The Advantages of First Person – And When to Use It
The perspective you use in a story can have greater weight and influence than three extra characters. Among the range to choose from, First Person is one of the strongest. It can shape the entire tone of the book, enhance character development, and more thoroughly immerse your reader in the story. It also serves to help writers overcome their own pitfalls and instead turn these into strengths.
Should you use First Person perspective? When is it most advantageous? We’ll discuss that below, in the 5 biggest strengths and uses of First Person perspective.
To help make this point, I’ll be referencing Behind Closed Doors: Trusting The Unseen by L. S. Andersson. It’s a first-person tale of struggle, betrayal, fighting for your life, and gaining your freedom. Not only is it a great book, but it’s a prime example of the strength of First Person perspective, when done right.
First-Person Perspective Helps:
Character Voice Reign
The key to successfully leveraging First Person is to immerse the prose in the character’s voice. It’s not the writer simply painting the scene – it’s the main character describing things as would be logical to their personality and current focus.
If you’re not excellent at writing descriptions, but prefer to channel the overall mood of a scene, then First Person excels in this department.
It also gives you freedom to play with different writing styles. While one character may quickly pick up on the look in someone’s eye, the next may be distracted by another detail. This allows you to disguise foreshadowing.
In Behind Closed Doors: Trusting The Unseen, the author uses this to define Rebecca’s past experiences and how she approaches the world. Rebecca is prone to noting tics or tells in someone’s expressions, or how they move around her. As someone who has been a prisoner in more ways than one, she’s quick to notice exits and how claustrophobic an area tends to be. In a Third Person perspective, other details may have been worthy of noting, but in Rebecca’s First Person look, we see what’s important to her. In doing so, it reveals more about her character.
Subtle Character Development
The development of a character’s voice can be more telling than the pure events themselves.
In Behind Closed Doors, early on, we see Rebecca’s voice leaning toward long sentences spliced with contradicting thoughts. She thinks of nuances in length and often makes excuses before even confirming her opinion. She tries to see all angles of the situation, even as they are damaging to her. She twists herself in knots - in the prose as in her own thinking - and that’s what helps keep her a victim.
However, as the story progresses, she’s faced with do-or-die choices. At these points, the prose and her state of mind quicken and become crisper. With each situation she faces, this ‘final decision’ portion becomes tighter, with less questioning, less reminiscing, less apologies, and less sympathy for her abusers. This serves as subtle character development. Rebecca is learning from her experiences. Rebecca is becoming more fed up with the things she’s subjected to. Rebecca is learning to stand on her own feet and make no apologies about doing so.
Thanks to First Person perspective, we are not only viewing, but also feeling Rebecca’s character development. The very way she thinks is changing from beneath her – and beneath us as well – which affects the choices she makes. Rebecca of Chapter 2 would not have acted like Rebecca of the last chapter, because, as we can see in the prose itself – she’s a changed person.
Make it Personal
Referring to the character as he/she/they will inevitably place a barrier between the reader and the character themselves – in the most basic sense, because you have a narrator there. This can be lessened to a degree with a Third Person Limited, but nonetheless exists.
In Behind Closed Doors, the story of Rebecca is raw and personal. It follows her journey through abuse, neglect, and betrayal on many levels until her point of hope and self-reliance. Third Person perspective may have been suitable to tell the events, but First Person threw us right into the thick of it. Just as we refer to ourselves as “I” and “me,” we’re better able to immerse ourselves as the very character saying “I” and “me” in the prose.
When you’re hoping to drive home a point more thoroughly, First Person lets you dig right into the characters’ brain and do this. This is best for stories with otherwise unsympathetic characters, for more emotional stories, or for stories where nuances play a heavy role. When you can’t afford the reader missing the finer details, First Person is best.
Smooth Gaps in Memory
Perhaps you don’t excel at writing transition scenes. Perhaps you’re writing a real life account and don’t have all the connecting information. First Person POV can help you smooth out gaps in memory.
It’s natural for people to forget information that isn’t immediately pertinent. In Third Person perspective, the writer is expected to be aware of these details, whereas in First Person, it’s more natural for this information to have escaped the main character’s mind, especially after time has passed.
In Behind Closed Doors, the story spans many years in Rebecca’s journey for freedom and self-empowerment, with numerous catalytic events propelling her from one to the next. In First Person, the burden lies on the main character to tell her story as she deems fit. She’s not recounting her entire life, but a collection of events that directly led to where she is now. As such, she sticks to the high points – the crucial points.
As such, readers are more forgiving and the transitions are more organic. If you’re looking to tell a specific story, or a large story that needs to be condensed, then First Person allows you to do so more smoothly.
Keep Up Hope
When writing a rather grim or disheartening tale, First Person perspective allows you to reinforce that the speaker is still alive – and still trudging along. It’s a light at the end of the tunnel, subtly reminding readers that hope still exists; after all, if the main character is telling the story, then they must have reached a point where they can tell the story.
In Behind Closed Doors Rebecca is telling her story to a trusted companion at a (currently) undetermined point. The First Person perspective gives us a steady view that she is somehow going to journey beyond her poor circumstances. It also gives the character an opportunity to reflect on the events and drive home the nuances of what we’re witnessing.
When you’re writing a story that needs to keep a note of hope up throughout the grimmer happenings, First Person is a subtle but impactful way to ensure this.
Conclusion
For your next story, or your current one, would it be better told in First Person?
If you’re interested in seeing this done well, want to read a fantastic story of struggle and triumph, and also support a fellow self-published author, check out Behind Closed Doors: Trusting The Unseen by L S Andersson.
Also check out her site, AnamMara.com, where she’s spearheading a project to help abused women find their voice and gain their own independence financially. Proceeds from the book will contribute to making this project a reality.