Welcome to Gaia! ::

With help from:

• Sima Zhongda (For permission to use the quote in the characterization section, as well as proofing/critique.)
  
• calviness (For proofing.)
  
• Ace of Shadows (For proofing.)
  

Before I get into the guide proper, I'd like to note that it will more often tend toward being explanatory rather than instructional, as I've noticed much of the confusion (or at least much of the confusion here on gaia) about writing first person stems from a lack of knowledge about how to use various aspects of story telling in this point-of-view.

Also like my short story guide, this guide is open to feedback and critique, and I'll make pertinent changes as needed, with due credit given for any help in making this a better guide.

Notices issued, onward!


The Basics
First person? What's that?
The simple answer, of course, is that first person is telling the story using I/me/my/mine, as in:


With first person, the narrator rarely ever changes, since we're experiencing the story as told through the eyes of a specific, singular character. We are, in effect, actually inside that character's head, experiencing their personality first hand, from their inner thoughts to their emotions, and telling the story as if we were that character.

Telling someone about your misadventure at the gas station last week would be told in first person, because you're using I/me/my/mine, because the story directly involves you and is about something that happened to you.

What about third person?
Third person is the most common story telling point-of-view, using he/she/it to tell the story, usually using several characters. The above example thus becomes:


With third person, we're seeing the characters from outside, as if we're an observer who's content merely to watch them. Usually, when we're using or reading third person, we don't know the specifics of what's going on in any given character's head or emotions unless they specifically speak it out loud or the writer tells us.

Telling someone about someone else's misadventure at the gas station would be told in third person, because you'd be relating the story of someone else, and so using he/she/it, because you'd be telling a story that happened to someone else (or several others).

Pros & Cons
Naturally, there are benefits and drawbacks to using first person vs third person.

The most notable is that first person is excellent for getting into the head of a specific character and exploring, in detail, a very particular personality and perspective on the world. This allows both the writer and the reader to gain a much more intimate association with the narrator than it's possible to achieve with third person.

On top of this, it gives the story a much more personal feel, because we're having it told to us as if it actually happened. There are several ways this can be done, such as the narrator telling the story in all earnestness, a comedic tone, and so on. How you go about telling the story will depend on the tone you want to achieve and how the narrator talks.

On the other hand, you can not get into the head of other characters when using first person (unless you're using multiple narrators), which is made doubly difficult by having to portray the other characters through the perspective and inclinations of the narrator. Also, stories told in first person are limited to those things the narrator directly experiences or has experienced - unless, of course, the narrator is relating events that he/she has learned about later in order to flesh out his/her story.

On the surface, this seems like a rather unbalanced equation, but you have to keep in mind that first person, more often than third person, is typically used for a purpose, said purpose usually derived from the pros listed above.


Tenses: Past & Present
I have to admit to being confused about people's difficulty with this particular aspect of writing first person, and I believe that it stems from a confusion about what past and present tense actually are. To explain it simply, present tense is describing events as they happen, while past tense describes events that have already happened. To make this clearer, some examples:



Of course, this is confused slightly by the difference between past and past perfect, and for explaining this, I'll quote from The Princeton Review's Grammar Smart (a very useful reference book, by the way, for things such as this), because I find their example amusing:




Story Telling Approaches
Narration Format
Easily the most common approach to telling a story in first person, the narration format is just that: narration. Of course, there are similarities to third person narrative format, in that there's going to be description, dialogue, and so on. Unlike a third person narrative, however, first person narratives are, as mentioned above, limited to what the narrator him/herself has experienced, so we don't get into the hearts and minds of other characters.

In either point-of-view, however, the narrative is (most often) a linear progression of events.

Examples of first person narrative format:

• Roger Zelazny's Amber chronicles
  
• most of HP Lovecraft
  
• Walter Mosley's Blue Light
  
• Mark Scott Zicree's Magic Time: Angel Fire (a good example of using multiple narrators in first person)
  

Diary Format
A fairly straightforward method, the diary format for first person is written as if we're reading the narrator's diary. As with any approach, there are good points and bad points to this method. The good is that it lends itself easily to being descriptive and allows much more leeway for conveying the narrator's thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, the diary format can be tedious to read, and doesn't easily allow for jumps in the time line, with it being rigidly linear.

Examples of this format:

• Anne Frank's WWII diary
  
• Caitlin R Kiernan's The Dry Salvages
  

Correspondence Format
One of the least used first-person techniques, correspondence format is the easiest method for making use of multiple narrators. Why? Because we're reading letters from one character to another. The most prominent example of this format (and the only one I'm familiar with) is Bram Stoker's Dracula.

The obvious benefit of this format is the ease with which multiple narrators can be included in the story. Beyond this, we have the same pros and cons with this format as we do with the diary format.


Memoirs & Autobiographies
Initially, I wasn't going to include mention of these, since they're effectively narrative format (and memoirs don't strictly have to be in first person), but then I realized that these can potentially be a mish-mash of the other three formats, and that they don't even have to be linear (although, like any other tale, it makes it much easier to follow if it is).

There is a catch with using either of these, though: they're nonfiction, specifically about someone's life. This means that they're not suitable for creative writing. Unless, of course, your life really is that strange, but odds are against that being the case. A good example of this is Walter Mosley's Blue Light (mentioned above), which is written as a retelling of the narrator's life (which is a common technique with first person), but the story is so obviously fictional that it would never pass as an autobiography or memoir.

Examples of this format:

• go look in the biography section of the book store or library razz
  

Multiple Narrators
First person is arguably the worst possible point-of-view to be using if you want to have multiple characters telling the story. (Right after second person, at any rate.) Why? Because we need to immediately identify who the narrator is if we expect to be able to follow the story, and with first person, our options for doing so are very limited. The only characterization tool we have for doing that is the narrator talking about him/herself, and "I" has no identifying traits to it to denote what character is now talking. Of course, the narrator could talk about him/her/itself in third person, but this is a trick that should be used sparingly, if at all, and only if it applies to being a trait of that character.

This does not mean that using multiple narrators in first person is impossible, but rather that it's very difficult. To do so, there are two things (at least) that should be done: identifying the narrator outright and giving each narrator a distinctive writing style. You can not do without the first, while the second is optional, but very effective if you can pull it off.

Identify the Narrator
This is, by far, the most important. The easiest and most intuitive method for identifying the narrator is simply to title each narrator change with the name of the narrator now speaking/telling the story. This was done in Magic Time that I mentioned above, where every chapter is a different narrator, and each chapter is titled with that narrator's name.

If we don't identify the current narrator, the reader is going to be lost, lost, lost, and I cite Roger Zelazny's Amber chronicles as a good example of this. The narrator changes at book five, but it doesn't become clear until several pages in that we're dealing with a new character (Merlin instead of Corwin), leaving the reader confused as to what's going on.

Give Each Narrator Their Own Voice
Just as you wouldn't mistake HP Lovecraft's sometimes purple prose for that of Dan Brown's utilitarian style, and just as you wouldn't mistake either of them for Dave Barry, so too does it make sense that different narrators would tell their story in a different manner than the others because each has a different style. Doing this gives us a more subtle, but also more obvious, method for distinguishing between each narrator, because we're identifying the character, not by name, but by how they speak and sound, which is something we do every day with people in real life.

The only problem with pulling this off is that it takes a considerable amount of practice and at least a little bit of skill. Fortunately, practice is easy to take care of and skill can be learned. That still, however, leaves us with the task of figuring out just how each particular narrator actually talks, which leads us into (*le gasp!*) the characterization sections of this guide.


Character Personalities
I've said it here and elsewhere, but it bears repeating: No two characters are going to have exactly the same perspective on things. Which is to say that, while they may agree, their intrinsic/personal reasons for their agreement will vary, however minutely, depending on their past experience, their knowledge, and how they think.

With first person, though, this gets tricky, because we're seeing the story through the eyes of the narrator, which means that what we see is going to be dependant upon what they see. Not every person is observant, so one character may see that unscrupulous janitor spiking the punch, but another may not notice even if they're looking right at the janitor. This means that you need to have an understanding of how observant your narrating character is and how they think, and if you need to come up with a few tricks to be able to do this, then definitely make use of them.

A good example of a possible trick (while more third person than first) comes from a past friend's D&D character, said character having had a very low intelligence score. What did my friend do? Everytime he thought of something complex that his character could do but which required a modicum of intelligence to pull off or understand, he rolled an intelligence check to see if his character would actually think of it, would know how to do it, or would understand it. Most times the check failed, but it worked as a rough representation of the character's generally limited mental abilities.

Of course, this is easy to say and not so easy to do, and to make it somewhat easier, there are a few things to keep in mind. I'll start off by quoting (somewhat modified, courtesy of the OP) from Sima Zhongda's IT BUILDS CHARACTER (Or Else It Gets the Hose Again) thread, and then move on to other methods.

Self Concept & Motivations

Related to this, what motivates the character? What makes them want to do what they do? What drives them to accomplish what they want to accomplish?

Again, while this also holds true for third person, with first person, we're going to be experiencing these things first hand, so they need to be written in a way that they're understandable to us. Even more than in third person, we need to know the why. This does not, however, need to be outright explained in an "I do/think this/that because..." kind of fashion, but rather that the 'why' needs to be clear to us. Just as we intrinsically understand our own 'why', we need to understand the narrator's 'why' in order to sympathize with them.

Third Person as First Person
I've seen it mentioned a few times here in the writer's forum that first person is similar to tight third person, where we follow a single character through the whole story and never leave them. This is true, yet, at the same time, is also misleading. Since it's a good (and easy to understand) parallel, I'll run with it for purposes of this guide.

Similarities
The most obvious similarity is that we have only one character that we're following through the whole story, as already mentioned. This means that we're going to be getting to know them pretty well (or we should), because we'll be spending most of our time with them as we travel the paths of the story.

More subtly, but also parallel, the following of a single character allows for the development of a style and voice that is more consistently unique to that character and story. When we're jumping from character to character in third person, we're forced to use a more utilitarian narrative style that can accomodate the uniqueness of multiple characters.

Differences
This is where we begin encroaching on one of the more difficult aspects of first person, namely that of writing the story as the narrating character sees it. This is the largest and most telling difference between first person and tight third person, because with third person we have the freedom of viewing the main character objectively, which allows us to receive an impersonal accounting of their actions, thoughts, and motivations. When we make that jump into first person, we lose any possibility of objectivity, because we are now inside that character's head. In effect, we are that character.

This means that everything we see in the story is going to be colored by the personality of the narrator. To do this most effectively, you, as the writer, must be able to think like that character, which means understanding why they do or think or believe certain things. While this also holds true for third person, when writing first person it is essential. You simply can not write first person from an objective perspective because no one can ever be fully objective about their beliefs and actions.

(Which brings up a tangent: machines. The common belief is that machines, AI in particular, are capable of complete objectivity about their actions. But consider: If they have a prime goal toward which they work (such as in the Terminator movies, or in Isaac Asimov's I Robot), then how can they be objective about their actions? Any time there is a measuring stick for judging progress, that measuring stick becomes an internal, and thus subjective, measure of success. If the machines goal is to stop a military attack, but the methods used to stop that attack involve the killing of 50,000 people because that's the logical and most effective method of doing so, is that goal objectively worth the cost? From the machines perspective, yes, because those 50,000 people will eventually be replaced as more people are born (for one potential argument in support of such action). From the perspective of another character, it may not be, because the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of those 50,000 people is collectively irreplaceable (for one argument against such action).)

What you have to do, then, if you're new to writing first person, is constantly evaluate what's going on in the story and ask if it's consistent with what the narrator would see or do, or how they would talk or tell the story. Again, while this also holds true, to some extent, for third person, it's essential for first person if you expect the narrator to be consistent. After a time, doing this will become second nature, and you'll be able to do it as you're writing without having to pause and think about it.

Other Characters
And here we come to the most difficult part of writing first person. Just how do you portray other characters when you can't get into their heads?

The simple answer, of course, is to simply write what the other characters do and say, and this is perfectly acceptable. But what if more than that is needed? What if the narrator needs to analyze what another character is doing or saying? What if the narrator doesn't notice something another character is doing, or catch the subtext of what another character is saying?

This is the sort of thing that proves difficult when writing first person, because we only see these things from the perspective of the narrator, rather than from the omniscient perspective of third person. This means we're not going to know what the other character truly means with something they say, and this especially holds true when something is said where the subtext or innuendo carries the actual meaning rather than the surface meaning of the words. This means we're not going to understand why another character has certain mannerisms or habits, because we're only seeing those mannerisms or habits as the character in question engages in them. This means we're not going to know the history of other characters unless they actually tell the narrator, and even then, we're not going to know if that character is lying (unless they're saying something utterly fantastic or we know from other sources that they are) because we can't get into their head.

Is this a bad thing? Only if you think it is.

Consider: How much trouble do you think you could get your narrator into because s/he misunderstood something they were told (such as instructions)? How many problems do you think you could create for them because they misread how another character would react to something they said or did (such as inadvertantly insulting someone)? What sort of complications could you create for them because they misjudged what another character was going to do (such as in an armed engagement)?

These are things that happen all the time, and they do not make your character less of a character. They make your character more real and sympathetic. Characters who never make mistakes are almost always boring, and including these very basic "flaws" of miscalculation and misunderstanding has the potential to make your story much more interesting. Just don't go overboard with it, or you'll end up on the opposite extreme of unbelievability, where you have a character who's always making mistakes and somehow still manages to have everything work out just fine.


Those Obnoxious Superficialities
The most important thing to keep in mind when taking a character's gender, race, or whatever into account is that the personalities of men and women, or black, white, brown, or yellow, or nationality, and so on, are not strictly this or that or the other. There is no single, overarching denominator other than physical gender that connects men as men and women as women (and depending on the character, even that can get pretty blurry), or skin tone to connect a particular peoples, or arbitrary political borders to denote a nationality, and so on.

Keep in mind that this doesn't mean a character's gender, race, nationality, etc., isn't going to have an impact on who they are, but rather that the role of these things in shaping a character and their personality is not as prominent as many people seem to think. They are only one piece of who that character is, in other words, and while the character in question may make it a prominent part of their personality, it is not their sole defining trait. The main thing to consider, then, is not how the character thinks of themselves regarding their gender (How often do you think, "I really love having (insert gender specific sex organs) and the person they make me."?) or whatever, but rather how other characters are going to interact with them because of it, and how the narrator is going to interact with someone else based on that character's appearance or superficial background.

This sort of character interaction is, I dare say, one of the main things that causes such stumbling, because it requires an understanding of how people interact with each other. Since in-depth discussion of this is outside the scope of this guide, as well as being very changeable person to person, I won't cover anything but the most basic foundations of it and leave the rest to your own creativity and understanding of people.

Gender
Realize that men find women confusing just as much as women find men confusing, and that, likewise, the personality traits of how one approaches and interacts with the other can be applied to both sides. While it's certainly true that men are more prone to obsessing over cars and sports than women are, and women more prone to pouring adulation on babies and shoes, it does not mean that all men and all women do those things. They are simply personality traits, some of which are culturally influenced, others which are inborn, and others that are acquired. In effect, from a personality perspective, the personalities of men and women can effectively be interchangeable. How and why the character in question acts out these tendencies is going to be what's important, as well as how they handle actions from others that are in the same vein.

Is the character a social climber? Do they want to fit in? Do they just want sex? These things - and all the others of gender attraction/aversion - are common to both men and women, and are going to do more to influence the character's personality than their physical gender is.

To put it in a different manner, our personalities regarding gender are shaped much more by how others approach us because of our gender than our gender itself shapes our personality. A good example of this is knitting and sewing, which are now widely considered things women do rather than men, yet it used to be that men would knit and sew clothing (or whatever it happened to be) far more frequently than women would, because it was a utilitarian skill as well as potentially monetary. This changed because the attitudes about gender roles changed, knitting and sewing transforming to be viewed as "house keeping", which would thus make it something only women should do, since women are traditionally the house keepers.

Race
(To start, I'd like to note that anyone who calls me a racist (and means it) because I'm daring to talk about race as a superficiality by which people interact will be summarily beaten with a Clue-by-Four and placed on my ignore list for being so blatantly stupid.)

Racial judgements about an individual's character are almost entirely culturally and socially indoctrinated. Because of this, you need to look at the culture and society that the character chiefly hails from. I say chiefly because a 28 year old character who's originally from Turkey but has lived in Brazil since s/he was six is not going to have a very "Turkish" personality, even if his/her parents retain the practices from that culture. In a case like this, the character in question is going to more heavily lean toward the beliefs and mores of Brazilian culture and society, even if s/he is Turkish in origin, because that's what s/he has grown up with from everyone around who isn't immediate family.

Another thing to realize is that this type of prejudice and racism are self-perpetuating, so they have a tendency of sticking around and rebuilding, even in cultures and societies that are largely free of such things. This is, in part, due to humanity's tendency to fear and condemn those things that are different, that are not understood, or which deviate from the norm. Because of this, the racial majority (or ruling racial minority, as was the case in apartheid South Africa and currently in Israel, for two examples) is often blind to their own racism, tending to believe they're actually helping the people they're oppressing unless their hypocrisy is forcibly pointed out to them. Even then, it may not change anything.

In the same vein, racism need not necessarily be overt. It can exist just as much in beauracracy as it can in the practice of slavery. Such racism usually falls under the blanket term "institutionalized racism", and segregation is a prime example of this, where there's nothing ostensibly unequal, yet it is inherently unequal and racist because of the underlying principles driving it: a desire by the ruling class or majority not to mingle with "them".

The interesting thing about passing judgement based on race is that it's possible to turn off, because it's a learned behavior, yet unlearning it must be learned and actively practiced. A character who grows up in an atmosphere of openly supported and practiced racism is unlikely to hold different views without a large amount of effort and education to the contrary.

Size, Shape, and Appearance
Like gender and race, a person's appearance is a major contributing factor to how people judge and interact with one another. People react differently to someone four feet tall than they do to someone who's six foot nine, just as they react differently to someone who's grossly overweight versus someone who's of a "socially acceptable" weight, or dressed like trailer trash versus a high powered executive. This is, in large part, because we, as a species, have flash recognition ingrained as a survival trait, the ability to pass instant judgement on something or someone so we know whether it's safe, neutral, or dangerous to us, rather than doing the whole deer-in-the-headlights thing when faced with an angry mother grizzly, for instance, while we spend that precious second or two analyzing if we should try to run.

As a practice run to see this behavior in action, go to the mall (if there's one nearby) and record your impressions of people, then approach some of those people and ask them how accurate that initial impression is. (If you're worried about angry confrontations, open the conversation with something like, "I'm working on a research project about people's behavior..." and then explain what you're doing. People tend to be more congenial when under the impression they're aiding in a research project, which is actually what you're doing, even if it isn't for school or money.)

Nationality
Often, but not always, linked to racism, nationalism is the belief that one country (usually the one one has grown up in) is superior to all others. (For the nit-picky among you, patriotism = nationalism. You can look up their definitions, if you like, to see just how grossly they overlap.) Unlike racism, nationalism usually doesn't care about skin color, which is best illustrated by WWII, where countries with mostly white populations set out to slaughter each other, and with the indiscriminate prosecution of anyone within Germany's own population whom the Nazi's deemed unpatriotic.

Also unlike racism, nationalism is perpetuated mostly by propaganda and tends to burn itself out, usually through massive wars that drain the population and resources of the country in question. How long nationalism persists after the people have been disillusioned is mostly dependant on the ability of the leading cultural and social institutions (government, church, and media) to continue issuing effective propaganda.

On the other hand, this doesn't even have to be related to nationalism, but could instead simply be another form of prejudice, such as America's illogical denigration of France and the French. Like any form of prejudice, it doesn't hold up under scrutiny, and its self-sustaining inner structure begins to crack and fall apart when faced with logical and supportable arguments.

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Obviously this is nowhere near a complete list of superficial traits, but it should be enough to get you started on the road to thinking about how people interact based on superficialities, which will ultimately help you create more believable characters. How your character reacts to these things (if they subscribe to such beliefs, or are confronted with such beliefs) will be one step in making them more realistic and (hopefully) a character we, the reader, can relate to or believe in, even if we don't like them as an individual.


Descriptive Styles
I've chosen to take two comments of mine from previous threads asking about first person for purposes of this section of the guide, because they're good summaries of what I want to talk about here.

Embellishment

The perfect example of this type of narrative embellishment (even if it's not first person) is Stephen King's Wizard & Glass, which is Roland (the central character of Stephen King's Dark Tower books) retelling the story of his first love and how he lost her. There are large sections of this narrative which Roland never witnessed nor participated in, yet they are there, fleshing out the story to make it more rounded and to more effectively tie together all the different threads of the tale. After Roland has finished his retelling, he tells Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, who are wondering how he knew all of this information if he wasn't there, that much of it was guess work based on what he learned later.

Quality Description

This is pretty straightforward, but tends to be overlooked due to its difficulty. The benefit of doing this, though, is that it gives you another tool for accenting and expanding the personality of your narrator, especially if the story is mostly the narrator relating events and their reaction(s) to those events without including a lot of dialogue. A happy-go-lucky cheerleader is going to have a different narrative style than a computer geek will, and writing in that character's narrative style is going to make relating to them much easier, and it's going to make them much more distinctive as a character. It will also make it easier, regarding the character self-concept and motivation mentioned earlier, to include and make their 'why' evident without relying on the "This is why I think/believe/do..." technique.

Awesomeness. biggrin

Alright. You people have me curious now. The poll is telling me people are worshipping me and I'd like to know who so I can properly direct my cult. rofl