Writing in the First Person Point of View

First person point of view is probably the most natural storytelling voice for fiction. It begs intimacy, immediately drawing you in, so you feel as if the author is right in your living room telling the story. Alyce Miller In the workshop book, Creating Fiction, writes that it is "familiar, it mimics the insistent voice of the self dramatized, the cathartic unstaged soliloquy of private diaries, unintended for public consumption," regarding the ease in which first person point of view sounds. However, author Henry James had a different perception of first person stories. In Technique in Fiction, Robie MacAuley quotes Henry James; referring to first person point of view, James called it, "That accurst autobiographic form which puts a premium on the loose, the improvised, the cheap and easy." James thought writing as "I" destroyed the necessary detachment between writer and character.

The biggest misconception about writing as "I" is that the writer assumes there must be a direct one-to-one correspondence between the author, "me," and the "I" narrator. When the author makes this assumption, he tries to stick to writing the story exactly how it happened and resists any suggestions for change, because "it didn't happen that way." Unless of course, you're writing a non-fiction piece, you don't have to write things as they happened. You're free to change the order of things, to change the ending, to change anything about the characters in the story. Sylvia Plath does this in her novel, The Bell Jar. While based on autobiographical events, Plath rearranged the events so they would fit the rebirth motif of the novel. Esther Greenwood, the narrator, was a character she created using the fission method. In other words, while Esther Greenwood had many similarities, conflicts and passions as Sylvia Plath, Esther was not Sylvia. (Although some critics would say Plath's "I" was her.) Some of her characters were compilations of people she knew. (The fusion technique) In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, the "I" was a detached narrator, reporting on the story events. Fitzgerald used a lot of his personal experiences in his fiction, but he rewrote them to fit the story and his characters.

Robie MacAuley wrote in Technique in Fiction, "[First person point of view] also carries a great temptation for self-indulgence, that is the loose, cheap, and easy habit of displaying oneself rather than the story. This kind of ego-trip results in some garrulous, arch, and irrelevant first person narrators in fiction. A story should not be confused with a screen test, a psychiatrist's couch, or an apologia provita mea." That does not mean you should avoid using the first person point of view in writing fiction. Sometimes it is the only point of view in which the story can be told effectively. Excellent published examples of first person narratives can be found in Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. To find out whether first person is the only point of view for your story, experiment with first, third, omniscient, or even the rarer "you" and "we" points of view. Switching points of view is not merely changing a pronoun. A different voice, different persona, ought to emerge with each. Even after you've settled that first person is the only way to tell the story, you must determine through which "I" to use as your storyteller, and the "eyes" through which all observations, beliefs, and events are filtered.

There are two basic types of first person narrators-the central and peripheral. The central "I" is directly associated with the events, like the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, in Plath's The Bell Jar. The peripheral "I" is an observer and not an influence on the events, like Nick Carraway in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. As mentioned above, Nick Carraway reports on the events which happen to Jay Gatsby, serving as commentator and observer. This approach creates an air of mystery that surrounds Jay Gatsby. Had the story been told through Gatsby's "I," the story likely would have lacked tension and would have been less intriguing.

What if you want to use events from your personal history? Let's go back to Plath's Bell Jar. Plath used her experiences in New York City and her own mental breakdown for the novel. Taken separately, each event in the novel is based on an actual event, but she restructured the order of events so the novel's plot would represent the symbolic death and rebirth of Esther Greenwood. Whether or not Plath detached from "me" to become the "I" of The Bell Jarhas been up for debate for decades. By all means, mine your personal history for stories, but do not feel compelled to transcribe things exactly as they happened. You can reorder the events or change the ending to fit your fictional story. In fiction, plot, character, and conflict have a cause and effect relationship. Real life usually isn't that logical. Your "I" of the story does not have to mirror yourself. You are free to create an "I" that is different from yourself, not only to be blonde and blue-eyed if you are brunette and brown-eyed, but also to cross the lines of race, gender, class, and morals. The fictional "I" is not "me." When you try the fission technique in creating a character, write a scene in which your character does something you would never, ever in a million years do. Have fun with it. Be ridiculous, silly even.

As fiction writers, we create different characters and become them, like actors and the roles they play. Mary Stuart Masterson becomes Joon in the movie "Benny and Joon," but she is not Joon. Anthony Hopkins becomes Hannibal Lecter, but he is not Lecter. Actors and writers become different personae from ourselves. Persona is derived from a Latin word for mask, meaning mask of self. It is the mask we don when we transform out of "me" to become different "I's" of our stories. We must extend past our personal experiences in order to grasp who our characters are. Alyce Miller writes in an essay from the book Creating Fiction, "Writing first person is not merely lining up all the facts. It is an act of discovery, a yielding, a listening."

Sources:

Lanning, George and MacAuley, Robie. Technique in Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987.

Miller, Alyce. "A Container of Multitudes, or When 'I' Isn't 'Me': The Art of First Person," In Julie Checkoway (ed.), 1999, Creating Fiction: Instruction and insights from teachers of the Associated Writing Programs. Cincinnati: Story Press.