Advantages of First Person Point of View

First person point of view is the default choice for many novel writing beginners.

Not only is it thought to be the easier viewpoint to handle, it is believed to be somehow "warmer", too, as you can get as up close and personal to the main character as it's possible to get.

There is some truth in both of these beliefs. But, as I will demonstrate below, the real picture is a little more complicated.

First Person Point of View is Easier

Make no mistake: the issue of how easy or difficult any particular point of view is is important.

If a viewpoint is difficult to handle, and you make a bodge of it, your novel is a whole lot less likely to get published.

Handling viewpoint badly is one of the surest signs there is of an amateur at work. To stop yourself looking like you don't know what you are doing, you can either learn how to handle viewpoint like a pro, or you can keep your use of viewpoint as simple as possible (or both).

Learning how to handle viewpoint like a pro comes from a total understanding of how viewpoint works (which is what I'm trying to teach you!) and from practice.

But you can make life easier on yourself by keeping your use of viewpoint simple.

How do you do that?

By having as few "working parts" to go wrong as you can get away with. And according to a lot of writing guides, that means...

• Writing your novel from the point of view of a single character throughout (as opposed to different characters narrating different chapters)
• And writing your novel first person point of view.

I would certainly agree with the advice to stick to a single viewpoint, if there is no good reason to do otherwise.

(Not that there is anything too difficult about writing a Multiple Viewpoint Novel, but having to switch from one point of view to the next is still another of those "working parts" which can go wrong.)

But the advice about preferring first person point of view to third person, because first person is supposedly much easier, I would take issue with...

• For one thing, first person point of view, written well, is not quite as simple to pull off as many people suppose.
• Second (and this is the good news) third person point of view needn't be as tough as some people think.

Let me explain those statements one at a time...

1st Person Point of View Is Not As Simple As People Think

First person pov is certainly the most natural voice to use in writing, probably because you use it all the time in your everyday life.

Whenever you tell somebody about something that happened to you (and you do that every day) you use the "I" of the first person.

To do the same thing in a novel, you simply need to slip into your viewpoint character's skin, as it were, and away you go.

But telling somebody about something that happened to somebody else in the third person isn't so natural, particularly when it comes to communicating that third person's thoughts and feelings.

I believe that it is the naturalness of writing in the first person point of view that accounts for the fact that most first-time novelists choose it. It strikes them as being altogether more straightforward.

But is it? Well, it all comes down to the question of who is telling the story.

In a third person narrative, you have the narrator (who you can imagine as either an invisible, godlike witness to the events, or as a kind of movie camera), and then you have the viewpoint character.

(If you have no idea what I'm on about, please see the article explaining How a Third Person Narrative Works.)

The narrator of 3rd person fiction can tell the story from on high, as it were, using their neutral and non-opinionated voice, and they can home-in on a scene, and on the viewpoint character in particular, showing us the events through the character's eyes, letting us hear their thoughts, and allowing their neutral voice to become "colored" by the viewpoint character's voice.

But in a first person narrative, the narrator and the viewpoint character are both the same person, meaning you don't have to make any tricky shifts from one voice to another. That is why first person point of view is often referred to as being the easier viewpoint to handle.

But There Are Two Counter-Arguments To This

The first argument against first person point of view being easier than third person is that, in a third person narrative, you don't need to use a neutral narrator at all. You can tell the entire story from behind the character's eyes. (I call this 3rd Person "Character" Point of View.)

The second argument, and one that it is critical to understand, is that a first person narrator is not precisely the same person as a first person viewpoint character...

(Yes, yes - I know I'm getting kind of technical here, but you won't make it to the top of the novel writing mountain without getting down and dirty with some tricky theory.)

Here's why first person narrators and first person viewpoint characters are different...

• A first person narrator is older and wiser than a first person viewpoint character, and is looking back on the events after they have finished.
• The viewpoint character is the narrator's younger and more naive self, and for them the novel's climax still lies in the future, meaning they have yet to be changed by the events. The narrator already has been changed.

(I explain all of that in a lot more detail in the article on How a First Person Narrative Works.)

Now, it is perfectly possible to do what most beginning writers (and even some published writers) do and ignore this subtle but crucial difference. Alternatively, you can decide to handle viewpoint like the professional you intend to be.

Yes, it is a little less straightforward doing it the correct way - but not drastically so. And the upside is that it will raise you above a lot of the other unpublished writers out there - and that can only be a good thing when it comes to getting your novel published.

So that has explained why first person point of view, written well, is not quite as simple to pull off as many people suppose.

Now for an explanation of why...

Third Person Is Not As Difficult As People Think

In a third person narrative, you have the narrator and the viewpoint character.

The narrator isn't a character in the novel - they simply tell the story, sometimes from on high and sometimes through the eyes and mind of the viewpoint character.

When the narrator tells the story from on high, their voice is neutral and non-opinionated. When they slip into the skin of the viewpoint character, their language begins to approximate the character's own voice.

(Again, see the article explaining Third Person Narrative POV if you are unclear on any of this.

Now, there are two things to say here...

• First, making these transitions from the neutral narrator's voice to the more colorful viewpoint character's voice really isn't that complicated.
• Second, you can do away with the neutral narrator totally if you want. Sure, it will give your novel extra dimension if you do use a narrator - a kind of sweeping, cinematic feel - but it is perfectly acceptable to keep the "camera" fixed behind the viewpoint character's eyes for the entire novel, from the first word to the last.

(For more on dispensing with a third person narrator, see 3rd Person Point of View in Two Varieties.)

Bottom Line?

How easy or difficult each viewpoint is to handle shouldn't come into the equation at all.

This is partly because viewpoint decisions should be based on more important factors - like which is the right viewpoint for the particular story you want to tell.

And it is partly because neither viewpoint is any easier or more difficult than the other, at least not when you handle each one properly.

Keep reading for the next supposed advantage of first person point of view: First Person POV is More Intimate...