BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?

Subject: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: katlaughing
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:41 PM

Just wondering: do most of you prefer your novels in first or third person? (Gotcha with the title, didn't I?**bg**)

Tks!

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:45 PM

As a general thing I prefer 3rd person; 1st person seems very limiting. However, 1st person can at times get deeper into a character practically wordlessly (if that is possible) because you, the reader, can watch as the protagonist's personality and character are revealed.

It depends.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Lox
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:50 PM

I can't even begin to conceive how I might answer that question. There's just too many variables.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:52 PM

A simple yes or no will suffice.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Lox
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:57 PM

"do most of you prefer your novels in first or third person?"

... erm ...

... Yes ... =-)

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Becca72
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:58 PM

except that it's not a "yes" or "no" question...

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Lox
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:59 PM

...oh ...

... no then ... =)

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Lox
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 05:59 PM

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:05 PM

Okay, then, if we're going to be pedantic: yes, no, or maybe.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Lox
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:06 PM

see - too many variables

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:07 PM

Horses for courses. Can you imagine Huckleberry Finn in the third person? Or Jane Eyre?

Or Pride and Prejudice or the Lord of the Rings in the first person?

Different stories require different narrative techniques.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Snuffy
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:09 PM

First person works fine as a fictional autobiography. "Reader, I married him". But a less private work demands a wider, impersonal perspective - "I" just wouldn't work for the sort of stuff Dickens or Balzac gave us.

Not the only options though: plenty of "documentary" novels with no narrator - just using letters, press cuttings, police reports etc.

The ones that really piss me off though are the ones done in the SECOND person. I only have to read "And then you think ...." and I say firmly "NO, I BLOODY DON'T" and shut the book. For ever.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Lox
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:13 PM

I'm trying really hard to remember where, if ever, I have read that kind of prose.

"... One day you wake up and you look out your door and you realise you're never going to read that many story's in the second person, so you get up and you go down the book store where you ask the guy behind the counter ... etc ..."

Perhaps it was a song ...

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:16 PM

"The ones that really piss me off though are the ones done in the SECOND person. I only have to read "And then you think ...." and I say firmly "NO, I BLOODY DON'T" and shut the book. For ever."

Does that mean the second-person novel sitting in the bottom of my desk drawer should stay there?

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Snuffy
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:21 PM

So you're in this guy's apartment and you're looking at all these cheap paperbacks on his shelf, all written in the swinging sixties, and you pick one at random, and you see it's written in the sodding second person, like he's trying deperately to get you to sympathise with him in his sad perverted life or even to get remotely interested, but somehow you know that it's just not going to happen because even if you continue reading the next seventeen pages to the end of the sentence, it's still not going to make you think him any more ........

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:29 PM

Did Mike Hammer do 2nd person? Sounds familiar.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:32 PM

"I" just wouldn't work for the sort of stuff Dickens or Balzac gave us. "

You should read David Copperfield or Great Expectations some time...

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Emma B
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:38 PM

probably one of the best known opening sentances -

Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into the kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner and John cleaning the knives, and I said -

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 06:39 PM

To avoid ill-feeling, contributors will please refrain from writing in the second person. The previous post, for instance, could as easily have been expressed thusly: "I should read David Copperfield or Great Expectations some time... " or "He or she should read David Copperfield or Great Expectations some time..." or even "David Copperfield should read Great Expectations some time...". Thank you for your continued co-operation.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 07:03 PM

The previous post, for instance, could as easily have been expressed thusly: "I should read David Copperfield or Great Expectations some time... "

Not really, because I have read them, and consequently know they are both written in the first person.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,...
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 07:05 PM

Doesn't Winnie the Pooh begin and end in the second person?

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 07:12 PM

Call me Ishmael....

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 07:18 PM

"Not really, because I have read them, and consequently know they are both written in the first person."

By golly, you got me there; that never occurred to me. I assumed that you, following the common practice, were content to create the illusion of having read them, while in fact only having watched the Masterpiece Theatre interpretations. I stand corrected. You must concede, however, that the question of whether David Copperfield has read Great Expectations remains open.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: katlaughing
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 07:26 PM

LOL, at you lot! Keep it up, very entertaining and, erm...informative.:-)

kat17,343wordsintoherNaNoWriMonovelinthirdperson

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 07:33 PM

Once she had a farm in Africa.

It is a far, far better thing he does, than he has ever done; it is a far, far better rest that he goes to than he has ever known.

Call him Ishmael.

I have met the enemy and it is I.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 07:34 PM

Lots of narratives dive in and out of different voices - first person, third person. And sometimes different first persons.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 07:37 PM

Third person is a cheat. Author trying to cover all perspectives, playing God. First person is a more honest way to go. First person, the author admits limited capabilities, more believable. Generally. Always exceptions.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Lox
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 08:24 PM

Elmer

Now you appear to have hit on something interesting.

Translating 1st to 3rd and vice versa.

Those few examples make the imagination tingle.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 09:06 PM

One must go down to the sea again,
The lonely sea and the sky ... mustn't one?

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 09:48 PM

Novels with even numbers of pages should be written in first person while those with odd numbers of pages should be written in third person.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Alice
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 09:52 PM

I've never thought of it as anything to prefer. Each in its appropriate way, whatever best fits the story.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 11 Nov 06 - 11:44 PM

Novels in the first person should only be read by the first person that reads them. Similarly, novels in the third person should only be read by the third person. The novel The Third Man poses a particular problem that will require some study - especially if the the third person is a woman. But then, come to think of it, it was written in the first person. I'm afraid legal action may be our only recourse in this instance.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 12:12 AM

But it ain't you babe,
I said no, no, no it ain't you babe.
It ain't you I'm looking for, babe.

Elmer ; > )

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Amos
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 12:22 AM

Last night she dreamed she returned to Marianbad
But don't ask me how I know...

You were a dark and stormy knight..


A

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: John Hardly
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 10:58 AM

I can quickly think of examples of either that I like. They each have their limitations (seems to me). In pursuit of an interesting character, it often seems more enjoyable to read a flawed first person describing his own reactions to the situations in the novel -- a sort of "humble by necessity of ignorance" that I find appealling.

The opposite of that is the tedium of the omniscient POV that fails to adaquately describe a character either by dialogue or by action, but instead falls back on physical description (the refuge of the weak writer).

The goal is less-is-more. Description is the road to tedium. I like the author who can write the multi-purpose paragraph wherein character is described without description.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 12:39 PM

"The goal is less-is-more. Description is the road to tedium. I like ... "

The key words here are "I like" ... Your criteria would dismiss every significant novelist from Jane Austen to Dickens to Tolstoy to Henry James to ...

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Snuffy
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 01:12 PM

Anyone fancy re-writing Tristram Shandy with a third person narrator?

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 01:48 PM

Been there, done that. How 'bout someone re-doing the Bible in the first person? Get rid of that pesky omniscient, know-it-all Narrator ...

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 03:16 PM

On a more serious note than my previous post...

I recently read Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies which is told through a series of letters from the main character, addressed to various minor characters. I found it to be an effective twist upon conventional first person point-of-view in that there is no narrator per se. The main character tells the story, but doesn't speak directly to the reader.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 04:03 PM

Third person is a cheat. Author trying to cover all perspectives, playing God. First person is a more honest way to go.

If it's about "honesty" surely it's the other way round, and the third person is more honest. Within the context of a narrative, the author is God. First person involves pretending not to be.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 04:12 PM

First person to me seems more egotistical, at least for certain genres. Worked extremely well for James Herriot, though!

I do not agree with the less is more in most cases. I was once told a story I'd written wasn't descriptive enough because I used words so sparingly. Most times I paint with my words and cannot imagine not describing the surroundings, feelings etc. going on in a story.

Bee-dubya-ell, "Letters of a Woman Homesteader" is exactly that, only non-fiction, most chapters being the actual letters Elinore Pruitt Stewart wrote to her former landlady in Denver, from her homestead in WY. One of my favourite books.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,memyself
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 04:23 PM

"told through a series of letters from the main character, addressed to various minor characters. I found it to be an effective twist upon conventional first person point-of-view"

This "effective twist" goes back to the earliest days of the English novel - Richardson used the same device in Pamela (1740)(http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=12050&pageno=3).

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 05:23 PM

"Description is the road to tedium"

If it's crap yes, but please ...

Oscar Wildes short stories for his kids are ostentatious in their use of descriptive prose. I wouldn't use "tedious" to describe them if it were the last word in my vocabulary.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 05:29 PM

In fact constructing novels in the form of letters were the normal way to do it throughout the 18th century, and there are plenty of examples of it since then.

I've sometimes thought that a novel in the form of emails and texts and personal messages and blogs and so forth could work quite well. Actually, maybe we are involved in collectively writing something on those lines here on the Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 05:33 PM

Any serious novellist would have a field day using this site as a resource.

Incidentally, methinks that many of the contributers to this forum display more than enough talent and imagination to write novels of their own.

This has to be pretty good practice.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Emma B
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 05:37 PM

I've read some excellent stuff from contributors to this site lox, there is a lot of talent here

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 05:43 PM

Dostoevsky used the first person to great effect. The opening to "Notes From the Underground" is hard to beat as a succinct character study. It would hardly pack the same punch in third person:

"I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased."

In "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man," there is a similarly brilliant sequence:

"I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever."

God bless fucked-up, brilliant writers.

Elmer

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 05:47 PM

"Description is the road to tedium."

I couldn't disagree more. Read some Colette, for one descriptive writer among the many. Her descriptions are so lush they make you want to eat the pages.

Elmer

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 05:59 PM

In oral storytelling descriptions are often best avoided, leaving listeners to fill in the gaps themselves.

"There was a man walking through a forest" can be more vivid than a detailed description.

One of the things that can make first person narratives particularly effective sometimes is that the narrators often won't describe themselves, and a reader has to construct the person using the clues given, and their own imagination.

Subject: RE: BS: Novel preferences 1st or 3rd?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 06:19 PM

Depends whose writing.

Isherwood does first person very well.
Thackeray does third.

Its the charm of the driver rather than the route taken.