Can you write a story using both third-person and first-person point of view? Will the POV cops arrest you if you do? Will you confuse your readers?
Sanhita posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
Sir, I have recently written a short story christened ‘Remembered’. In this story I wrote initially in third person about a family with a missing mother, then after putting three asterisks I wrote about what actually happened to the mother in first person.
Critics say that since I was writing the fiction in third person, I should not have changed it to first person.
Is it necessary to write the whole story in either third or first person? I am now in a fix whether to change it to third person or not. Kindly help.
Also I have put the story about the mother in such a way that she, at first, tells how she left her home and why(in past tense) and then (in present tense) commits suicide. Some of the critics have commented that since she is dead she can’t be telling the story.
Kindly guide me whether and how to change the story. I would highly appreciate if you kindly spare a few minutes to read it. I will be awaiting your reply. Thanks.
Randy sez: I don’t know who your critics are, but they are wrong. There is no rule that says that all parts of a story must be written in the same POV.
Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling novel Dragonfly in Amber mixed first person and third person POV throughout the story. The reader was never confused.
And that’s what matters — you want your reader to never be confused. If you execute your story well, you can switch between first person and third person smoothly.
The second part of the question was whether a dead person can narrate a story. Sanhita’s critics say he can’t do that.
I say he can. Alice Sebold’s bestselling novel The Lovely Bones tells the story of a 14-year-old girl, Susie Salmon, who is raped and murdered in Chapter 1. The rest of the novel is narrated by Susie from heaven. Nobody is confused by this. Not one reader ever said, “Wow, that can’t happen because, you know, Susie’s dead.”
Readers are generally pretty smart. They aren’t confused by dead narrators, omniscient narrators, or for that matter, cat narrators.
This highlights an important question that all writers should constantly keep in mind: Should you take advice from just anyone?
I’ve phrased the question in a way that makes it obvious that the answer is no.
Be careful in taking advice. Not all critiquers are created equal. And some of them, even when they are giving sound advice, don’t know how to make it clear just how certain they are of being correct.
I often hear novice novelists complain about the “rules.” These “rules” are allegedly fixed in stone and nobody can violate them.
That just isn’t true. There are very few unbreakable rules in fiction writing. There are many rules of thumb. Some of them work so well and so often that you should be wary of ignoring them.
But most of these “rules” can be broken, if you know what you’re doing. You’ll know when you can break one of the “rules” after you’ve learned them so well that you can follow them without thinking.
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.
Just to add to books who mix POV D.J. MacHale Pendragons 10 Book Series is a book of First and Third. Great series by the way.
Also the Bartemaeus trilogy. Three POV. Two of them are in third person, one is in first person.
Wow! Thanks a lot Sir, your reply really boosted up my confidence. Thanks. 🙂
In all the book reviews reviews I’ve read that were written by readers, I have never seen a comment about the reader being confused by POV shifts. Is this because those books were ALL written to avoid POV shifts, or is it because readers don’t really care and don’t get confused. No one gets confused reading the book of Acts when Luke shifts between 3rd person and 1st person.
I believe the agent/editor emphasis on POV consistency and avoiding head hopping is misplaced. In other aspects of writing (such as working in back story) we are told to trust our readers, not to spoon-feed them. Shouldn’t it be the same for POV?
[Randy sez: If you mean POV shifts between scenes, I’m pretty sure all readers are comfortable with that, and at the very least, they’re not confused.
If you mean POV shifts within a scene (commonly called “head-hopping”), I’m not a big fan of that. I know that some readers like that, especially in romance novels, where they want to know what both the hero and heroine are thinking. However, my thinking is that you give your reader the best emotive experience when she slips inside the skin of one single character in any given scene.
Many readers don’t know the technical terms for POV and don’t realize that the writer is head-hopping. They just know that they aren’t connecting well with any one character, even if they don’t know why.]
Randy, thanks for your ideas for Sanhita and the rest of us.
Your comments are always so common-sense, and often cleverly humorous, too.
No wonder I keep reading your stuff.
As a relatively new writer, your comments helped me immensely.
Thank you
Thank you for this answer, Randy. I was going to send a similar question. My book is mostly first person, with several 3rd person sections. I will be reading Diana Gabaldon’s book that you suggested to see how it’s done well. Thanks again.
Thank you for this. I just ran into this problem in a novel I started in first perosn but realized I have to shift POV at least twice to tell the story and make it move. This will be first novel attempting this, my first Epubbed novel is entirely third person but shift view points between scenes
I’m considering this problem in my next novel. My first, Hindsight (to be published as an e-book this summer) was written completely in the first person. For my second, I’d like to widen the scope. I’ve been going back and forth on how to effectively do this. I imagine I’ll be doing a lot of experimenting in the next few months. But, to add another option to your list of multiple POV books that you could check out, James Patterson wrote Cat and Mouse in this style. I thought it was very unusual, but cleverly done. His main character, Alex Cross, always speaks for himself. When he switches to scenes with his villains, he moves into the 3rd person narrator voice. Whenever Cross and one of the villains are in the same scene, he always uses Cross’ voice to tell the story.
I hope Sanhita felt better after reading the comments. My guess is the people chosen to ‘critique’ the work were not readers of the genre, had little knowledge of just how difficult it is to attempt a true short story, and had little knowledge of the world of writing. Doesn’t sound like they were voracious readers, either. I hear the best thing to do, at least in the final draft stage, is to find experienced writers familiar with the genre who are willing to do that oh-so necessary critical read. This was such a long time ago…I hope Sanhita didn’t give up because of bad and probably ignorant reviews.
Now, you say all this in the sense of one book (As much as i can tell). In my case i am writing a novel right now and already know what i want to do for the next, is it a bad idea to have the second in first person instead of the third i have in the first?
Nice! I actually switched from first person to third person in my latest book, Black Cat. Something to indicate that there was a switch is useful in point-of-views.
It’s kinda annoying to me that anyone would ever even suggest that one can’t narrate through a dead character.. hello? Has anyone read the Penelopiad? We practically worship all the ancient literature, but I guess we’re just gonna ignore the fact that an entire book was written from a dead perspective now. I mean, it literally starts with: “Now that I’m dead, I know everything” :\
This discussion was good for me. Thanks
This post is from 2012, I’m a new writer writing my very first fiction of my life, thank you very much! this gave me clearance to execute my imagination freely.