I am midway through a rewrite of book one: a novel which, as yet, has no name. As part of the changes, I am rewriting the protagonist’s story from third person to first person, and have been amazed by the difference it makes. It is, of course, far more than simply amending ‘she said,’ to ‘I said,’ and instead shifts the perspective of every experience she encounters. It is a daunting process, and one which is not guaranteed to work – in three months’ time I could be switching it all back again – but it feels right. And so I am revisiting Jenna’s story, bit by bit, seeing life through her eyes without the filter of a narrator. In doing so I am getting to know her more and it therefore follows that the reader will know her better too.
I love writing in first person. It holds an immediacy about it which I find both entertaining and addictive: abandoning a book written in the first person would be a rejection not only of the book, but of that character. When I mentioned on Twitter that I was rewriting from third to first, someone suggested it would be impossible to achieve a sense of jeopardy in first person. ‘After all,’ they said, ‘the reader knows the character won’t die.’ It stopped me in my tracks for a while: my book is a psychological suspense which relies heavily on tension and fear. But then I thought of all the brilliant thrillers and suspense novels I have read which are written in the first person (Into the Darkest Corner, Before I Go To Sleep, Gone Girl…) and decided first person doesn’t remove the sense of jeopardy at all – it adds to it. First person narrative makes me care about the character – good narrative makes me feel I am that character – and so when they are in danger, my heart beats just a touch faster.
First person or third person: which do you prefer?