OK, it’s a trick question. The answer is that every “I” narrative has not one, but two points of view.
Think about it: You – the writer – embody the second POV. You stand behind the curtain of literary creativity, directing everything that happens in the story; what to include and what not, what other characters say to your “I” narrator, what action happens on camera and what doesn’t.
As the invisible puppeteer, you pull all the strings. You have the power to present this character as you wish. With every decision you can go far beyond what the character may want to reveal at any given moment.
A solution to the restrictions of the “I” narrative
For the novelist or writer of YA fiction, memoir and other narrative non-fiction, the “I” narrative, first-person POV offers tremendous possibilities for an authentic personal voice that sees everything from inside your central character’s perspective — the deepest feelings, the fond or dreaded memories, the secret desires. This approach quickly engages readers with the “I” narrator, and compels us to care about what happens next.
But many writers feel restricted when writing in the first person. They struggle with how to get in all the back story, the crucial action that’s happening elsewhere, the real, nuanced personality of your main character that she herself doesn’t realize or understand — without pulling away and inserting a third-person omniscient narrator who explains it all and interprets for the reader the truth about what’s really happening in the story.
So it’s important to keep in mind the parallel existence of two actual points of view within one “I” narrative when writing a novel or memoir. It brings us to the core of literary art. You, the writer, are creating a character, fictional or autobiographical, whom we know only through what you put on the page.
Jonathan Franzen’s brilliant construction
Here’s an example. I’ve just finished reading Jonathan Franzen’s new best-selling novel Freedom, a contemporary family drama that I found immensely readable. It also contains a brilliant construction of two points of view within a single “I” narrative.
The book appears to be a third-person account written to a therapist about one of her patients. We realize eventually, however, that in fact, we’re reading an “I” narrative, a journal written entirely from inside the mind of the book’s main character Patty Berglund, a woman struggling for love, significant work, and meaning in her life.
Franzen weaves painful self-revelation and embarrassing dialogue into this double narrative, creating a portrait of Patty that’s far from flattering. He could have stuck strictly to her mercurial mood-swings from denial to self-loathing. But his “second” POV, informing his behind-the-scenes choices, balances the two perspectives – his and hers — to create a deeply moving and highly nuanced character.
Franzen goes beyond the first-person narrative to include occasional third-person scenes. The complexity creates some unnecessary confusion. Was I his editor, I would have made some surgical cuts and suggested new language to clarify the sequence of events.
Shaping a memoir
Here’s another example. I’m working with a writer on a memoir in which the “I” narrator suffers through years of physical and emotional abuse from her husband before ultimately finding the strength and maturity to leave him. This topic is so relevant these days – so many forms of abuse go on and I wanted to bring that to light in my writing. It’s not just domestic abuse, but child abuse, and even elderly abuse. You hear about many firms such as this Illinois nursing home abuse law firm going out to cases of abuse within care homes. Somewhere families send their loved ones for care, love and assistance. It struck a cord with me, so it was important that I wrote into one of my books to try and spread awareness of abuse, in particular for me, domestic abuse. I wanted my audience to see that people can overcome domestic abuse and can find the courage to leave their abusive partners by filing for a divorce with their local divorce attorney. It’s so important that people hear this, just in case, they need some inspiration to change their lives by leaving their abusive spouse. I want women who might be going through domestic abuse to know that they can adopt measures and ask for assistance from different charities and victim support. Such women can also ask for a restraining order and implement home security methods such as CCTV, high-tech door locks, burglar alarm installation (to prevent breaking and entering), etc., to feel safe in their home.
Anyway, I thought it was important to write about that. I wanted to shift to the third person to show how the central character’s parents had been role models for her awful marriage and how her husband had been unfaithful. I thought about citing statistics and psychological theory to support her premise.
But my editor suggested it was far more effective to read just the heroine’s perspective as she first accepts and then rejects the carefully selected incidents of her transformation. It was the author’s parallel POV that determined what specific dialogue and meaningful action best revealed the reason for her escape.
What’s your experience?
Please share your opinions about and experience using the “I” narrator. What techniques and solutions have helped you tell your unique story?
Just wanted to say thank you for this post – very serendipitous to find it today. Exactly what I needed, and I appreciate you making your expertise available.
Hi Alan great site; some very useful stuff here.
I just discovered it because of your post about getting book bloggers to review their books. The book I am interested in getting reviewered is my first novel written in the first person about a girl who has lost her memory.
Half way through the book a traumatic incident causes her to regain her memory. The flashback as she recalls who she is, and how she came to lose her memory – cue more trauma – is in the third person from her pov.
Then the end of the book returns to the present which is back in the first person.
I did it this way to differentiate between the present and the past. I’ve no idea if it works for a reader but it seemed completely logical to me.
Hi Mia,
Glad the suggested shift to first person worked for you.
I do recall how much better the new opening read when you sent it along with the old draft to compare.
Keep up the good work!
Alan
Alan,
Earlier this year you had recommended I change my historical fiction from third person to first person. A few months ago I took up your suggestion, which terrified me to no end. The change in voice has been a liberating experience. It has been the difference between the death of a story and having a second chance. Thanks so much for the encouragement and for showing me the way.
Mia
Sheila
I’m not a big fan of query letters, as many readers here know, since they are often discarded unread by agents and editorial assistants.
Focus on the memoir itself and good luck finding your power to pull those strings.
Tom
A+ literary exegesis.
Many thanks for the excellent explanations of how Hawthorne, Melville, and Faulkner handled the limitations of first person narration, one way or another. All can strive for this level of imagination and creativity.
Julie,
Congratulations on getting representation for your book.
A note of caution about depending on jacket blurbs to provide clues for the reader to understand what’s happening in the story, as authors under contract with commercial publishers don’t usually control the jacket blurbs on their books. And the jacket may also change over time, with different editions, hopefully.
To be safe, it’s best to keep all the clues and clarity within your writing.
Good luck!
I loved FREEDOM, thought it a profound book. I found the point of view in the novel really interesting. It certainly did seem to be Patty’s story, but I found myself stopping every once in a while to see which character the narrator was actually describing, whose eyes the story was being told through. The point of view seemed to shift many times, although it was almost always technically third person point of view. Franzen is brilliant at getting inside a character’s head and making all his characters’ voices appear to be first person. When Patty actually spoke in first person through her therapy journal, the voice still sounded like Franzen’s voice. And yet, when Richard Katz goes on his rants about society, I found myself thinking, “Hmmm, maybe that’s Franzen.”
Thank you for this valuable post. I’m writing several novels right now. I started writing a YA Fantasy novel about three teenagers who find an unconscious mermaid washed up onshore after an oil disaster. I’m telling this story in first person through the eyes of one teenager, and have found myself puzzling over how to expand how much she knows. Your insight into the “I” narrative as actually two points of view is very helpful!
Alan Rinzler:
After collecting a thousand fiction script rejections, I began memoir writing, will be ready to query by January 2011 (I hope) and remain excited. Intially I worried about the redundancy of the letter I. Still editing, I get around the, “I, this,” and “I, that,” but of course I can’t completely delete it.
And having read your brilliant post on the two point of view’s on “I”, something suddenly became clear; I love power! You said, “…you pull all the strings. You have the power to present this character as you wish.” I perked up and continued reading, “You the writer are creating….only through what you put on the page.” No wonder I found my genre, I yelled to myself.
Mr. Rinzler, you worded it beautifully and the two point of views is an important reminder right now. Thank you!
Sheila Cull http://sheila-cull.blogspot.com
Dear Mr R,
Thanks for alerting writers who haven’t encountered or solved this dilemma. Hawthorne and Melville stumbled over it, but triumphed nontheless: In The Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne has a first person narrator, and the author had to go through many gyrations to put him in places where he could see and hear the other main characters in his story (for example, up a tree under which they act out an important scene and, taking a break from the utopian farm where they all do everything but farm, stopping in town at a pension which just happens to be across the street from the windows, etc., where other characters are staying). Melville’s Ishmael, in Moby-Dick, a first-person narrator, gives us a brilliant scene with Captain Ahab alone in his cabin because, one would imagine, Melville needed this scene.
But almost all good writers do anything but maintain a consistent single point of view, not only because they are behind the curtain pulling the strings of first-person narrators but by having their characters hand off point of view to other speakers. Faulkner has a brilliant story that begins with his famous tragic narrator Quentin Compson who very quickly says, “Ratliff is telling this.” Nice.
The Arkansas-based writer David Jauss has written a series of excellent essays on aspects of fiction, one of which proves, with multiple references, how often this handing off of point of view and switching of point of view exists in excellent works by accomplished writers. Jauss’s essays have appeared.over time, in The Writers’ Chronicle, a publication of The Associated Writers’ Programs that would be a value to anyone working in short fiction, poetry, and the novel.
I just secured representation for a Christian YA. Writing from first person POV was restricting in regards to the ongoings elsewhere. A killer, for example, seeking my MC. She was unable to know many crucial details. However, I hope that these same issues helped to drive the action and keep the reader reading. There are plenty of clues along with a jacket blurb that allow the reader to understand what is happening before the MC. First person POV can be used to the writers advantage to create suspense, which is what I hope I did successfully.
lawrenceez,
Sounds like you’ve found a solution that works by understanding how you, the author, can both occupy and transcend the first person POV of your novel.
But you could, actually, tell the whole story from the past tense, since the main character is telling the entire story after it happens, including his discovery at the end, right? Your call.
Hi, this is a very interesting article, as I’m facing the POV first person question in my second novel. The story only seems to work in the main character’s view point (present tense with past for back story), but there is much background information that he only discovers after the dramatic peak towards the end of the story. Rightly or wrongly, the entire novel has him looking back while continuing to narrate in the present tense. It also means the central character is relating events told to him after the story itself. Confusing to explain, but I think it works. The alternative, telling those other sections in other POVs, wasn’t really working.
This looks like an excellent site.
Scooter,
Try to distinguish the third-person other-language POV from the first-person main character not only with action and characters but with the narrative language itself — the actual choice of words, syntax, rhythm, and pacing. Also don’t necessarily go back and forth alternatively in a predictable manner.
You’re free to switch within chapters, but do it irregularly so it’s not too automatic or mechanical.
Good luck!
My first novel was written entirely in first person. It was crap, but not because of that. The novel I’m working on right now switches between first and third person to simulate a language barrier in a fantasy world. I know I do write with a much stronger voice in first person, and used it to make my main character funny and sympathetic. I am struggling with creating a compelling, rich flow in my third-person sections, but I’m working on it.
To keep the reader from becoming confused while jumping between the two POV’s, I embedded very identifiable traits from the other POV’s action or characters to keep it sane and allow the reader to orient him/herself. So far, the complaints from my betas have not been related to point of view, so hopefully it’s working as well as I think.