First-person is one of the trickiest character perspectives to master. In many ways, it’s more challenging than third-person narration. Third-person has its challenges too, but writing in first- person comes with a unique set of challenges and limitations.
In this episode, we’ll look at common mistakes writers make when writing in first-person, and you’ll learn three ways to master your first person story.
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Episode at a glance:
[02:18] Common First Person Mistakes
First-person tends to stay mainly in the character’s head. The character thinks about the story more than he or she actively engages in it. And so first-person is more prone to exposition- more summary than scene. Sometimes we’ll get mini scenes where the character interacts and engages in the action. But all the events and observations need to be consistent to what the character sees, knows, and believes to be true.
[03:30] The Mask
This is the protective shield between our private world and our public world. You want to think about what the character is trying to hide from him or herself and from the reader. What is this character trying to convince him or herself of? What is she trying to convince the reader? The challenge for the character is to shed the mask -the protective shield that’s keeping him from confronting himself.
[06:44] Unreliability
What makes a first person narrator different from a more objective narrator is the first-person character has a stake in how the reader interprets the events. He or she has an invested interest in how we accept their reality, their version of what happened.
[12:38] Moral Dissonance
We can distrust a first-person character’s version of the events being told, and still feel sympathy or fascination. And that throws the reader into moral ambivalence. As the author, we need to put put our character’s version of events into context. We all see reality through our own filter, and it’s skewed by our experiences, our world-views and beliefs – the context in which those beliefs are built.
Links Mentioned In This Episode
A Crime In the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne
The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
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