How to Write in 1st Person POV 

First person POV also entails the active reader having to fill in gaps, or question the reliability of the voice, as Shaelin said. Georges Simenon's *Act of Passion* takes the form of a letter, from a man who has murdered his wife, to the judge at the trial. There is a summary of the novel (Lettre a mon juge) on Wikipedia: no one is better at getting inside a man's head than Simenon. Nicolas Freeling, an English novelist who settled in Holland then France, killed off his detective, Commissaris Van der Valk in 1972. *A Long Silence* describes the Commissaris being shot, his last thoughts, then Freeling takes over the narrative. Metafiction indeed ! Paul Theroux's *My Secret History* takes us on the inside track of a brilliant storyteller's brain, moving from Boston to Africa. For tone and nuance Hemingway's memoirs *A Moveable Feast* like Scott Fitzgerald's *The Crack-up* shows what first person can do. For a supernatural tale in first person, read Friedrich von Schiller's *The Man Who Sees Ghosts* Pushkin Press first published in 1789.

Good point!

“I smiled a that didn’t reach my eyes” Did you copy/paste from your MS, then delete a bit to clean it up, but accidentally got how much to delete wrong? Because your quote makes no sense, and I don't think you wrote it that way.

@@ScottyDMcom Finis Farr wrote the first biography of John O'Hara (one of the great short story writers) and the first page of the preface warns us about men whose smile never reaches their eyes. Do not trust such men, said O'Hara. He was right. It is a challenge to describe the unfinished smile in a specific way. A smile may be cold for many reasons: a girl creeped out by a guy. Artists in Life Class walk around the model, so that they can see the figure from every angle, in every possible light. So it is with character creation. Flaubert told De Maupassant to describe a man so that Flaubert would recognise him in a crowd. O'Hara rarely describes his characters and somehow he gets away with it. His stories read like radio plays: you must fill in the gaps. If Dickens is master of the surreal, Capote is le petit maitre; from the lost children of *The Grass Harp* to the damaged childhood of the killers of *In Cold Blood*. I like Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty for their visual powers: Ladies from the Deep South. Elizabeth Taylor, Alice Thomas Ellis, Beryl Bainbridge and Penelope Fitzgerald all created unforgettable English eccentrics.

Wolf Larsen, is that you?

For first-person past-tense, I consider there are 2 first-person characters: The character who is experiencing the story now (dialog). And the same character who had experienced the story and has had time to reflect on things. This character-as-narrator presents a "filtered" version of the story (narration). As for character thoughts you may write thoughts as they happen (I call them "internal monologue" and write them the same as dialog, but without the quotes), or you can let the character-as-narrator filter their thoughts through the lens of time and present them as part of the narration. I tried internal monologue (present tense) without the italics, which works--until you get quite a lot of it. Then it just seems like you (the author) flunked verb tense 101. In first-person present-tense there is no filtering of past events. The character/narrator is living the events as they unfold. Everything is in present tense and internal monologue (which all thoughts must now be) are not italicized. This can easily slip into stream-of-consciousness style. When reading well-written first-person, I love both present and past tense. And in this case present-tense pulls me a little closer to the character. Unfortunately, every third-person present-tense story I've read--even those professionally edited/published--fall flat, and push me further from the character.

Books in first person present lose my attention in about 10 seconds. I keep wondering "where am I?"

I believe first person present tense is mostly favoured by inexperienced writers who try to solve the "problem" Scott above mentioned of having two characters, the one who's telling the story after the fact, and the one who's experiencing it in the moment. The thing is, present tense is not usually meant to represent something happening now, but action that happens habitually. For example, what does "I go to the store" mean? Are you on your way to the store, or are you the one doing the shopping in your household, so you go to the store every day, instead of someone else from your household? Do you go to *this* store, and not some other store? Most of the time, this means that "I *habitually* go to the store." But when you say "I went to the store", you know this is a one time thing. It might not be clear if the character came back from the store, or he went and is still at the store, but it's clearly a one time event that happened and there's no confusion about that. But when it's present tense, if you're not EXTREMELY careful, I won't be able to tell if you're coming or going.

@@daina3628, to understand what I meant, we need to back up a moment. *The whole POV thing is really about, who is telling the story?* In a *third-person* narration the storyteller is assumed to be some unseen godlike being, typically the author. You can do other things. For example the storyteller might be a god gazing down on humanity from their perch on Mount Olympus, and they stay out of the action. They watch and comment. In *first-person* the storyteller is one (or more) of the characters participating in the story. Choice of pronouns almost always matches first, third, or even second, but there can be the (rare) exception. In _Willow,_ Julia Hoban's debut novel, she chose to write a single POV, very tight psychic distance, present-tense narration, and the storyteller uses third-person pronouns for the POV character. The story drove me nuts, and IMO would have be far better if written in first-person. Odd thing is, it _feels_ like Willow is the storyteller. It's just that Willow is one of those slightly off balance people who always refers to themselves in the third-person. Jane Gardam's short story _The Great Grand Soap-Water Kick_ uses the protagonist as the storyteller, but he shifts between first and third throughout the telling, and even starts in second. This was deliberate on the part of the author. That story is a fascinating example where psychic distance is so tight the narrator (almost) vanishes. It's all about the character. Not the character as narrator, but simply the character being the character. *That brings us to the character as storyteller (first-person).* There are moments when the character is the character, and moments when the character is telling the story. A description is a moment when the character is the narrator. Is the narration in past-tense or present? If the character/storyteller is thinking back on events and telling the story from that perspective, then the character has had time to reflect on what happened and is giving a filtered (or perfected) version of what happened. Present-tense works best (IMO) if the character is giving a running commentary of events as they unfold in real-time. Describing past events in present-tense is one of those writer's tricks than seldom works. At least I've never seen it work. I've also seen future-tense narration, but clearly that was a mistake. The reason I don't like third-person present-tense is, where is this unseen storyteller? (Assuming it's not a crazy POV character named Willow.) To me it _feels_ like a teenage kid in a movie theater with a cell phone, describing the movie to their sick buddy stuck at home. It really pushes me away from the character. Present-tense is supposed to pull the reader in closer. Another fun observation is that (IMO) second-person only works in present-tense. *This whole POV thing is really to answer two questions:* Who is telling the story? And where are they in both time and place in relation to the POV character(s)? The choice you make as an author has a radical effect on how the reader experiences your story. If you can make it work, then there is no wrong choice (despite my "IMO" moments).

@@ScottyDMcom You ask 'where is the unseen storyteller'? Does it really matter, Scott? It is whether the convention of third-person present-tense works to your strength as writer. Anthony Powell said realistic novels are artificial in their construction but give the appearance of seamless reality. Who is telling the story in third-person narrative? Flaubert said the unseen narrator is present everywhere and nowhere. Alain Robbe Grillet looked critically at these narrative problems in his long essay Pour un Nouveau Roman (translated into English). Deirdre Madden's 2013 novel *Time Present and Time Past* plays agreeably with T.S. Eliot's concept of time from Burnt Norton. *As Fintan is crossing the landing that evening Niall calls out from his room. 'Dad? Is that you?' 'It is,' he says, and puts his head around the bedroom door.* The reader is watching the scene as Fintan and his son Niall talk to each other before retiring for the night. The reader will forget about the unseen storyteller unless the storyteller draws attention to himself as John Fowles does in his novel *The French Lieutenant's Woman*. Harold Pinter retained the idea in his film script of the Fowles novel - we see that we are watching a film being made of a Victorian story and then we hear all about the actors in the film principally Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. Dana's problem about going to the store can be resolved by precision of detail. Let us say that her character had no intention of going to the store that Sunday evening in winter until she realised she had run out of milk. She only goes to the store that one night in real time. A friend of mine was knocked down by a car on a dark wet night precisely because he went out for milk for his coffee. He survived to tell the tale, but gets headaches from his brain injury. Narrative (Time present and past) occurs in real life too, sometimes disastrously as in my friend's case. The fiction writer gets the messiness of life into the work, but looks for form and shapeliness as well - everything Robbe-Grillet abhorred.

I'm having a similar problem. How did your journey go? Did you get feedback from editors?

Online: Clean Young Englishman, by John Gale. *The Age of Uncertainty*. My Comment is headed Anonymous but my name Jack Haggerty is at the bottom. I spoke to John Gale, a journalist with his own idiosyncratic writing voice, several times on the telephone. He died before we could meet.

POV means point of view

Martin Amis said that all writing is performance, indeed impersonation. It is hard to keep your 'natural voice' out of any first-person narrative. One way is to hear the 'other voice' talking in your head. Read online: *Women and Violence in the Stories of Raymond Carver* Sandra Lee Kleppe. Open Edition Journals. *Through the Eyes of the Blind in Cathedral by Raymond Carver*. *Point of View of the Lady With the Dog by Raymond Carver*. Another way into other people's voices is to read books of interviews whether oral history or journalism. *Demon Barber - Interviews by Lynn Barber* in paperback, a London journalists who asks celebrities very direct questions Tony Parker's books of interviews (Wiki) make great reading - he interviewed violent men in prison, wives of soldiers etc. Reading plays trains the ear for speech cadence - A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams) All My Sons (Miller) Arcadia (Tom Stoppard).

@@johnhaggerty4396 Experienced writers do use first person well. New writers often don't. It looks to them like the easy way but it really isn't. It's easy to do badly.

I did first person before and it was fun but difficult Lol-

I see more problems with third person. Writers switch between omniscient and limited without realizing it, use clunky ways to indicate inner monologue, head hop in limited, infodump excessively. 3rd person limited has the same problem of having to keep the author's natural voice out.