If you’re anything like me, when you’re in writing mode, you’ll have a narrative style that you naturally gravitate towards. For me, my default style is third person, past tense, using deep point of view. But again, if you’re anything like me, you will encounter that one story that makes you question whether your default is the right choice.
Perhaps there is something within the narrative construction that makes you think you need to be a little bit closer to the characters. Or maybe there is something within the narrative that wants you to be more distant. Or maybe you just want to experiment and see what you’re capable of doing.
But there are some things about certain narrative constructions and certain stories that lend themselves more to one particular style of narrative as opposed to another. Making that decision as to which is most appropriate is not an easy thing to do.
In today’s post, I want to explore this idea of whether a narrative wants to be in first person or whether it should remain in third person. And I want to discuss what is similar about first-person and third-person, deep-point-of-view narratives and what is different.
