posted
Okay, we all know that the most common POV is third person light penetration, so let's not discuss that.
Who here has sold a story in first person or third person omni? I'm interested because I like exploring different ideas. I just finished a first person story in Cajun dialect. It worked for most readers but for sure not all. I've also sold a third-person omni short-short,and that was a lot of fun to write.
Of course, there is always a penalty for straying off the beaten path, but there can also be great rewards.
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It's OK. I'm still muddled about the differences between light penetration, limited penetration, heavy pennance, and so on. I wouldn't have noticed the error. Posts: 2026 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Most of my sales have had first person narrators. I've never used 3rd omni in a short story. Larry McMurty did, I believe.
Posts: 179 | Registered: Jul 2003
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The penetration, light or deep, is how far inside the character's head you go. Limited refers to a style of omniscient narrator, such as the fly on the wall who can observe but not see inside any character's head. I think OSC calls that version cinematic omniscient. There are various degrees of omniscience from extremely limited to God who knows everything and can change the story and talk directly to the readers.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
A lot of my writing is in first person. I've sold one first person present story to a print mag, and a first person past story to a webzine.
There is a degree of resistance to first person stories, which to me means you have to do them well. Probably better than if you were writing the same story in third.
People say to me "but first is so limiting". I say, "it's not limiting--it's challenging"!
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Interesting... I've not seen so much support for 1st person since I've been a member of this forum. I have tried several times to start a story in 1st person, and usually give up after a few paragraphs and revert to 3rd, simply because I want the reader to know more than the POV character knows.
But a well-written first person narrative is not intrusive to me. Two stories that were really well-done in that voice were "The Secret Life of Bees" and, of course one of my all time favorites, "To Kill A Mockingbird."
I've written several stories in 1st person, but never anything of great length. One of these days I'll be successful at writing an entire novel in 1st person, just to see if I can. I agree with BuffySquirrel--it's a challenge!
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My first sale was in first person. I'd like to be able to say that my second sale was in second person, my third in third person, and my fourth in fourth person, but they were all in third.
[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited August 13, 2005).]
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Third person omni seems to be going completely out of style in such a way that it is a difficult sell, at least in speculative genres. Outside of speculative genres I often see inconsistent viewpoints and it drives me nuts...I don't think the authors really know what viewpoint they're using they just write the story.
First person PAST tense, it seems to me, has always had a small but solid base of support. I'll read this and have enjoyed first person stories before, but I admit they make me feel slightly uncomfortable and it often takes me longer to get into them. Still, I see plenty of these around and feel confident that you can sell such a story if it's good.
First person PRESENT tense is a strange trend that I have rarely seen outside of amateur writer's groups and critique groups. There's some in print, but given that disparate ratios I suggest that they are harder sells by their very nature.
Third person limited, whether light or deep penetration, seems to me to be the easiest way to make a speculative sale nowadays. All four of my sales have been in this format, with varying degrees of penetration. (IT's a sliding scale, really, and I often stick to somewhere in the middle.)
posted
Three sales were 3rd limited POV, one was 1st person. The 1st person was epistolary in style, which I tend to prefer with 1st person. I like the sense that I'm either overhearing a conversation or am reading something that had some reason for being written down.
Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
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I really find it hard to understand why 3rd omni is going so much out of style, I find that I really love well written 3rd omni. Of course, there is a problem here: not very many writers actually know how to write in 3rd omni well, and therefore, there isn't very much well written 3rd omni available. By corollary, I suppose one could reason that this is why it is going out of style. Very unfortunate.
Posts: 477 | Registered: Oct 2004
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dpatridge: You hit on one reason that third person omni is going out already -- it's hard to write well and most people don't. I've tried my hand at it a couple of times and it feels vaguely uncomfortable, but that could be that I've been getting used to third person limited.
The other reason, and the reason I have never really bothered to learn how to write it, is that it creates more distance from the people in the story. With a limited viewpoint we get to know one character really well. With omniscient we see everything from an outside point of view and the dips into character's heads, even in well-written omni, are shallow and brief.
Third person omni is also a camera's eye view. This is what movies do, and do well -- show the story to us. The actors, if they're good, can give us glimpses of what they're feeling through facial expressions and other nonverbals, but basically what you're looking at is a third-person omni story.
In fact, movies do this so much *better* than books that we can't realy compete. This is another reason I think books have moved away from this style. We had to find something we could do that movies couldn't do with pictures and sounds to make it come alive. We can crawl into character's heads. That's what we can do.
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exactly! Most people screw it up badly, so it just looks like a series of POV errors. And even when it's done well, it feels distant, as Christine says. It's really hard to pull it off.
Posts: 1750 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Truth be told, when I wrote my first person present story, I didn't even think about the person or the tense. I just wrote the story the way it came to me.
It's an odd little piece anyway, and I think in third its oddness would probably have been more obtrusive. Being in first, it's just ascribable to the narrator's voice .
posted
A. First person narration has one aspect that no other POV can give--an unreliable narrator. This technique gives the story an unbelievable amount of subtext and can allow you to do some terrific "negative space" intrusion.
B. Christine wrote: "First person PRESENT tense is a strange trend that I have rarely seen outside of amateur writer's groups and critique groups. There's some in print, but given that disparate ratios I suggest that they are harder sells by their very nature."
In SpecFic and mainstream, first/present may not be common, but in the literary genre, it's been around for at least 35 years. Raymond Carver used it extensively and to great success.
[This message has been edited by DavidGill (edited August 14, 2005).]
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3rd omni isn't limited to camera mode. It can be used to reveal the thoughts of all characters at all times. Susan Cooper uses it a great deal in her Dark Is Rising sequence.
Posts: 179 | Registered: Jul 2003
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Third person cinematic is camera mode. The omniscient narrator can be, as I stated before, anywhere from God, who can go back and change the story, to almost third person limited with light penetration. It is a very versatile narrator, but also difficult to wield with skill.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
Well, since this has turned into a discussion of different persons, what is the difference between third person cinematic and third person objective? Or are they two names for the same thing?
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My series in progress is going to be written using 3rd omni "near God" for the first two books and either 3rd limited or 1st person for the last book.
I have my reasons for wanting to do this.
Technically, there are two stories occuring at the same time in the first two books. An inner story being related to our MC of the outer story by a story teller and an outer story of said MCs reactions to the inner story and his gradual change from an egocentric to the man who is heir to the roles his great, great , great grandfather played with his brother.
I couldn't exactly make the storyteller use third person limited, that'd make him have to have been directly involved in the events in some way or another, instead of indirectly as a God character. If he wasn't a God character, he couldn't still be alive after so many generations.
I've had many people tell me I'm being silly, but I disagree.
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I've written a fair amount in first person POV and I'm quite comfortable with it, though it does depend on the narrator - I have to feel comfortable "being" that person to make it work. I will admit that some of my first person stuff uses a narrator who's almost a cipher, though those are works at an early stage of development.
I dislike third person omniscient. If the writer can drop into anyone's head at any time, then there is a real problem with information flow - how do you legitimately keep anyone's thoughts a secret? For that reason, I like third person deep. However, if you're strictly limited, then you have some of the same problems as in first person - you can only report events that your POV character is actually present at, and some stories need to be told from different perspectives.
One way round that is the strict demarcation that George R R Martin is currently using in his epic; each chapter/segment is 3P for a specific named character. But even there, there have been problems; a major character who was only indirectly referenced in the first books has now become one of the featured characters, which feels wrong to me.
Generally, I do think that the structure of the story will pretty much determine what POV you can use. If your story is basically that of one character, you can follow them around in first or third deep, but if you need to cover all manner of events in all manner of places, LotR style, you need multiple viewpoints, and I don't like deep multiples.
I'm still trying to resolve this with one of my stories, where the original idea was to start with an ensemble cast and then "zoom in" onto one character as it became clear who the main subject of the story actually was. However, I think that's cheating the reader to some extent, so I started moving towards strict third person deep. However there are still too many things that need to happen when she's not around, so I don't know what POV to use to cover those and how to "separate" them from her story. I haven't resolved it yet.
[This message has been edited by tchernabyelo (edited August 15, 2005).]
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That's why my omniscient narrator is presenting himself as a story teller tcher, EVERYONE knows that story tellers love to withhold information until that opportune moment Posts: 477 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Unreliable nmarrators are indeed fun, but have to be handled carefully.
A technique I have used fairly extensively in one set of work is to use two narrators, alternately. This allows for different viewpoints and opnions to be expressed, and makes it clearer that narrators can indeed be unreliable. It's also fun playing with emphasis, seeing which narrator thinks which things are important, how the same icident is viewed by the two of them, etc etc.
posted
That sounds like an interesting technique. It's similar to how the UK tv show Coupling works, where we hear the men's point of view and the women's point of view alternately, or in split-screen.
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