First/Third

fountain923

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What generally makes you decide whether to write your horror story in third or first person?
 

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I choose what I think will best serve that particular story. Doesn't everyone?
 
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Maryn

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Same here. As I do for every story in every genre. While first person comes more easily to me, often it's not quite right.
 
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Gramps

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Personally, if I lived it, it's 1st. Like trying to navigate town without crossing paths with a Starbucks at lunchtime. All other horror, I listen to the story, except Walmart after midnight, then no person should be there 1st or 3rd. I hope this helps, but I must warn you, my family says my help doesn't feel like help.
 

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fountain923 said:
What generally makes you decide whether to write your horror story in third or first person?

:unsure: Well, I almost always write in third person because that's the approach that works best for me, but I have done one or two in first.

I guess the deciding factor is how 'close' the horror is to the main character. If it's some kind of world-engulfing Thing that's doing all the horror'ing to everyone at once, I'd do it in third, but if it's a personal / internal / psychological type of demon (metaphorical or otherwise), I'd go for first.


Norsebard
 
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Nether

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Right now, I prefer writing in first-person, so that's my default.

However, when I started writing my first ghost manuscript, I began in the first person but quickly realized it'd be difficult to show all of the deaths from the first-person (at least, not without getting a bit silly), so I changed it to third-past... and wound up having at least 30 POVs by the end (some of whom only got a single chapter, although they were referenced or appeared in others).

The second ghost manuscript was also multi-POV, but stuck to a far more reasonable number of POVs (maybe 4-8?). Because one of the characters suffers from memory loss (forgetting their own identity), I decided to write that one POV in first-present.

And then for the kinda-horror example of my upmarket werewolf, the POV use was a gimmick

Otherwise, it's not so much that I use first-present because I write YA horror (or things adjacent to horror), it's more that I found a lot of elements to my approach worked better as a YA (ie, voice-ier first-person, the characterizations/relationships made more sense, and -- importantly -- a few of my ideas were on the shorter side where I could maybe get away them as a trade-pubbed YA but not a trade-pubbed adult (since 50-60k would be closer to novella territory).

Beyond that, there are advantages and disadvantages to each. When people harp on one or the other, they tend to focus on certain practices which aren't necessarily intrinsic to the POV style and that kind of POV can be written without them. Technically, you could even write a multi-POV in the first person, but that can be confusing depending on the number of characters involved and the voice has to be very distinct (even if the chapters are labeled with that POV character)
 

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Third. I cannot stand First POV. I need that distance between myself and the character to see things clearly--and I get super annoyed with 1st POV when the character does something stupid that I know is stupid but I have to write anyway. Unless it's character entries (diaries, letters, etc), those are fun.
 
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Fi Webster

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Third. I cannot stand First POV. I need that distance between myself and the character to see things clearly--and I get super annoyed with 1st POV when the character does something stupid that I know is stupid but I have to write anyway. Unless it's character entries (diaries, letters, etc), those are fun.

Fascinating. I'm exactly the opposite: I have to write in first in order to be close enough to the character to see things clearly. I do things that are very stupid all the time, most of them things I know are stupid, so that's not an issue. =laugh=

I wrote a long messy draft of a novel quite a few years ago, in third person, but I bogged down at the rewrite-and-revise stage. Recently I've been changing it all to first person, which I find is helping a whole lot in figuring out what works and what doesn't. It feels like a magical transformation, bringing all my thoughts and feelings about the story into much sharper focus. I'm on the fence about whether to change it all back to third when I'm done.
 
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Nether

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What's a ghost manuscript? Do you mean you're a ghostwriter, or are you referring to some other type of book?

Meaning a manuscript featuring ghosts. In hindsight, I suppose that may've been a little unclear, although I hadn't thought it'd be interpreted like that 🤷‍♂️
 
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I wrote a long messy draft of a novel quite a few years ago, in third person, but I bogged down at the rewrite-and-revise stage. Recently I've been changing it all to first person, which I find is helping a whole lot in figuring out what works and what doesn't. It feels like a magical transformation, bringing all my thoughts and feelings about the story into much sharper focus. I'm on the fence about whether to change it all back to third when I'm done.
If it works for the story, and it works for you, and you can get it all to work--which it sounds like you have--keep it first!

That's how I feel about the third POV. That clarity and feeling of rightness is such a powerful gut feeling. There are a lot of technical parts of writing, but it gets funneled down to, "does this feel right? this doesn't feel right. I need to fix this."
 

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I'm used to writing third so that's what I'm doing but it's multi POV so it sounds like that's the right track.

I'm not sure if I could write first. 3rd feels so ingrained at this point that switching to another POV will be a struggle. That said I'm new to writing horror so maybe I'll eventually need to.
 

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Always "third" for me :)! The first-person bugs me unless it's for very short stories. Because no one remembers exactly how a long event played out or exactly what their thoughts were at the time. So when I'm reading anything in first-person, I'm thinking, "How did he/she remember all that?" especially if it was a high-intensity situation, when people tend to get tunnel-vision. Meanwhile, the third person storyteller seems much more 'invisible', like a camera in a movie. (<--but without lens flare. Lens flare also kind of breaks the fourth wall for me!) But that's just me!
 

Nether

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The first-person bugs me unless it's for very short stories. Because no one remembers exactly how a long event played out or exactly what their thoughts were at the time. So when I'm reading anything in first-person, I'm thinking, "How did he/she remember all that?" especially if it was a high-intensity situation, when people tend to get tunnel-vision.

I'm not really sure that's true in the general sense, since I've known many people who recounted stories in great detail. But, more importantly, when those stories are told, there's no way of knowing what details were left out or what facts were distorted. First-past (and first-person in general) isn't necessarily a 1:1 telling of the facts (and, technically, the same can be true of third-person (ie, GRRM will have discrepancies between his POVs at times), although an unreliable third-person narrative always struck me as odd because there's a greater presumption of accuracy

Either way, what you're describing sounds like an objection specific to first-past rather than first-present. First-past has the appearance of somebody recounting a story, first-present kinda fits your movie camera analogy (or maybe it's more of a body camera thing?).

And whether first or third, high intensity scenes tend to feature less detail for pacing so there's not much to remember. And a lot of minor details often don't make it into first or third.
 

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I'm not really sure that's true in the general sense, since I've known many people who recounted stories in great detail. But, more importantly, when those stories are told, there's no way of knowing what details were left out or what facts were distorted. First-past (and first-person in general) isn't necessarily a 1:1 telling of the facts (and, technically, the same can be true of third-person (ie, GRRM will have discrepancies between his POVs at times), although an unreliable third-person narrative always struck me as odd because there's a greater presumption of accuracy

Either way, what you're describing sounds like an objection specific to first-past rather than first-present. First-past has the appearance of somebody recounting a story, first-present kinda fits your movie camera analogy (or maybe it's more of a body camera thing?).

And whether first or third, high intensity scenes tend to feature less detail for pacing so there's not much to remember. And a lot of minor details often don't make it into first or third.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, I'm thinking of first-person-past-tense. And it's not really true in a general sense. It's just that way for me, but I know a lot of readers really like 1st person. For sure, 3rd person narration isn't 1:1 true and unbiased for me, either. Like, if I'm writing a third-person perspective from someone who has biased views or misunderstandings, then I'll just write from their third-person mindset, even if they're wrong. And the tone of the the prose will take on a touch of their "voice", even if they're not talking.

I do think it's strange how GRRM will have a character (like Sansa thinking the Hound kissed her?) believe something that didn't happen without really addressing or hinting at the cause of the the dissonance. Are they daydreaming? Are they delusional? Lying? I haven't read GoT, but I've read about GRRM doing stuff like that and I have a a similar feeling as you about it.

Third-person present tense isn't as much as a stumbling block for me, though. Like, I wanna say the opening chapter of Rebecca is in 1-st person present and it is just flawless. Like, it's so good even Stephen King plays with it in the book "Bag of Bones".

Also, books written as diary entries can be cool.
 

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I feel much more comfortable writing in the third person. This goes even for very intimate, personal stories that involve a lot of internal psychology; there are definitely still ways to get at those sorts of things in the third person. Couldn't say why I shy away from the first person, which I do occasionally use especially for very short works, but maybe it has something to do with giving me a certain amount of critical distance from my own characters and writing. That said, you can of course still get to know your folks in the third person--just not as if you were them.
 

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I am more attracted to first person than third (because when I'm in third I accidentally use first person anyway) but it definitely comes with some distinct disadvantages, it's often a slippery slope to write a self-insert for me. So any tips on how to avoid doing that would be great!
 

Maryn

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For me, avoiding the self-insert is a matter of knowing my character's thought process, opinions, fears, strengths, yada-yada-yada, so thoroughly I can step into their skin and become them as they narrate. While there are little snippets of me in every character, by the time I'm a quarter of the way into a novel I can be the main character pretty comfortably.

Maryn, who enjoys making herself younger and more attractive
 
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