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Narrative Writing Tips

If you're looking for an intense and surprising narrative viewpoint, try the first person. Anybody or anything you like can be telling the story - the trick is to avoid 'I' becoming 'you'.

The first-person viewpoint is all about the 'I', the character's sight, their frame of mind, their limited understanding of themselves and the world around them.

With the first person, everything is seen through a single 'I'. Think of the difference in effect between 'he thrusts in the knife, feeling her skin rip' and 'I thrust in the knife, feeling her skin rip.' The 'I' narrator speaks from a privileged position: he or she (or even it) inhabits the world of your text, and is part and parcel of what goes on within. Events therefore have more power to spill off the page and into the reader's consciousness.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

But there are some restrictions to this point of view. How do you describe your character without risking cliché by having her look in a mirror? Also, everything in the text has to be something known by the narrator, and told through her unique narrative style. She can't see what's coming, she can't see what's happening in another room, she can't tell what other people are thinking, and she doesn't know the truth about everything that has happened (four excellent reasons why this viewpoint is often used in detective fiction).

Moreover, first-person narrators aren't always reliable: how often have you embellished a story to boost somebody's opinion of you? First-person narrators telling somebody else's story (think Heart of Darkness) are at even more of a disadvantage. Work out before you start writing exactly what your narrator knows, and how much of what she says should be considered the truth.

SPEAKING FROM THE HEART

We all tell stories from a first-person viewpoint - how many times do you use the word 'I' in a sentence? Because of this, it's easy to see the first person as the most immediate and accessible form in which to write. This way, all of your experiences and knowledge can be drawn upon on demand, and little is lost in the translation to a third person. The first-person narrator also inspires a kind of intimacy that is absent from the more detached third-person alternative. The narrator is speaking from the heart, confessing to you, sharing an experience.

BEWARE THE CLONE ARMY

But this complicity between the author and the narrator can often be the downfall of both. Because the 'I' is so familiar, the character using it can quickly lose her own identity and become merged with yours. Instead of forming rounded, autonomous characters, you risk simply creating extensions of yourself, each with the same form of speech, the same opinions, the same personality. If your characters are missing the spark that makes them appear unique - if a reader can tell that you're blatantly speaking through them - then nobody is going to be interested in their progress for more than a few pages.

Keeping your characters alive and independent in the first person can be extremely difficult. The trick to succeeding is to ensure that you know each player intimately - their pasts, their dreams, their fears, their pet hates, their political opinions, everything about them - so that they don't risk becoming literary versions of yourself. They are as much a separate construct as a third-person character. The weaker the character appears in your own head, the less chance he has of staying afloat in the seething mass of ideas and images that is your text.


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