I’ve written a little about the benefits and limitations of the first-person perspective before. But that was in a discussion about all of the different narrative perspectives you have to choose from, so I didn’t go into a lot of detail. Recently I’ve been thinking more about the different perspective options, and I’ve seen some interesting discussions about them. So, I’m planning on going into more detail around the pros and cons of the various narrative perspectives you see in fiction.
I’m starting with the limitations of the first-person perspective. It’s nothing personal, I actually find myself increasingly drawn to writing in the first person myself, but it can involve some pretty hefty downsides. I’m going to talk about what those are, and also some ways that you can potentially get around them. Because, at the end of the day, I really just want to help you out!
The four biggest limitations of first-person perspective
Difficult to describe the narrating character
Unless you have your character wake up and see themselves in a mirror (which… just don’t do that) it’s hard to communicate what your narrator looks like. This often doesn’t matter as much as you think it does, but if you want readers to have a mental image of your protagonist it can be annoying.
If there is something that you think readers have to know about your character’s appearance, consider how you can make it relevant to the story. How does it affect their life? That’s the stuff that you want to communicate to readers. Otherwise, does it really matter what colour their hair is, or whether readers know their height to the inch? Probably not.
Can become self-indulgent
When you’re stuck in one character’s head, and you only have access to their thoughts and feelings, it can feel like their thoughts and feelings get pretty boring after a while. This is particularly tricky in stories where your character is experiencing similar challenges or frustrations for most of the story. Readers may understand why the character’s thought process remains similar, and their emotional state hasn’t changed much, but that doesn’t make it any more engaging to read.
Sometimes a dose of self-awareness can help with this. If a character grows frustrated with their own inability to change the situation they’re in, or acknowledges the repetitiveness of their situation, that can refresh a reader’s empathy. It’s not a perfect fix though. Another thing to try is finding small ways to introduce a new emotion or frame of mind for the character, to provide some much-needed variety.
Easy to slip into telling, rather than showing
With the story coming entirely from one point of view, it’s easy to just let that character tell the story. They can fill the readers in on any backstory to explain what’s going on, right? Well, sure, they can, but it’s not the most compelling way to give your readers that information. Or any information, really.
The limitations of the first-person perspective can make it feel difficult to show readers things that aren’t happening directly in front of your point of view character. But by using a range of techniques such as flashbacks, conversation, observation of other characters, etcetera, you can usually find a way to pull readers into the story rather than filling them in through narration.
The reader only has access to information the narrator has
This can actually be pretty useful in some stories, but I’m including it as a limitation of the first-person perspective because in some genres it is pretty annoying. You want readers to get hints and foreshadowing, but your perspective character wouldn’t notice them. Or you want readers to understand that the love interest is falling for the protagonist, but you don’t want the protagonist to figure it out just yet.
Some of this can be got around with specific techniques. You can write in moments, events or hints that can be chalked up to another obvious explanation which your character accepts, but which readers will start to pick up on over time. Another way to play it is to have your character notice something, but get distracted by a more urgent or important event and not come back to the hint they picked up on. With a little ingenuity you can often come up with a way of seeding those hints in there.
Getting around the limitations of the first-person point of view
Obviously I talked about some of the ways you can mitigate or avoid these problems already, but there are a couple of other tools you can use to get around some of the major first-person perspective limitations. One of the most popular, especially when it comes to the difficulty of giving your readers a complete sense of the story through the first-person narrator, is to use multiple perspectives.
You can switch between first-person narrators on a chapter by chapter basis, or even within chapters as long as you signpost it clearly. It can be difficult to keep the narrator’s voices feeling distinct when you do this, but if done well it can be an effective way to keep the benefits of the first-person perspective while ditching one of the major drawbacks.
If you’re feeling really confident, an interesting way to give you readers information that the perspective character doesn’t have is by playing with tense. This isn’t something I’d recommend as a first port of call, because it’s tough to do well, and it also depends heavily on the set-up for your book.
However, in certain styles of story, it can work for your point of view character to make a comment to the reader in a different tense to indicate something that they would find out later. This is a tough one to explain, so I’ve got an example for you. N.K. Jemisin uses this strategy in her book The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, such as here:
“Through all this she maintained her dignity and was never less than polite to people who were anything but. My father, in one of the few clear memories of him that I have, said this made her better than them.
I am not sure why I remember this now, but I am certain it is somehow important.”
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin
The first part is in first-person, past tense, as is the majority of the story. But then you get an interjection from the same character, speaking in the present tense. This is something she’s adding for the reader from some point beyond the story. It’s not a technique to over-use, as it can feel like cheating to step outside the story like that for key information. But it can work well to draw a reader’s attention to something that the perspective narrator would have overlooked.
What’s your favourite perspective to read?
Do you like first-person, or is it too limited for you? And do you have the same preference when it comes to reading and writing? Let me know in the comments!
This was interesting. My absolute favourite narration style is first person from different character perspectives. If I’ve read a blurb that sounds good then I open it and it’s written this way, I automatically think I’m going to find it more enjoyable. I think it’s a great way to develop your characters too, and of course, it’s a very easy way to let the reader know something that the main character doesn’t. I agree though, I’m not that keen on first person from one character, I much prefer third. x
Sophie