Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Flattered but…First Person POV

Sometimes--though not always--when I write in first person, a few readers here think the story is real. I’m so flattered, but if the story were to be my real-life story, I would choose personal or experience from the genre selection.

The funniest example of this took place about four or five years ago when a character at the end of a story announced her pregnancy. Following that, a few people e-mailed to congratulate me on my pregnancy. I told them a pregnancy would be a medical miracle at my age, although I admit some women older than me have given birth during this last year.

Now, the latest story "Invalid Item"  managed to make me of Mexican descent. I assure everyone, I have no Mexican blood in me that I know of, even if I adore Mexicans, but I am flattered and immensely flattered that four out of six reviewers thought so. As a matter of fact, the only true incident in that story I managed to sneak from my childhood memories into the writing is the recollection of a pond in the backyard with red fish in it and of a cat scooping out a fish to eat it alive. I remember bawling my eyes out for not being able to avert that catastrophe. That’s it.

But then, first person point of view does that. It gives intimacy with the readers, even if, when it comes to plot and motivation development, it may fall short. That is the reason most teachers advise writing students to use the third person, because then, the narrator is inside the minds of all the characters in the story. On the plus side, first person POV captures the personality and the voice of the narrator fully.

Probably, the most popular variation of the first person point of view is when the protagonist is the narrator, telling of the events that occurred to him from the way he sees things, subjectively. Sometimes this POV may be objective, but the feat is almost impossible to accomplish, even when it may be assumed that the protagonist has used and can use some introspection into his own psyche and into other characters effectively.

The other first person narrator can be a witness. Remember, “Call me Ishmael.”

Alternately, the third type of first-person can be a re-teller or the gossip monger who is relating a story he has heard.

There is yet another first person and not just one person but a group who tell the story from the first person plural point of view. This rare POV is also called the first person collective.

Maybe an untold pitfall for using the first person can be this: the limited nature of the first person may instigate the confusion of the writer with the character, even when the treatment of the story is less than perfect.

Oh well, I am flattered anyway.