365 Days- Book I

120. My Point of View

October 29, 2018

"Write in the first person point of view."

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Fine, I am going to take this opportunity to both play on the prompt and also to rant, a bit, so I will be writing about. I am going to write about my personal dislike of the first person point of view.

Okay, so everyone knows that there are basically three points of view (PoV) in which a tale can be told - the first, the second and the third (the third person point of view also has types - limited and omnipresent, which we shall not discuss here). There is nothing set in concrete, one can write in any PoV though the second is quite rare (at least considering the books I have read), so that basically leaves the first and third PoV.

There are a lot of arguments favouring the first PoV and though I agree with them, sort of, I am not a great fan of it. It is not that I do not read books written in first PoV, some of the classics, two of Charles Dickens novels, David Copperfield and Great Expectations are in first PoV; a couple of my all time favourite Alister Maclean novels - Ice Station Zebra and Fear is the Key are also in first PoV. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold are also first PoV novels that I have read. It is of late that I seemed to have developed a hesitation to read first PoV novels, surprisingly coinciding with the advent of the e-novels.

It is not that I have not read them, I have read, too many in fact and each new book simply adds my hesitation at taking up a novel in first person PoV. Partly for I have always felt a bit like a voyeur when reading in first person PoV, even as I read, I often keep wondering how did the author write this, such emotional content without subsuming himself or herself? And when it comes to intimate, erotic scenes, you can imagine my plight?

The other reason is the rise of e-novels which somehow seem to favour the first person PoV - even a lot of writers advice one to write in this PoV as it seems to connect more to the readers (unless you get someone like me who somehow is detached the moment it is first PoV) and it gets even worse, first person PoV is primarily used to provide the narrator's view to the exclusion of all the other characters and events, so it would be limited, to the extent that you, the reader know about others only what the protagonist knows. That is both the limitation and the beauty of the story telling, unfortunately most authors overcome this by bringing multiple first person PoV, of two or more characters. One story which really set my hesitation in stone and turned it to aversion had PoVs for the villains too, the only PoV missing was of the poodle (I wonder why that was not done).

And then comes the style, most of such stories have too many 'I' bombs, it really makes plodding through them difficult. It is tougher to write 'show and tell', there is usually too much exposition and some facts are completely off. Case in point, in third person PoV, a writer can go to great depth in describing a character, including the colour of the eyes. However, when you write in first person PoV, you have to be careful, a casual glimpse, especially from a distance of more than fifteen feet (approximately) you will not be able to see fine details, example eye colour. And yet, most of them focus on eye colour. Dialogues are less, most are about the protagonist and his or her thought; I... I... I... Further, narrative is usually missing or minimal.

Also as mentioned earlier, because it makes me feel a little like a voyeur I am hesitant to write in that PoV too. The only exception is letters, something which love, both to read and write.It is not that such novels are not well written or are not gripping to read, some are very powerful precisely of the first person PoV but I am wary of reading them. And if I do read, it must be very very good for me to have started and really gripping for me to have completed it.

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Word count - 720

Also as mentioned earlier, because it makes me feel a little like a voyeur I am hesitant to write in that PoV too. The only exception is letters, something which love, both to read and write.