Perspective Preference?
 

I'm very particular about perspective, when it comes to books.

I really, really don't like first person, I'd much rather read my books in third. But I've been adapting to reading first person, and putting myself in the main characters position, and then.. translating it, I guess into third.

Anywho! What is your perspective preference? First person? Third person? Or do you really just not care?

Discussssssssss! xD;

First person needs to be very well done for me to enjoy it. And the narrator needs to be an interesting character, otherwise I'll get hopelessly bored. The only books in first person that I really liked were Glen Cook's Black Company books.

I tend to gravitate towards third person with multiple point-of-view characters. It's been a while since I read book that was third person with just one PoV character throughout. I can't even think of one off the top of my head.

On a similar note, unreliable narrators are awesome, too. Damnably hard to write, but awesome, nonetheless.

Good idea for a topic, by the way. :)

Why, thank you very much! I'm insanely drawn to third person view, when it comes to reading AND RPing. Even though its coming from me, I still can't do it. Anywho, I thought it would be interesting to see peoples preferences, when it comes to PoV. I know some people who swear up and down on first person written books, others who abhor the thought, etc etc.

Luckily for me, I've found some pretty good authors who write in first. It seems like my favorite genre has some pretty darn good authors, who write that way. But as I said, I gravitate FAR more towards third person. Its more comfortable for me.

As I writer, I seriously love writing in first person, but... I'm not as good at it as I would like to be. I'm going to have to clean up my work.
As a reader, I kind of like third person, but the reason I like writing first person is because I like reading it too.

When reading first person, I have a horrible habit of putting myself in the position of the main protagonist/character. Doesn't matter how they're described in the book, I just see me. xDD;

As with third person, I imagine the character as what he/she is SUPPOSED to look like. Unless I come up with a better visual myself. I'll make a character look how I want them to look, depending on their personality.

<.<; I'm such an odd cookie.

That's a tough question, I kind of like both :P When I used to write I would write third person when the character was "outside" of me, and first person when the character was "in" me. As for reading, I find it easier to picture the world when I read in first person and easier to picture the people when it's third.

That's what struck me about the The Black Company series I mentioned above. The narrator is so unique that his voice and his character come through vividly in the first-person narrative.

On that note, I'd say that 1st person can only work when the actual writing style tells you something about the character. That's... a very difficult thing to write, or at least to write consistently.

I prefer first person perspective most of the time but it sours really fast when it's not done well. The favourites of my own writing are those I chose to write in first person.

The difficult thing about it I think, is to keep the narrative natural. Few people are going to introduce themself and then describe themselves in detail. It makes it trickier to get descriptions across sometimes and involves a lot of sidestepping things that might otherwise be straightforward in third person. My favourite first person books, which are also some of my favourite books: are Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus; All Quiet on the Western Front; Doctor Glas (which also has an unreliable narrator); and Oryx and Crake, for something written after World War II (much of my perferred books were written pre-1950. Might explain why I seem to have some out-dated writing habits at times).

I like third person too, but most especially when the narrator sounds like a character themself. War and Peace for instance, in which the narrator speaks of the things that occurr among the characters and what's happening in their perspectives, as well as musing on larger, historical events pertinent to those events, interspersed with philosophical musings on the nature of history, war, and life in general.

One of the more interesting experiments in perspective I've read is in the eighth Malazan Book of the Fallen, Toll the Hounds, in which Erikson has a character from the previous books (who has a very distinctive way of speaking) narrate the entire book in third person, making for a narrative that sounds *very* different than the seven books that came before.

It's split the fan-base in two, but I rather like the effect, personally.

I don't know if I can recall reading anything in first person.... but I tend to not really care as long as the book is written well. What does drive me mad is when writers suddenly got into third person omniscient when the start of the book was third person limited >.< I've got two or so books that do that and I just wonder where the editor was, or if they just read the first half the book.

To me, it really doesn't matter which perspective the story is being told as long as it works. If the story line fits the perspective, then I am fine with it. I, myself, am a first person writer, and sometimes I find it doesn't really work for my stories, just like it doesn't work for some novels/stories out there. And the same goes to 3rd person perspective.

I prefer writing and reading in third person, but sometimes I don't mind if an author writes a book in first person, as long as it's done really well. It makes me feel more connected to the character that way, as well, instead of observing them from the outside like reading a book in third person. xD

I like reading and writing in third person. First person only works well in some cases. Like if the book is written as if it was made up of journal entries or such then it would probably be first person. I can't write in first person at all.

I prefer reading in third person. I like to know what's going on inside of the main character's head. I also understand more about what's going on in the story.

For the most part, 1st-person will only work if the story follows one character from beginning to end and never branches away. This obviously limits the scope of the tale to whatever the narrator directly experiences. It also forces the narrator's bias onto how the reader sees the other characters.

In contrast, 3rd-person can follow multiple points of view and tell more elaborate, intricate stories that show different facets of the characters' personalities.

They both have their advantages, but I think 3rd-person is more widely applicable. You have to want to tell a very specific kind of story for 1st-person to work.

I have seen book that have multiple 1st-person points of view, but those tend to be rarer and I don't have enough experience with them to decide if they work as well as 3rd-person for layering the story.

3rd person now that I think about it.... a lot of times, 1st person feels awkward to me.

But for funsiez.. I LOVE 2nd person. XDD Idk why, those choose your own adventure books where they always say "You find a knife" and stuff like that... I love it x3

I remember the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. Unfortunately, when I was young I wasn't adventurous enough to actually get a lot out of them.

One of the things I find with first person when I try to write it, is that one must have a very thorough understanding of the narrator's mind. Appearance and physical details not so much as in a third person story, since a narrator doesn't tend to look at him/herself a lot. When I think about it, in each of the first person books that I've read I have almost very little idea of what the characters actually look like.

Frankenstein is written in first person in two ways, in that one man is writting letters to his sister, in which he copies the narrations of Victor Frankenstein when they talk. Victor tells his own story in first person, and the current events happening around Victor are told in first person by the other man.

Doctor Glas is made up of diary entries, at the beginning of which the narrator states flat out that what he tells is the truth but not all of the truth, so it makes for curious interpretatios along the way. This novel makes easy sense to me since I write my own diary entries in first person like I'm talking to someone else.

All Quiet on the Western Front is written from the perspective of one of the soldiers who enlisted in the German army with his friends just after high school. The author himself was a soldier so I imagine that helps a lot when getting into the character's mind. I don't think the story is autobiographical at all, if I recall correctly. (I say that a lot. Perhaps I should start looking more stuff up to be sure.) One curious thing about this book, is that at the end, on the opposite side of the last page is a third person paragraph about the death of a man who is not named, but is presumably the narrator. If I didn't happen to see the shadow of the text through the page, I never would have noticed it.

I think it depends on the book. 3rd person is always nice, but for a book with an overlying theme of social commentary, 1st person works well to point out and sometimes even exaggerate the bias of the main character. and I think that seeing how others think is absolutely fascinating, so I like those sorts of books.

I like either 1st person or 2nd person (I like 2nd person best), I think I like 2nd person better because every time I read i always play this anime-like movie in my head and it's hard to do it in first person in that type of thought since the person can easily configure what the other character's saying differently than if you would of done 1st person on another character.

For me second person gets everyone's situation in the story, not just one.

Second Person, as in "You see this," "You said like..." "You felt that..." and so on?

I don't think I've ever seen a book written in Second Person beyond adventure books for kids. I'm kind of curious if there's ever been a real book written in that style. Anyone have any examples?

I don't know any full length books written in 2nd person. But it's not necessarily only for kids.

I have a Mini- mystery book written in 2nd person, where the deduction and observation skills required to figure out whodunit at the end, is waaay too much to ask of any child. Well, at least any normal child.

So its safe to say that not only choose your own adventure books have it, but rather any book that requires "interaction" on the readers part, can be done in 2nd person.

For me, 1st person just does NOT cut it as placing me into the narrator's shoes. It usually just makes me feel like I'm reading someone's mind and they have an over active imagination (a la JD of Scrubs) or I'm just reading their diary. I never feel like its me doing those things.

2nd person does that. They literally force YOU to think of YOU doing the actions and in that situation. Which is why it can also work of mystery novels and crime solving books where YOU are the detective. That way there isn't a sense of knowing anything about the character that you personally wouldn't have access to.

Normally in mystery books, it's written in such a way that the reader is given chance to solve it before the detectives do. I'm not entirely in to that. I prefer to go on the ride with them.

That's the kind of writing that, for me, I can't stand, usually because the stuff that it's telling me I do or the options that I might pick are nothing like those I actually would choose, so it just becomes flat and irritating to me, a story about some hypothetical individual who is not me.

I agree though that first person isn't the way to go if one wants to feel like they're part of the story, as the narrator in a first person story can't be ignored. The best one can do, I think, is to decide who they relate to the narrator and the story they are telling.

I've never read a mystery book in which there was any intention for the reader to solve the mystery before the detective, but that may be my choice of authors. I read a lot of Agatha Christie when I was young, as well as a few of the Nero Wolfe mysteries. The information is presented through the detective so the reader usually gets any info at the same time as the detective. Or, if the author is evil, the reader only get some of the information so they can't solve it until the dectective brings it up. (There's an amusing movie called "Murder by Death" that deals with that very issue).

I'm really loving all of your guys' responses! I'm glad I thought to make a topic like this. <3

I think all perspectives have their value. There are certainly some stories that are better in third person rather than first person, but the true could be said of the opposite, really.

I even enjoy some short stories done in second person. Choose Your Own Adventure books are a good way to use second person in a longer format, but they sort of lost their appeal for me around... middle school, I think?

Then again, I'm one of those people who skip to the last page in a novel. I tended to cheat a bit with Choose Your Own Adventure books. xD

Anyway, third person is probably the most flexible point of view. You can easily adjust the amount of information given to the reader.

I don't really have a specific preference to that, but I guess I like first person better. The series I read and pretty much only talk about changes perspective from each sister in every new book, so it makes it less boring.

Heya Batty.

I personally prefer third person as well. Its just that when you're learning to read and first getting into books, most of them are in third person. Now there's been an outbreak of first person writing. Even, I found a book that was first person, and writing out like the story was present tense, not past tense. It was confusing as all get out.

I can't stand anything extremely repetitious in a story, yet when I write poetry or whatever it is, I repeat things constantly.

A lot of the problems with first person can be easily moved to third as well, I think. Repeting "I" all the time is just as bad to me as repeating a character's name.

I think what I like about first person is that it adds more personality to the story rather that was is generally a neutral narrative. I'm not saying that I don't think there is particular personality to be found in third person books, it's just that I've foound it more often in first person. Of course, how much I like the narrator in question always has an impact.

I do like it when a third-person narrative is told consistently in-character. Maybe because I appreciate how difficult it is to write that way, I don't know, I'm just really partial to that style.