Which is harder to write *effectively*: First person or third person?

[Britva415]

I have a hypothesis that a lot of first-person-narrated stories are written this way because it's so easy to just write "I, I, I..."

Not all, but a lot. I appreciate a story which makes it really good and clear why it's plausible that I, the reader, would be privy to this narration.

So I ask, of the following two scenarios, which is harder:

1. Writing first person but putting in a little extra effort to make clear things like: Why is the narrator character motivated to tell this story? Who the reader is to the narrator? By what means is this narration being transmitted from the character to the reader? Is the reader an onscreen character, an offscreen character, or not at all a character in the story universe?
Or
2. Writing in third person, which also requires at least the extra effort necessary to write "Charactername" instead of "I" everywhere (this is really all it takes at bare minimum) and possibly also the additional extra effort of adding points of view and omniscient observations beyond what the protagonist immediately experiences?

First-person is often written without that extra effort, and third-person is also often written without that extra effort. So I'm not asking about those scenarios, they're obviously both easier than making these extra efforts.

 

[Britva415]

I guess we could also discuss whether "easy" is the reason authors make this choice or the other - or, frankly, neither.

Speaking for myself, "yes," I have written first-person stuff which contains the exact flaws I spelled out in scenario 1, why, because it's easy. I have also written stuff in which I deliberately made the extra effort described in scenario 2.

Also speaking for myself, I think scenario 2 is way easier than scenario 1.

Still speaking for myself, I also think scenario 2 makes for better stories, on the whole, as a broad generalization. Setting the reader up to recognize the different experiences and motivations of the different characters creates the opportunity for dramatic tension which can't easily be achieved with excessively limited point of view narration.

At least, I'm happier with my stories I wrote that way. Even though I wrote more first-person stories.

 

[Ssbbw4u1974]

I tend to write third person stories.
I like saving first person for my real life stories, like the sexual memoirs story I wrote.
It's easy for me to put myself in the mindset of writing, "John or Jane did this, said that".

 

[SeraphNocturne]

Personally, first person is a bit more difficult for me.

I write almost exclusively in third, because for some reason first feels a little more personal than I think I would enjoy. To the date I haven't quite gone autobiographical and I feel like a bit of me might bleed over if I'm writing first. It's also easier for me to describe characters from the position of omnipresent narrator.

When reading from a first person perspective I find a lot of the time it's harder for me to really get a mental image of the characters portrayed? After awhile my ADHD brain feels like I'm just doing a record repeat through first person stories though. Unless the author's doing a fantastic job painting a mental image for me, there are a few such talented writers onsite.

I'm planning on branching out and at least giving first person point of view a try just to be able to say I've done it. And who knows, maybe I might enjoy it, and publish more work from that point of view. It's really popular here on Lit.

 

[Euphony]

I guess we could also discuss whether "easy" is the reason authors make this choice or the other - or, frankly, neither.

1st is, as you suggested, how we tend to naturally think so many authors feel more comfortable speaking that way on the page.

That comfort is a double edged sword. You can misidentify your ease as actual proper flow when it's not.

Add in fiction isn't equal to but more adjacent to everyday language so even being dead on understandable in everyday communication can still feel *off* in fiction.

When you move past "easy" your internal compass starts to feel "better" and you make your perspective choice from that.

Then you end up using whatever your worse at more and more and, hopefully, the frustration leads to learning and intentional practice which makes you better.

Still speaking for myself, I also think scenario 2 makes for better stories, on the whole, as a broad generalization.

Disagree. You may be under the impression that "more work" = "better work" and it's not always the case.

Narratives tend to have perspectives that just work a touch better than others. Sometimes you want the blindness 1st can offer. Sometimes you want the minor o r major distance 3rd can offer (there's a range)

Scenario 2 may appear better writing simply because the narrative is better matched to the perspective.

Setting the reader up to recognize the different experiences and motivations of the different characters creates the opportunity for dramatic tension which can't easily be achieved with excessively limited point of view narration.

Do consider whether or not the perspective is driving the better fiction or if it is better narrative matching.

At least, I'm happier with my stories I wrote that way. Even though I wrote more first-person stories.

Being happy with your writing is the top line goal. When you feel more tools in your toolkit allow you to expand what you can do and how you express yourself, seek them out.

 

[SexyVita]

So from the perspective of someone who writes role plays rather than stories, I used to prefer first person, it allowed the reader easy access to my character's thoughts as well as her words and actions, and because I love stories with a lot of internal struggle, it seemed a good fit. However, two writers alternating using first person can also be jarring to the reader because of the perspective shift with each new post.

Now I generally write in third person. I've discoved that in many ways I like it better, because instead of being a narrator with a fixed perspective, I can occasionally become a omniscient narrator with access to information that is not apparent to my character. The hardest part to writing a story in third person for me though, is deciding when to use pronouns vs. the characters' names in scenes with two members of the same sex. Sometimes I find that I'm using the character names more than the pronouns because it's unclear who I'm talking about if I just say she/her or he/him.

 

[Britva415]

(regarding first-person POV)

It's really popular here on Lit.

Interesting - by what measure?

I grant, a hell of a lot of it is written and published here. I haven't investigated measures of reader engagement.

 

[Britva415]

You may be under the impression that "more work" = "better work"

I'm not.

I'm a bit amazed that the extra efforts I described seem to have been taken as "work for work's sake" rather than actual improvements!

 

[ElectricBlue]

I think as you develop your skills as a writer, either pov becomes "more natural" for the purposes of the story you're currently "in". After a while you instinctively "know" what will suit a particular story's purposes best, and proceed without conscious thought.

With my stream of consciousness style, I'll get a paragraph or two into the story and say, "Oh, okay, this one's first person," and keep writing.

I've never changed the narrative voice in a story, but I have on occasion (after a thousand words or so) changed tense - invariably, to past tense. I should know by now not to annoy myself by starting in present tense.

 

[Britva415]

Scenario 2 may appear better writing

I really, really tried to present the two scenarios as "not different" in terms of their relative quality against each other.

What are your thoughts regarding the relative quality of scenarios 1 and 2 against the scenarios where either first or third person is written without any of the "extra efforts" I described?

 

[Britva415]

After a while you instinctively "know" what will suit a particular story's purposes best, and proceed without conscious thought.

I see what you mean.

I wasn't really considering these two scenarios as being candidate choices for the same story. It seemed obvious to me that a scenario 1 story is a completely different story than a scenario 2 story.

I guess you could take the intent as asking about which kind of story was easier to write, not which way is easier to write a given story. That's unanswerable.

 

[Paul_Chance]

I don't think it makes a difference in terms of difficulty.

Both are easy to write.

Both are difficult to write.

It just depends on the story you're trying to tell.

 

[Britva415]

I wasn't really considering these two scenarios as being candidate choices for the same story. It seemed obvious to me that a scenario 1 story is a completely different story than a scenario 2 story.

I guess you could choose between the first-person and the third-person versions of scenario zero* for some particular story, but I think it would be hollow as hell to choose third-person to tell the exact same story as the first-person version without utilizing any of the privileged features of the third-person POV.

No omnipotence at all, no alternative viewpoints besides the protagonist's, no insight into any character's experience except that one who would have been the narrator if you had just gone with first-person.

The only positive thing this choice would do would be to avoid the problems which the scenario 1 extra efforts address.

* scenario zero is where you just write a first-person or third-person story without any of the extra efforts I described in scenarios 1 or 2

 

[Euphony]

What are your thoughts regarding the relative quality of scenarios 1 and 2 against the scenarios where either first or third person is written without any of the "extra efforts" I described?

The assumption is the extra care taken pays benefits but whether it's necessary is so story specific, speaking in generalities isn't much more than a hypothetical exercise.

I'm with EB66, the story sets the perspective more than the writer. Of course, if we assume a new/unskilled writer, there's more likelihood they don't *feel* what the story is telling and/or choose from personal comfort.

I'm always going to assume best practices b/c it makes us better writers which (I'd assume) AHers are generally aspiring to be.

*FOR ME* and sticking only to the scenarios as narrowly defined (which, ok, but I find it oddly limiting) the 1st person scenario is harder.

I find it easier to get ahead of my skis in 1st. Is it the perspective, my experience as a writer being pushed away from that direction, or some natural inclination to find 1st more problematic? Can't say.

Macro view, I don't think either scenario is significantly more difficult than the other to force a choice in one direction over the other.

Now if an author has stumbling blocks one way or the other, they should either chose to address them or (if it's not worth the effort) go with the other option.

But overall, I find them both to be similarly difficult enough to essentially be the same level and I'd go with what supports the narrative best.

 

[NotWise]

I think the standards you're trying to apply to first person are entirely personal. There is generally no reason why a first person narrator has to tell the reader why he or she is relating the story. I approach it as @Erozetta describes, like the story is the narrator's somewhat formalized journal.

It's fine if you want to build a setting where the narrator has a reason to relate his story to the reader, but that's your choice.

I also don't see that third person requires more work. For me, the limitations of first person makes it more difficult to tell a story.

I write in both first and third, depending on the story. My most recent is in 1st. The one before that was in third. The one before that was in third, but it had a long story embedded in it that was related in 1st person. The story before that was in 1st person. And so it goes. I've even started stories in one voice, stopped, and rewritten in a different voice.

To me, different stories work better in different voices.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

Interesting - by what measure?

I grant, a hell of a lot of it is written and published here. I haven't investigated measures of reader engagement.

Just my amateur opinion, but it's always seemed to me a massive majority of stories are written in first person. I find third person content underwhelming. I do quite a bit of perusing, not as much reading as when I first came to Literotica, but it's been largely the same. I don't have any specific numbers so don't quote me on it, but my daily sweeping down the 'New Stories' lists in my categories of preference, it seems there are ten first person narratives to every one third person narrative.

 

[Britva415]

I've always read 1st person as though I've come across a diary or journal of the viewpoint character

I imagine this is what authors probably figure readers will do, but when they don't write it as that character's journal, it usually doesn't read like it's that character's journal.

I also personally have a nitpick where the story itself, which in this case is either a frame-story or else the journal's content, fails to make any attempt to explain why it's plausible that I would ever come across the journal.

It's just something I personally have a hard time suspending disbelief about. Most of the time it's a minor annoyance but there have been stories - and I'm not even talking about Lit, I'm talking about professional blockbuster novelists stories - where it is a glaring omission and really makes it hard to swallow the story. I consider it a real blemish sometimes.

 

[alohadave]

I don't think either is easier than the other. They tell stories differently.

1st person means you are in the POV character's head. So you have to account for how the character sees scenes, what they know and don't know. It also means that you have the option of intimacy of thought with the POV character.

3rd person can be more flexible, with the option of detachment. You can describe what they are doing, with out necessary delving into what they are thinking. But, you have the option of the omniscient aspect that can know things that the characters wouldn't know.

I've read plenty of excellent stories told both ways and when done well they both work.

 

[GlennJenko]

Personally, I find both perspectives work for different things. But when it comes to erotica I find it easier to, and much prefer to, write in 3rd person.

I'm quite new to writing erotica, but I'm much more comfortable doing so in 3rd person. Maybe it's because I'm a straight male and my first story I'm currently writing has an FMC, so the idea of writing a sex scene in a woman's perspective and talking about a man entering her just doesn't really excite or interest me that much, which are instant red flags on the way to becoming detached from my writing and abandoning it.

 

[Rob_Royale]

There's a time and place for both. For me, it depends on the scope of the story, if it's a personal "I was there and this happened" story, first person does well. And it flows well as I'm writing because it's just one POV.
But, for anything with a larger scope or cast, I prefer 3rd person. It's harder for me to write, but it feels more complete, if you get my meaning. When I'm reading, I prefer 3rd person.

 

[ronde]

I have a hypothesis that a lot of first-person-narrated stories are written this way because it's so easy to just write "I, I, I..."

Not all, but a lot. I appreciate a story which makes it really good and clear why it's plausible that I, the reader, would be privy to this narration.

So I ask, of the following two scenarios, which is harder:

1. Writing first person but putting in a little extra effort to make clear things like: Why is the narrator character motivated to tell this story? Who the reader is to the narrator? By what means is this narration being transmitted from the character to the reader? Is the reader an onscreen character, an offscreen character, or not at all a character in the story universe?
Or
2. Writing in third person, which also requires at least the extra effort necessary to write "Charactername" instead of "I" everywhere (this is really all it takes at bare minimum) and possibly also the additional extra effort of adding points of view and omniscient observations beyond what the protagonist immediately experiences?

First-person is often written without that extra effort, and third-person is also often written without that extra effort. So I'm not asking about those scenarios, they're obviously both easier than making these extra efforts.

Probably the best way to make a boring first person POV story is to just keep writing, "I, I, I..." as you state. It is easy to fall into that trap, but the repetition can make the story drag and it's easy for a reader to lose their place when most sentences start with "I".

In both first and third person POV, it's very important to make things clear like what is happening, why it's happening, and what the characters are thinking. The only real difference is in first person POV, everything is filtered through the eyes, ears, and mind of the main character. That can be an advantage to the writer by using what the main character "reports" to assist in the description of his or her personality.

The writer can lead the reader to see the true personality of the main character with the choice of wording used by the main character. That is difficult to do without having the main character make the explanation. There are few real people who can make a truly objective analysis of how and why they act and interact with other people as they do.

Fleshing out characters is a bit easier in third person because the third person narrator is privy to the thoughts and emotions of all the characters. That can be an advantage to the writer because once those traits are established, the concentration can be on the interaction between the characters. It can also be a disadvantage if the personality of a character suddenly changes from that originally attributed to that character.

I write in several different time periods, and if I'm writing about the past, I'll always use third person unless it's a series of letters or some sort of journal. For my other stories, I use first person or third person depending upon what feels right at the time.

 

[mirafrida]

For me the choice of first-person or third-person is 100% situational. One of the two will normally fit the scenario and the effect I am going for better than the other. But, it's often unclear when I start writing what the correct POV is. Several times I've scrapped an early-stage draft and switched POV (either 1st/3rd, or the POV character, or both), and found that it clicks much better.

So, in that sense, only one of the two will be effective - but which that is depends on the dynamics of that particular story.

 

[Britva415]

I rented a house in Alabama when I was 18 and found a bunch of old diaries in the attic. I wish I had kept them, or at least transcribed them, but I didn't get to have them long enough to do much more than read through a few. They belonged to my landlord and he was *pissed* that I went into the attic. (Never mind that he illegally came into the space I was renting with zero notice or even a knock on the door while I was in the shower.)

None of the entries were dated or started out "Dear Diary," or the like, they were just first person retellings of events from his life. Everything from seeing a buddy get his head blown apart by gunfire in "the war" to watching a French girl undress in her window.

There were pages of confessions to no one about a lot of depraved things. If I were to retell any of his stories, I wouldn't start it as myself finding them, I would just retell them as best I could remember from what he wrote directly because they are his stories. My finding them has zero bearing on the story being told and is just wasted words to appease what would amount to a very small subset of readers.

I get what you're saying, but I bet those diaries didn't read like a novel.

Do you get what I'm saying?

 

[HeyAll]

The most difficult mainstream way of writing is 3rd person narrator which doesn't know. Only observes.

Tough to be great at, obviously, because you can't just explain backstory or character thoughts. You have to present everything with great descriptions and let the reader imagine what the characters are feeling and thinking.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I have a hypothesis that a lot of first-person-narrated stories are written this way because it's so easy to just write "I, I, I..."

Not all, but a lot. I appreciate a story which makes it really good and clear why it's plausible that I, the reader, would be privy to this narration.

So I ask, of the following two scenarios, which is harder:

1. Writing first person but putting in a little extra effort to make clear things like: Why is the narrator character motivated to tell this story? Who the reader is to the narrator? By what means is this narration being transmitted from the character to the reader? Is the reader an onscreen character, an offscreen character, or not at all a character in the story universe?

IME, "not a character in the story universe" is the default for first-person stories. It's a very well-established convention and not something an author should need to clarify or justify, unless they're choosing not to follow that default.

Or
2. Writing in third person, which also requires at least the extra effort necessary to write "Charactername" instead of "I" everywhere (this is really all it takes at bare minimum) and possibly also the additional extra effort of adding points of view and omniscient observations beyond what the protagonist immediately experiences?

My POV on this is almost the direct opposite. Omniscient POV is less effort than choosing a limited perspective, telling the story within that perspective while still conveying all that needs to be conveyed, and using that limited perspective to enhance the story.