First person narration, but what about the other person?

[ElectricBlue]

Many authors feel that first person narration gives a more intimate, personalised feel to a story, and with erotic fantasy, first person does makes a lot of sense, since it's most likely your own fantasy in the first place. I think we've all written first person pov stories, for that reason.

But what about the readers who have never been and will never be that narrator, such as a woman who has never been a man, for example, or a man who has never been a woman. How do they relate to the story, since on face value the story protagonist can never be them?

We've often talked about this as writers, but where does the reader fit? How does a woman relate to the male me in a first person male narrative? And to stretch the discussion, what happens in the reader's mind when a male writer writes as a first person female character (which I've done a few times).

My query isn't in the context of, "Which is better, first or third?" - because neither is "better", just different, but puzzling about this as a reader who isn't "I".

 

[SimonDoom]

I think you've identified two issues, one being the choice between POV and the other being the ability to relate to a character/narrator who is of a different gender.

For me personally, the choice of POV makes no difference to the second issue. A skillful writer can get me into the head of a main character whether the story is told in first person or third person.

In fact, I think this is one of the pleasures of reading stories here: getting into the erotic head of somebody completely different. The erotic pleasure of, for example, reading a story told from the point of view of a kinky lesbian isn't exactly the same for me as the pleasure of reading a story from the point of view of someone more like me, but it's still pleasurable, in a different way.

Maybe I've been reading long enough and widely enough that it's not an issue for me. I feel like if the author is able and imaginative they can put me into the head of just about anyone.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Many authors feel that first person narration gives a more intimate, personalised feel to a story, and with erotic fantasy, first person does makes a lot of sense, since it's most likely your own fantasy in the first place. I think we've all written first person pov stories, for that reason.

But what about the readers who have never been and will never be that narrator, such as a woman who has never been a man, for example, or a man who has never been a woman. How do they relate to the story, since on face value the story protagonist can never be them?

I know hundreds of men and hundreds of women.

I don't know a single astronaut. And yet I can empathise with a protagonist who's an astronaut, if the author does a decent job of putting me in their head and showing me what matters to them.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I don't look at it like that. I assume that in first person, I'm at the pub telling a story I was involved in.

Mind you, I'd need a few beers before I'd tell someone these stories.

 

[SimonDoom]

Here's a challenge for you: write one of your trademark "man and woman meet [in cafe/on bus/etc.]" stories, but from the woman's point of view, with an emphasis on her impressions of the male character, who is I take it an alter ego for you. See how you pull it off. I'm confident we won't be getting a lot of the "I creamed at once at the sight of his obvious urbanity and the bulge in his pants" sort of thing.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I don't know a single astronaut. And yet I can empathise with a protagonist who's an astronaut, if the author does a decent job of putting me in their head and showing me what matters to them.

Certainly, but then again, the authenticity as an astronaut interacting with other astronauts has nothing to with gender, while the authenticity of say a dungeon Domme interacting with her slaves has much to do with gender, so the question still makes for excellent thought.

I do agree though that it doesn't matter very much depending on two factors - the skills of the writer and the intentions of the reader. There are countless poorly written stories on lit from a female PoV that are so obviously written by a man, since the woman has no motive for being horny other than 'what the hell, I'm, horny'. It's not so much that I can't get behind that character (although it may be boring to do so) but more that the narrative is so jarringly male that it takes me out of the moment. On the flip side, I have had more than a few (male) readers tell me that I spend too much time describing my male characters (funny that my female readers somehow don't agree : P ). They don't mind my female PoV much at all, they're just not interested in what turns her on, only that she is. Which therefore means that they're not really interested in getting into the mind of that first person character of the opposite gender.

Good writers can easily put the reader into the head of an opposite gender character so long as said reader is interested in being there.

Safe to say that basically all of us have had husbands/wives/boyfriends/girlfriends/etc and have paid attention to some of the things that we have done with them that turned them on. We can use these experiences to write convincing characters of the opposite gender even in an erotic context.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Here's a challenge for you: write one of your trademark "man and woman meet [in cafe/on bus/etc.]" stories, but from the woman's point of view, with an emphasis on her impressions of the male character, who is I take it an alter ego for you. See how you pull it off. I'm confident we won't be getting a lot of the "I creamed at once at the sight of his obvious urbanity and the bulge in his pants" sort of thing.

I've done that already, many times (Seventy/Thirty is my most recent one). I'm more intrigued in the psychology going on behind the scenes for a reader of a first person story - not whether I can write one from a different gendered point of view - I know I can do that.

Obviously we all can identify with a well-written character, but what's the psychological effects going on when the narrative is first person, and you're not the "I"? I'm reading Koestler's The Act of Creation at the moment, so maybe that explains the psychological curiosity.

So far though, other than Bramble, I'm getting "writer" answers, not the other way around. It would be nice if more "I'm only a reader" folk wandered through the AH, but I get why it would never occur to them.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've done that already, many times (Seventy/Thirty is my most recent one). I'm more intrigued in the psychology going on behind the scenes for a reader of a first person story - not whether I can write one from a different gendered point of view - I know I can do that.

Obviously we all can identify with a well-written character, but what's the psychological effects going on when the narrative is first person, and you're not the "I"? I'm reading Koestler's The Act of Creation at the moment, so maybe that explains the psychological curiosity.

So far though, other than Bramble, I'm getting "writer" answers, not the other way around. It would be nice if more "I'm only a reader" folk wandered through the AH, but I get why it would never occur to them.

It IS the Author's Hangout. You're going to get writers. You're not likely to get non-writer readers.

I was a reader long before I was a writer, and my response is from my point of view as a reader.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Certainly, but then again, the authenticity as an astronaut interacting with other astronauts has nothing to with gender, while the authenticity of say a dungeon Domme interacting with her slaves has much to do with gender, so the question still makes for excellent thought.

Yeah, I was probably over-simplifying things somewhat - and of course there are fewer astronauts around to say "you're doing it wrong". But I do think writing cross-gender doesn't have to be the huge challenge that some folk make it out to be.

I do agree though that it doesn't matter very much depending on two factors - the skills of the writer and the intentions of the reader. There are countless poorly written stories on lit from a female PoV that are so obviously written by a man, since the woman has no motive for being horny other than 'what the hell, I'm, horny'.

And indeed countless stories outside Lit that suffer from the same problem. Many of them quite well written in other regards, but the authors either seem reluctant to write women or just don't find them interesting outside their role as appendages to a male character.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The erotic pleasure of, for example, reading a story told from the point of view of a kinky lesbian isn't exactly the same for me as the pleasure of reading a story from the point of view of someone more like me, but it's still pleasurable, in a different way.

It's the "different way" that I'm trying to unpack.

 

[Cagivagurl]

There are literally thousands of wonderful stories told in 1st person that express emotions from all characters....
It's what separates the casual hobby writers from the great writers.
Manipulating dialogue, and building great depth of the involved characters is the benchmark of the great writers.
As with all creative outlets, some are good, and others are great...
Some of my favourite stories have been told in first person, and yet they still managed to get all of the characters emotions on display...
I'm not arguing 1st person is best. I am merely offering my opinion that it all comes down to the skills of the writer.

Cagivagurl

 

[OffNSFW]

The typical man has far more in common with the typical woman than he has with, say, Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark.

Just be observant, use your imagination, play fair, pick a friend to answer your questions if you must, and you'll be fine.

 

[SimonDoom]

It's the "different way" that I'm trying to unpack.

OK, I'll draw an analogy. The Godfather is a movie about terrible people who do terrible, evil, immoral, criminal things. Almost all the main characters in the movie are, by any decent standard, horrible people.

But the movie doesn't present them that way, and we don't uniformly see them that way. We get inside Michael Corleone's world (or, in the case of the Sopranos, Tony Soprano's world, or in Breaking Bad, Walter White's world) and in the context of that world we root for him. We sympathize with him. We can swim inside his value system and want things as readers to come out the way he wants them to be.

Admit it: during the Silence of the Lambs, isn't there part of you that thrills to the ingenuity with which Lecter escapes from his prison, despite the gory and murderous way he does it? I think this is an element of these kinds of movies: our capacity to sympathize with things we find abhorrent in our day to day lives. It's fun to imagine being a gangster--somebody who doesn't have to follow any of society's rules--even if just in one's mind.

So, if I can do that, which I can, it's not at all hard for me to put myself in the shoes of a sex-driven lesbian for the short interlude it takes to read a story. It can be an erotic experience, even if it's not quite the same erotic experience.

 

[ronde]

It's the "different way" that I'm trying to unpack.

I think making a character a reader can identify or sympathize with is largely a matter of how the author defines the character and not the sex of the author. I don't see writing actions and dialogue for a female character any different in either POV. It's just a little harder to sell in 1st person if the author is of the opposite sex. That can be fixed in either POV by doing an adequate job of defining the character's personality and traits. That personality and those traits will tell the author how the character will act, what they will say, and how they will say it, and if the author writes that, a reader will accept it.

The really difficult part is being willing to investigate personalities and traits of the opposite sex. It's not enough to use stereotypes because while lesbian or gay or bi or heterosexual definitely connote a certain type of individual, it's more an encompassing definition than the person you might meet on the street. To write believably about the opposite sex requires enough study of different personality types by the author so he or she can predict what a character might do or say or think. Without that understanding, the work will probably be seen as just a guess.

 

[THBGato]

I'm with @Bramblethorn @SimonDoom : if the writer is good enough, it really doesn't matter.

Take a Sci-Fi series like, say, The Expanse. I ended up being able to identify with most, if not all, of the POV characters, regardless of gender (or planetary origin). That may not have been 1st person, now I think about it, but my point still stands.

Hell, with Andrian Tchaichovsky's Children of Time, I was able to identify with the damn intelligent spiders, it was that immersive!

 

[MyBareTorso]

Here's a challenge for you: write one of your trademark "man and woman meet [in cafe/on bus/etc.]" stories, but from the woman's point of view, with an emphasis on her impressions of the male character, who is I take it an alter ego for you. See how you pull it off. I'm confident we won't be getting a lot of the "I creamed at once at the sight of his obvious urbanity and the bulge in his pants" sort of thing.

You do in my stories...

 

[Omenainen]

It’s a function of imagination and maybe empathy. We do have those readers who can only identify with themselves, and yet are unable to write their own stories, and then they’re in everyone’s comments saying “there needs to be more pussy hair” or “they need to discuss what kind of porn they watch when they masturbate.” The poor bastards.

I believe most readers are capable of identifying with someone not themselves, and then I don’t think gender is a defining factor in who they’re able to identify in. I don’t think first person/third person makes a difference in the identifying process. At least I don’t feel it does. First person can be written without really getting in the person’s thoughts and feelings and third person can be written very close. I think it’s more a matter of intimacy and depth.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I'm probably not the person to answer why readers identify with one character over another - being bisexual I find it doesn't matter what sex the narrator is, and possibly from having no gender attachment I'll happily identify with either sex or indeed other species.

When I was a kid I found my ideas of who to identify with in books and movies was at odds with everyone else: ET rather than Elliot in ET, Wonka rather than Charlie in the Chocolate Factory (one reason I much preferred the Depp adaptation to the one with Gene Wilder).

I suspect that even for other readers of say a male narrator, it's not quite as simple as "women want to fuck him, men want to be him". Often a story makes you feel you're sitting in the pub being told the story, empathising and laughing at different parts of the story.

But many readers here aren't looking for stories, they're looking for their own fantasies to be told to them. The dominatrix would do x, y, z. The victim would feel a, b, c. The reader doesn't care why.

 

[Bramblethorn]

OK, I'll draw an analogy. The Godfather is a movie about terrible people who do terrible, evil, immoral, criminal things. Almost all the main characters in the movie are, by any decent standard, horrible people.

But the movie doesn't present them that way, and we don't uniformly see them that way. We get inside Michael Corleone's world (or, in the case of the Sopranos, Tony Soprano's world, or in Breaking Bad, Walter White's world) and in the context of that world we root for him. We sympathize with him. We can swim inside his value system and want things as readers to come out the way he wants them to be.

Admit it: during the Silence of the Lambs, isn't there part of you that thrills to the ingenuity with which Lecter escapes from his prison, despite the gory and murderous way he does it? I think this is an element of these kinds of movies: our capacity to sympathize with things we find abhorrent in our day to day lives. It's fun to imagine being a gangster--somebody who doesn't have to follow any of society's rules--even if just in one's mind.

Silence of the Lambs is a masterclass in how a writer can manipulate their audience's attitudes to a character. (For the sake of discussion I'm focussing here on audiences who have only seen/read Silence of the Lambs. Those who encountered Red Dragon/Manhunter first, or who watched the TV series, might not view Lecter the same way.)

If one looks at Lecter's balance sheet objectively, he's a pretty awful person. He's murdered a string of people; he faked a heart attack and then mutilated the nurse who was trying to save his life. He played along with Clarice's predecessor and then directed a murderous psychopath to his house just for funsies.

But SotL finds ways to turn those things into a selling point. Yes, he's a sociopath...but he likes Clarice (or purports to) and his history just makes that feel like a huge compliment, for her to be one of the very few human beings he considers worthy of respect. It's the ultimate "you're not like all the other girls". Audiences default to identifying with the protagonist, so being nice to her counts for a LOT.

We're given unlikeable characters like Chilton and Miggs, and encouraged to focus on the very few ways in which Lecter is better than them, rather than on the many ways that he's worse. He gets to give his own explanation for why he talked Miggs into suicide, and nobody questions whether he might have ulterior motives for it, or suggests that "politeness" or even Miggs' semen-throwing might not actually justify talking him into suicide. He's established as cultured, well-read, patient and clever, things that don't equate to goodness but which are often mistaken for it.

Most of his worst acts are kept off-camera, "told" rather than "shown". We might take a very different view of him if we saw him from the perspective of the nurse he attacked - but I don't think she ever even gets a name. The big exception is his escape, which happens only after the story has built up that sympathy for him, and even there his murder of the medics isn't shown.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thanks to all.

I'm not a sure what was behind the question, to be honest. One of those waking at 3:42 am things, thinking, "This is something important" when it was probably just a light fever.

Usually it's waking at 3:24, which hopefully means I'll die in my sleep, when that time comes, coz it happens so often.

Collectively, carry on .

 

[Lifestyle66]

Here's a challenge for you: write one of your trademark "man and woman meet [in cafe/on bus/etc.]" stories, but from the woman's point of view, with an emphasis on her impressions of the male character, who is I take it an alter ego for you. See how you pull it off. I'm confident we won't be getting a lot of the "I creamed at once at the sight of his obvious urbanity and the bulge in his pants" sort of thing.

I did that sort of switch in POV in my "Unique Rewards of Yoga" story (7.6k words). It's a story of the husband who (as a special birthday gift) gave his wife a "hall pass" to have sex with a guy she might want, told from the husband's POV. The story is how she eventually used it.

I followed that with "Unique Rewards of Yoga - Her Story" (12.2k words), which is the whole thing told from the wife's POV. Then I did a third version from the female yoga instructor's POV, telling the story of how it all started.

These were all in Loving Wives, with the husband's POV eventually rated 3.33/305 with 28k views, and the wife's at 3.74/282 with 24k.

EDIT: I think women reading the husband's story can appreciate the growing tension and angst as he realizes what was going on. And male readers can see the anticipation and decision-making going on in the wife's POV, and realize how she might lose track of it all in her excitement.

 

[AG31]

I've done that already, many times (Seventy/Thirty is my most recent one). I'm more intrigued in the psychology going on behind the scenes for a reader of a first person story - not whether I can write one from a different gendered point of view - I know I can do that.

Obviously we all can identify with a well-written character, but what's the psychological effects going on when the narrative is first person, and you're not the "I"? I'm reading Koestler's The Act of Creation at the moment, so maybe that explains the psychological curiosity.

So far though, other than Bramble, I'm getting "writer" answers, not the other way around. It would be nice if more "I'm only a reader" folk wandered through the AH, but I get why it would never occur to them.

Would you list some of your other female POV stories?
I thought about this a lot last night, and I'm taking my time composing a response, complete with research time.

 

[StillStunned]

It would be interesting to compare a male 1P narrator written by a male writer, a female 1P narrator written by a male writer, a female 1P narrator written by a female writer and a male 1P narrator written by a female writer.

I'd like to know whether there are any structural differences between how men and women write their own and other genders.

 

[visioneer]

This is a topic that many, in my opinion, overthink. Fundamentally, we are all subject to the same emotions and motivations. Write a believable character, male or female, and readers will be able to put themselves in that character's skin.

 

[AG31]

Isn't the answer to your question pretty simple? The same thing goes on in the reader's mind as in the author's. Or, better, the same wide variety of experiences go on the the readers' minds as in the writers'.

Being that I think that is the case, here's the reply I composed mostly in the night, when I'd mistakenly remembered your post as applying to the writer's internal state rather than the reader's.

Perhaps the difference you're wanting to explore has more to do with a spectrum that doesn't involve the choice of grammitical person. Could it be the spectrum that has authenticity at one end and exploring-other-minds at the other. (Clearly I need a better term for the right end of the spectrum and will be very, very grateful if someone can supply it.)

I have said that authenticity doesn't necessarily imply anything about the author's state of mind, it just says something about how we're made to think about the author's state of mind. For purposes of this discussion, let's just assume that how it sounds is how it is.

You, yourself, have described the left end of the spectrum as writing that "comes from the heart." When one is writing that kind of story, I think there is more of a sense of being impelled to express something personal, maybe something that is not clearly understood at a cognitive level. Whether one writes in first or third person I think, is irrelevant. I do think it is possible for a man to write about a woman and vice versa in an authentic way. The heart is more deeply embedded than the genitals.

As for the right end of the spectrum - exploring other minds - for some years now I have experienced an increasing interest in and appreciation for the act of writing fiction. I admire authors who are able, for instance, to accurately describe the experience of aging, even though they are not, themselves, aging. I am often very impressed with an author's ability to make real for me human experiences that were never mine. It's a great relief to read nuanced descriptions of people of all political persuasions in this age when one would think people were nothing more than their politics. It comes from a different place in the author's mind. An exploratory place, a curious place, a love-of-life place.

You ask about "when the narrative is first person, and you're not the "I". Could it be restated as "when the narrative comes from the heart instead of from the brain?"

Your Seventy/Thirty stories are, to me, tours de force in exploring the mind and emotions of a female college student. But not "authentic" in the way of some of your other stories. I don't think the grammatical person used is relevant.