Enjoyable for whom? As a reader or as the writer?
As a writer I’ve written in pretty much all forms of writing—-tenses and actual stylistic forms—-poetry, playwriting, scriptwriting, etc.—-so I’ve had to learn how to juggle and master whatever forms best served the project.
Writing in the first person, I did, I felt, I believe in and telling the story from that vantage point is often for an immediacy and internal exposition. How do I decide? Generally if I have a character that might be one the star of the project and also be directly going through some graphic things that I want to get an internalized view of, I’ll choose First person.
Tranny: A Transsexual Tale
Born one way but living another, Nicky K. has it all: low standards, unfulfilled dreams, tragic mulatto angst, a history of sexual abuse, a dead Daddy who is now a pestering car wreck mangled ghost who won't quit criticizing; several obese, depressed White women as BFFs; hostile male to female tr...
Tranny: A Transsexual Tale, an idea I had for about a decade before commuting it to paper—actually typing it directly up—-I generally handwrite everything first—-pressed that i explore the lead character, Nicky K in a very direct, graphic, interior way.
I wanted this person who has started life male and is doing things, some illegal, to try and become female—-and is now questioning it after an illegal surgery, reflecting back on the pressures that got her to this point—-I needed that immediacy and internal access. I also wanted her to tell this story in 10 concise chapters. So I wanted a depth but a speed as well. There’s no time for languishing on the color of the carpet or the birds wending through the air—-no, Nicky K is telling you, the reader, what happened, why, where, who was involved and how that has affected and effected her. I knew that it would be extremely graphic, Nicky having been involved in prostitution, jail, drugs, affairs with married men so I needed the reader to if not wholly sympathize, at least understand her.
From the Third Person-Omniscient—-I would tell you Nicky K’s story—-me, Kyle would tell you—-with the 1st Person—-ostensibly Nicky K is telling you.
First Person also gives me, as a writer, a clean access to the character’s voice. Do they curse a lot? Use slang? How does she see things? Can I create a paradox where you the reader see through Nicky’s eyes and yet you can see what she sees differently than her? Then that presses that you, the reader, start to understand Nicky as faulty, faulted, blind in some areas. Which gives me the writer space to play and you the reader space to even deeper understand the character.
I would also offer that because it can seem so interiorized and personal—-the character’s thoughts and impressions immediately translated against their feelings—-the character becomes more “real”. Now the reality of a character, not just their inner world but the reality which they occupy for a reader—-becoming real to the reader, becoming articulated to the point that the reader considers this could be a real person—-has a lot to do with access to their inner thoughts, motivations, experiences, observations. Yes, you can of course do this in 3rd Person—-present a situation, put a character into it and in the omniscient voice have the character relate (to the reader) the reality they’re experiencing. But to do so deftly, to create almost a seamless transition from reader to reality, 1st Person is often stronger. To do so in 3rd Person generally requires more and more experiencing, building characters and what a lot of 3rd Person relies upon—-analogy/metaphors.
That skill, which is ultimately after writing, in rewriting and editing, going back and erasing the obvious seams and stitches and hooks, whether in 1st or 3rd person, is when one has worked, garnered such a skill at writing that it is now colloquially seen as “talent”.
Also 1st Person is easier to some degree because it is most similar to how a writer themselves externalizes their own thoughts. So when I write: “I walk down the road…” I, Kyle, have walked down roads so I know of where my character speaks. Graduating in sophistication, I can further explore the interior of a character because their feelings might be similar to ones I’ve had. That similarity then allows me as the writer to expound or explore something I went through and paste a character over it. If done well, as I have in some of my writing, readers might not again see the seams of woven in reality to this work of fiction.
Writing in the 3rd Person though, to completely re-examine the above I’ve done almost equally as much, most recently in the novel Stay With Me.
I had 3–6 main characters 3 men, 1 woman and 2 children. I needed to throughout the novel move through time and space easier and faster and distinctly. By distinctly I mean that a paragraph starts out with Christina woke up—-blah blah blah—-what I’m doing there is setting up. introducing to the reader that this section/chapter is from Christina’s perspective. Now let me tell you what she’s going to do, why she’s doing it, who she’s interacting with her. The pitfall is that I could tell everything, I could tell it so much, so emphatically that I’m telling you—-not showing. So the line of the 3rd Person writing is to show—-to show Christina moving through her day, her issues, her interactions—-without an over-reliance upon directive-telling sentences and exposition. This balance between telling and showing is often such a problematic area in writing because of a lack of feedback.
Writing is personal, no matter the form/formula, but once it goes out in a classroom, over the internet——your skill or lack thereof, is exposed and rightfully open to criticism and questioning. This means that the general taste of the mass audience will be equivalent to the mass reading of the audience or the averaged/mean reading level of the mass audience. Or more pertinent to this counter-point—-the mass median level of the reading populace, which might differ from those simply capable of reading. I’m referring more to the people who actively read—-what would be considered “a lot” by the mass population.
I read on average 5 books a week so I‘m constantly being -re-familiarized with all of the rules of grammar, structure, punctuation, etc. so “bad” writing stands out to me faster—-generally within the first two sentences of nearly anything. Now I might give something “a chance” say if I’m the teacher of a class on writing or working with younger teens/adults or if it’s a subject I’m interested in/.information but I know that the writer is perhaps say more of a scientist than a writer so I’ll make space for them not being a wordsmith.
Now if you’re attempting or claiming to be a writer—-I assume, like you would to any profession that you have achieved some mastery of the tools—-grammar, punctuation, past-present tense, etc.—-just like I would a professional chef, a race car driver or a doctor—-I assume this because you shouldn’t go public with your work until you’ve mastered the tools, and know what the tools are.
When I write in the 3rd Person I’m using it to tell a story that might span more time or it would be cumbersome for an interior monologue to relate what happened each chapter—-that might cross decades. Also I’m able to jump from character to character—-perspectives and include more descriptions and reactions of and from other characters. In many ways 3rd Person is interactive with writer, reader and characters whereas 1st might singularly narrow the focus to the main character. That narrowing might help to enhance the characterization itself or in 3rd I can use the characterization to also make objective observations about the character/their reality.
Simply, subjective and objective, yes, but also a writer needs to control which is happening and why.
With objective-omniscience as a narrator I can illuminate the character in ways that they themselves might not readily offer ——if I kept it in the subjective, personal, it would be forced.
In Stay With Me—-Christina often “cheats” on her boyfriend—-who is secretly having an affair with men—-but the novel itself unravels that because of his family issues, he seeks out partners who as children—-have had trauma—-therefore manifest it as self-doubt/depression as adults.
Such a complex dynamic—-easily followed when directly explained—-is something Christina and Kirk, Stavros’s female and male lovers, come to realize, would not be as easily unveiled if I left it “in their heads”. The reader then gets to see them having parallel traumas as children. The reader then also gets to see—-aha! this might be connective tissue between two such disparate characters. The 3rd Person then lends to authenticity in the fact that the reader can see-read similarities that people/characters might not readily be able to express—-or it would be clumsy to express it—-again showing amateurish usage of writing tools. You always want, I want, in my writing two things—-naturalness and flow.
Naturalness is experimented with and elements of it are explained above. By “flow” I mean that I aim for each section, sequence chapter to move naturally into the next by value. Each section must earn it’s place so as not to be edited out. I tease early in Stay With Me, Kirk telling his son he’s too young to drive as the little boy playfully asks to be taught—-but that heralds to the future where Mateo actually tries to drive a car. It seems like simply a playful aside but 50 pages later the reader sees that as the book itself is designed to observe these characters through the multiverse—-of 5 alternate/related realities—-that the writer was also inner playing with the text itself. Which deepens the experience for the reader. The book is no longer simply a story but the reader sees that in the complexity of the construction, there is much to notice, to pay attention to, that there is a connective tissue.
In such a large work, there has to be a connective tissue or else it’s a huge word salad being cast at the reader—-the writer has the responsibility in their work of making it accessible for the reader and also making it , if not easy, possible for the reader to see deft stitching occurring—-the reader trusts the writer, and therefore the work, when they can see writing well done. Now they may not articulate this consciously but a reader is seeking a book to be “set” in the sense that as a reader one doesn’t have to do editing or corrections or (unless it is a mystery) suss out what is going on.
Strategic breadcrumbs.
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