good story but then Scouries probably thinks that Alice in Wonderland was a biographical account.

 

[jomar]

I agree that it depends on what I'm doing with the story. I usually just start writing and it naturally fits one or the other. I probably more often write erotica in 1st person because that's the most intense emotion/most personal tense, which seems to suit most erotica best.

I agree with this. Find the right smut and it's easier and hotter to project yourself into the first person narrative.

But as SR said, depends on what you're trying to do and what fits...not only that, but right now I have a sci-fi story that as I read it needs to be rewritten in third to make it really work.