Photo by Jackie , via Flickr In last month’s post on expository technique , I identified reportage as the most utilitarian, least evocative mode of exposition. By way of supporting evidence, I provided parallel passages demonstrating alternative strategies for relaying expository information to the reader. By force of habit on my part, these passages were all written in third person. But what holds true in third person doesn’t necessarily apply in other modes of narration. On the contrary, there’s a case to be made for arguing that reportage is the very essence of first person narration. This is owing to the narrow restrictions in first person vision and perspective. Information pertaining to setting, atmosphere, backstory and plot can only be layered into the narrative through the medium of the narrator’s self-expression. First person reportage is thus both highly selective and highly subjective. The challenge for the writer is to establish the first person narrator as an au...

Image by Artur Bergman , via Flickr Before I talk about specifics, let me mention that this particular book I’m talking about was written ten years ago. Resurrecting an old manuscript has its own set of problems, but those tend to be technology and history. Oh, and let’s not forget the quality of writing. The operation I needed to perform was much more complicated. I’ve written all my books in third person point of view, but toward the middle of my current work in progress, my critique partner kept telling me that my heroine was standing on the sidelines, without much emotion. A cardboard character. No matter what I did, I got the same response from her with each page swap. I always have multiple POVs―four in this book―which is the reason first person never worked for me, except for two short stories I wrote for different anthologies. Was writing this one character in first person the solution to my problem? What about the other three POVs? Before I tested the POV switch, I c...

Recent posts by Debby Harris on First and Third Person Limited Narrators and by Diana Hurwitz on Narrator Intrusion reminded me about one of my favourite ways of telling a story – via an unreliable narrator . Photo by Sam Beebe via Flickr I first came across this method in the book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Below, between the brackets, is a major SPOILER for the book; highlight from one bracket to the other with your cursor to view the text . The book is narrated in the first person by Dr James Sheppard, providing a Watson to detective Hercule Poirot’s Holmes. [ The twist, though, is that Sheppard turns out to be the murderer, and ] Sheppard’s entire account of the case is called into question in the final pages. This particular technique is risky because it almost always requires cheating the reader by withholding information that the narrator is aware of. For this reason, I prefer using third person rather than first person for unreliable narrators ...

Image by Joel Montes de Oca One of the fundamental decisions a writer has to make involves selecting the narrative voice(s) best suited to carry the story. The three most common candidates for adoption are a) first person singular, b) third person limited, and c) third person omniscient 1 Each of these options affords a different range of narrative possibilities. To start off this series of posts on narrative voice, we’ll be considering the pros and cons of writing in first person . First person is the most subjective of the three angles of vision cited above. This subjectivity makes it an especially popular choice among writers of middle grade and young adult fiction. For one thing, writing in first person is more economical in terms of word count than the other two options. For another, first person narration gives the reader direct access to the thoughts, emotions, discoveries and experiences of the focal character. This access enables younger readers to ident...