Truth be told, I grew up not liking a lot of books written in the First-Person perspective. Part of it was a natural distrust of the narrator—even early on I understood that the singular narrator could be an unreliable one, and I thought there was more fun in the third perspective, though in retrospect there’s was also a lot of terrible head-hopping. I think the book with a first-person perspective I remember reading was Stoker’s Dracula, which featured a lot of letters. There was a lot of early readings of Sherlock Holmes, with The Case of the Speckled Band and The Hounds of Baskervilles being particular favorites. I always enjoyed John Watson’s voice.
However, whatever likes or dislikes I had of the first-person perspective were in for rude awakenings when I set myself to the job of writing The Blessed & Possessed. In many ways I fell in love with writing from that POV with The Driver of Serpents, which is the first book told from the viewpoint of a reincarnated St. Patrick of Ireland as he tries to rescue Deevi, who is the last Nephilim being hunted by the forces of Heaven and Hell. The first novel follows Patrick’s POV exclusively.
One voice can be a lot of fun, and Patrick was about having fun since it was the first time I was writing something that I knew was going to be published, but I hadn’t really dived into first-person POV before with commitment. Patrick forced me to re-learn how to pace a story from one perspective versus staging a scene with a third-person POV, even if it is tightly done.
I liken the first-person to spoken word and standup—it’s not about the specific words or the impact of the dialogue, but rousing an emotional reaction on the beat. Carrying the audience along the story of the entire performance through these emotive beats matters more than characters nailing their scenes in a story told from the third person-perspective, which has a structure of beats and breaks unique to itself. Of course first-person and third-person share aspects of voice with each other, but for me third-person perspective is more akin to producing stage, television, or film. There is a fixture character in a setting (which is all but ephemeral in first-person unless the author pursuing it likes to wank with words) but we see all these other characters fleshed out in their own moments, adding to a richer narrative that, sometimes intentionally, is meant to be distinctive in parts.
Establishing settings in themselves is also a uniquely different task in first-person than it is in third. For example, in first person you only need to really focus on what is manifested for the sake of the story. If I walk into a kitchen, it is contingent on me to build the scene for the reader, but only so much that I cover what it is important. In third person I would have to build the scene, relate it somewhat to the characters and their state, and whereas a character in first-person can carry their voice and tension and uniqueness from scene to scene, making what they will of it, and not necessarily pay attention to the mood of a place. Third-person requires that every scene carries something to itself beyond the voice, but many voices and forces.
But in The Delver of Purgatory, I switch between two first-person perspectives: the first is, of course, St. Patrick of Ireland.
The other is Lucifer Morningstar, who required his own distinct voice, delivery, and worldview different from Patrick’s. There will be a blogpost soon on writing characters from the Bible into fiction, which will be a feat in itself if I can pull it off, but building that new voice not only forced some original thinking, but I found once again that first-person forces a different set of skills to come into play.
Now, I do think there are some places where first person authors get to cheat a little bit, and I get why—it is much, much easier to write blow-by-blow action in first person than it is third, but the downside is that some authors are often sloppy, too abbreviated, or have no sense of pace. The flow of a fight in third-person is built from a bunch of static imagery flowing into a complete picture of movement and result, but first-person is much more of a dance with words, each comma and period a step or spin in a greater circuit that gets the reader from point A to point B. The great authors who write in first person pay a lot of attention to their dance, while the sloppier ones I find will often outright say “I was in a fight and now we’re past it.” For some reason beyond me readers are far more forgiving of first-person authors than they are those who write in the third.
But first-person avoids head-hopping (moving from one character’s third-person perspective to another within scene, which is also called third-person omniscient), and I have to agree with my mentors and peers in the field of genre fiction: it really is a lost art. Either way, first-person is incredibly helpful in keeping readers on track and anchored into the narrative.
There isn’t necessarily a place where the first-person perspective fails in literature, only authors who fail to use it right. Getting back to that thing about voice:
I had to do everything I could to make sure that Lucifer did not sound like Patrick at all. I did so because I cannot tell you how many first-person narratives I’ve read where everyone sounds like everyone else, but those are almost also always the books where I find out that the author has an unhealthy attachment to their main characters, who is more than just a voice in a narrative. One thing I think behooves the authors who do well with first-person is their ability, even from the viewpoint of one character, to allow other characters outside of the main one to have their own emotions, their own thoughts, and establish a voice to themselves. That requires putting emotional distance between you and your main character, but not their emotions—which shouldn’t be yours.
For example, despite the characters in The Blessed & Possessed having some sincere gripes with the Almighty, I do not. I know, that might sound surprising if you read the books, but any anger I have over the unfairness of Patrick’s story and what is laid upon him is left for him to feel, not me. The same with Lucifer—I don’t have a reason to rebel against Heaven, but I have to let Lucifer find his way into rebellion. I only filter their voices, which is what I think first person-perspective should be used for in a sense. There are many, many voices in I, and to use I effectively means to give those multitudes use of your voice.
That takes making it not about you, but the story.
A lot of authors fail in this measure. If you go on their social media pages after you’ve read their books, one quickly discovers how much genre fiction released is about personal, some might say selfish, wish-fulfillment. That’s not the purpose of storytelling, which is transformative.
And that is the goal I take into these books—I, the author writing, need to disappear for the sake of these voices. Yes, of course, my thoughts and beliefs and personal philosophy are reflected in some of these characters, but not all of them. The best books, written in first-person or third, give the reader a sense of who the characters are. And I have to stress, especially in today’s publishing and media landscape, it’s important to be able to create both a closeness between the readers and characters and a distance between the characters and the author. The worst thing an author can do in crafting great character is serve themselves first. That’s not the job.
Whatever perspective one decides to use, the job of the author is to translate and transmit story for the reader, and whatever one needs to use to complete that transmission in the clearest way is often the best.
But did I get the job done? You’ll have to find out by reading The Driver of Serpents and its sequel, The Delver of Purgatory!