Point of view

Character as narrator

We said that in first person narrative, the narrator tries to convince you, the audience, that they are the point of view character.

graphic showing narrator recording themselves inside the story. The narrator is wearing an elf costume.

In non-fiction stories, this is potentially true. In fictional stories, it's definitely not.

Here's another Lemony Snicket example:

I looked at Prosper Lost, who was across the room, standing at his desk and looking at his fingernails. Soon he would notice I was on the phone and find some reason to stand where he might eavesdrop better. "I live alone," I said, "but only for the time being."

"I know just what you mean." I knew from my sister's reply that she was also in a place without privacy. Lately it had not been safe to talk on the phone, and not only because of eavesdroppers.

When Did You See Her Last?(2013)

Apart from changing the pronoun for the point of view character to 'I', this looks exactly the same as third person limited subjective.

So what's the difference? Why would you choose first person over third? (Or vice versa?)

Try to answer that for yourself

We'll answer the question in a moment, but using what you've learned so far, what specific effects do you think first person would have on a story?

Check out these examples. Do you agree with the highlighting? (First person has the same blurred experiential boundaries as second person!)

I looked at the vast chamber of metal and concrete, all the pipes and cables that fed into it. "This would be why your bill is so significant, Mr Malady," I said.

The creepy dude gave me that patronising smile of his. "You can see it's a large and important social project, Mr Sana," he said, half boasting and half scraping.

Social project, my ass. It was probably a weather control machine or something. I looked at the notes Austen had given me. "If it would help, I think we could offer a 5% discount for the next three months?"

I did not like the dark look that flashed across Mr Malady's face when I said that.

I heard a sudden, loud intake of breath behind me and then a shriek. Everything happened at once. I looked over my hip and saw the shark rise out of the water and snap at the Islander guy, who flipped over in a panic. His surfboard whacked the shark in the mouth and it chomped down hard, splitting fibreglass and spraying foamcore. He splashed in a panic, unable to swim.

I went rigid with terror. I heard an outboard motor start and someone screaming on the PA. I felt the whole world shrinking down to a spotlight on this shark's head, and the wild-eyed guy in the water in front of it, all of us frozen in time.

Strengths

First person is what you use when the whole point of the story is about this one character's experience and perception of the world.

  • All story events can be interpreted through this character's personal lens.
  • First person also allows the narrator to speak with the character's voice, which can be interesting if the character has an interesting way of talking about things (though not necessarily phonetic dialect!).
  • It creates a similar heightened intimacy to second person—because with only audience and narrator, there are only two entities involved in the story—without running such a big risk of being creepy or artificial.

Limitations

However, its strengths are also its limitations:

  • A first person story is bound to the point of view character, so it doesn't work so well for stories of grand scope.
  • Also, by combining narrator and character, you lose the ability for the narrator to have a different voice and perspective to the character.
  • And while it can make the audience feel closer to the point of view character, it can also make the audience feel more distant from secondary characters, because they are more clearly 'other' in this point of view.

Go weird

The biggest opportunity with first person is to lean into the character's perceptions and show the audience how this character experiences and interprets the world through their individual lens.

  • If a character's experience and perspective on the world is pretty 'normal', then there's not going to be much difference between a first and third person story about them.
  • But if their experience more colourful or warped and they interpret the world in interesting ways, then the first person experience could be very different to the third person perspective. 
Write a snippet using first person, told from a character's point of view, and try to capture how they experience the world, and how they might talk and think about it.

We've explored all three grammatical points of view and several variations.

Let's choose some snippets for a checkpoint!

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