3rd person vs. 1st person—which do you like more and why?

[Demesnedenoir]

I dislike present tense, period. It doesn't work for me, it feels fake. I was plenty used to it in screenwriting (for those who don't know, screenplays are always... or better be... written in present tense) and it was actually a bitch trying to flip back to past tense writing after years of screenwriting. And it's limiting to the story and doesn't fit stories I want to read. Nope, no thanks. If your story needs 1st present to be engaging, you might want to rethink your story, heh heh.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

I like present tense a lot, though I also write in past. It mainly depends on the story and the point of view character-s whether I use third or first.

 

[Chessie2]

Just my opinion but...

-Present tense seems like lazy writing to me. It's hard to get into the story, characters, and any context because to me, stories are something that has already happened, not something that is happening.

-First person is too intimate for my liking. I like space between myself and others (just who I am as a person) and first person is like a person I just recently met trying to get cozy with me right off the bat. Nope, not happening.

-I love love love writing in omniscient even though the readers in my audience of books don't prefer it. So I write in a mixture of third past & omniscient, which is probably the reason why readers either love or hate my work.

To each their own though. <3

 

[Svrtnsse]

I don't write first person, because it doesn't come naturally to me. I do mix past and present tense quite a bit though. The majority of the story is in past tense, but now and then I will swap to present tense for a scene. Usually when describing something that isn't too closely tied to the pow character - or when I need a different kind of vibe/feel to the prose.

 

[Hallen]

A lot of my favourite novels and short stories are written in present tense. I don't find it annoying at all. I wonder, do those who criticize it actually dislike it? Or have you been told, by some "how to write" article, to dislike it and avoid it?

If it's done really well, then I can deal with it. I still prefer past. Maybe it's because it's what I am mostly used to, but present feels contrived to me.
It has nothing to do with being told "how to write".

I prefer 3rd limited or whatever other terms you want to use with it.

Omniscient can be OK, but it takes a really good writer to pull it off well. I have never been more confused while reading when the writer jumps heads too often in Omniscient mode. Omniscient is also very easy to abuse and find yourself narrating a story rather than allowing the reader to live the story.

First person is also fine. I enjoy it, but find it limiting. You are only allowed one perspective -- that of your POV character.

 

[Rkcapps]

My preference is third, but I'll read anything. Present tense is trippy!

 

[Chessie2]

Omniscient can be OK, but it takes a really good writer to pull it off well. I have never been more confused while reading when the writer jumps heads too often in Omniscient mode. Omniscient is also very easy to abuse and find yourself narrating a story rather than allowing the reader to live the story.

Omniscient is so much more than head hopping though. In fact, to be done correctly, head hopping should be a smooth transition between characters. It shouldn't confuse readers. It is hard to do well, but that's why writers ought to be encouraged to write in omniscient if they wish to be good at it. Any tense is easy to abuse and do incorrectly. Omniscient is probably the hardest of all to master and it's evident that a writer who does it well definitely has major skill. Lastly, omniscient does allow the reader to live the story. Tolkien was a master of omniscient and I'm pretty sure many of us here can agree we enjoyed the heck out of his stories and lived it well as children (or thereafter). The whole point of that POV is to provide the reader with a sense of being told a story. The author SHOULD be narrating in whatever voice best fits the story. The whole point is narration.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I think the reason 3rd Om is getting more difficult is because people are reading less of it in pop culture, literary or genre. I don't think any POV is technically more difficult than another. I used to write 3rd om all the time but then my reading habits changed... 20+ years ago, and going back to it would feel more unnatural.

Also... As Chessie said, it's more than head hopping... in fact, it's not head hopping at all in my opinion.

Head hopping is unintentional POV "dohs!" in 3rd Limited, sometimes extremely subtle.

 

[Chessie2]

I think the reason 3rd Om is getting more difficult is because people are reading less of it in pop culture, literary or genre. I don't think any POV is technically more difficult than another. I used to write 3rd om all the time but then my reading habits changed... 20+ years ago, and going back to it would feel more unnatural.

Things change. Omniscient was super popular back in the olden days and now it's first person or third limited. Honestly though, writers should write in whatever tense and style suits them the most. Some people can tell really good stories in first, others in 3rd limited, others in omni, etc. Writing to your strengths is key. I love writing in omniscient but, since romance readers do not prefer that it seems, I mix it up with 3rd. Although I simply cannot do 3rd limited. It freezes me up and frustrates me. I am the storyteller and my narration depends on the story. My 1940's romance series is written in omniscient with a narrator voice that is sarcastic and judgemental of the characters. I thought it fit well in the scope of the story and somehow, those books were much easier to write than the ones I have narrated in third.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I like pulling in and out from a third intimate for what I'm doing now. When I write my vampire comedy it will (probably) be from 3rd Om with a distinctive narrator's voice. But, without being able to get into the heads of secondary characters the humor wouldn't be nearly as fun.

 

[Tom]

A lot of my favourite novels and short stories are written in present tense. I don't find it annoying at all. I wonder, do those who criticize it actually dislike it? Or have you been told, by some "how to write" article, to dislike it and avoid it?

I personally just find it grating. The way sentences have to be phrased in present tense doesn't appeal to me. Just like any other narrative tool, I think it can be used well in the right hands, but it's one of those things that I avoid in reading and writing.

 

[SithLord]

I prefer to write in omniscient third. In my WIP that is a three part, three novel series, I have created one chapter in each book that happens to switch to first POV only the one chapter and one time. First book is POV for my male lead protag, second book has my female lead protag, and third and final part is my male lead antag.

 

[Malik]

I have never been more confused while reading when the writer jumps heads too often in Omniscient mode.

If the writer is just jumping heads and calling it "omniscient," they're doing it wrong. Just, so wrong. Omniscient third is not a license to do whatever the hell you want. That's not writing; that's art.

 

[Malik]

Omniscient is also very easy to abuse and find yourself narrating a story rather than allowing the reader to live the story.

Actually, that's exactly what omniscient is. Omniscient is the story told to the reader by a fictional narrator, who is an additional character in the story. (The narrator is not the author, either. Readers will know if the narrator is you, because you're not clever enough to be a narrator. Yes, you, reading this. The narrator has to be wittier and more articulate than you are, which is why omniscient is so bang-your-head-on-your-desk-at-regular-intervals hard. More on that in a minute.)

Think of omniscient as the author sitting in your living room with a drink in his hand, telling you a story. Now think of someone telling you a story and doing spot-on impressions. That skill with impressions is the author's skill at separating and delivering character voice, which is the key to omniscient third. If the author doesn't have a knack for voice, reading omniscient becomes basically listening to a long story told by someone who sucks at impressions. (If the person telling the story doesn't know how to tell a story very well, and/or they misuse words all the time, and they suck at impressions . . . hoo, boy.)

The narrator can be opaque, in which case the book might read almost like a first-person account--the narrator in The Princess Bride is so opaque that he breaks the Fourth Wall and speaks directly to the reader--or transparent, in which case the author is just barely tinting the story through a narrative lens; or any degree in between. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series has a narrator who's pretty tightly constrained at the halfway point, injecting humor into the story by selectively revealing information, but otherwise not interfering with the reader's perception. A common point where fledgling authors get wrapped around the axle with omniscient is by not choosing the left and right limits for the opacity that they want, and/or they don't practice writing enough to know when they're working outside those limits.

Any good writing is hard.

This never gets easy. Omniscient, though, is painstaking, which is a different kind of hard. This is why the stereotype omniscient writer is a furrow-browed "serious author" who takes half an hour to remove a comma. And there's a reason this stereotype exists: it takes a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and a lot of deconstructing and reworking to get a feel for it. And even then, it takes hours if not years of fiddling and teeth-grinding to get it dialed in for each book. It's the ship-in-a-bottle of writing techniques.

There's a lot of bad omniscient out there, but then, there's a lot of bad writing out there. There's also some magnificent omniscient fantasy out there. I'd love to see omniscient come back into vogue.

 

[Chessie2]

You and me both, Malik. It is very frustrating to write in omniscient but it can be so beautifully done. What sucks is that most readers don't have a flavor for it anymore, and they complain.

Just throwing this in for fun: the omniscient narrator can totally be judgemental, irritating, conceited, yet they must be eloquent, interesting, and engaging. Malik is right though; the voice needs to sound different than your author voice. That's very, very, very hard to do. I struggle with it immensely yet I keep going back to omniscient determined to master it someday.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Here's another point... IMO... Multi-POV 3rd limited is basically (not exactly) 3rd OM only limited by chapter/section. GRRM is, in essence, writing as an omniscient but in any one chapter he is limited. I think he mentioned it taking him days to get back into the head of character.

All good writing is hard... I'm down with that, but different people will have different levels of struggle with varying POV's and their intricacies. But I will contend that exposure is the biggest reason for writers struggling with... lots of things. And these days, lots of the exposure is to things successful... but poorly written.

But, this is all getting into the weeds.

 

[Hallen]

Omniscient is so much more than head hopping though...

I agree with everything you wrote.
My point was that Omniscient is difficult and it is not uncommon to come across a novel in Omni that is poorly done. It can be a lazy way to write since the narrator knows everything and can just tell the reader instead of letting the reader experience it via the characters. But when it's done well it can be very powerful and immersive.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

I'm going to take the leap and try omniscient, on the grounds that the narrator is an actual character in the series and is a natural storyteller [literally]. If I don't like how it feels or it ends up being too ambitious, I can always try something else.

 

[Chessie2]

I'm going to take the leap and try omniscient, on the grounds that the narrator is an actual character in the series and is a natural storyteller [literally]. If I don't like how it feels or it ends up being too ambitious, I can always try something else.

Try different voices and characters for your omniscient narrator. I agree with Malik in that it's kind of like--well, really more like acting out voices.

I mentioned already that my 1940's romance series is written in omniscient. The same narrator tells the story, and I imagined them to be a voice over like in those black and white movies that were narrated back in the 50's. The narrator was highly critical of Lila, the actress, who was the villain in book 1 and the heroine in book 2. She (the narrator) tones it down some in book 2 but there are parts where she basically says, "well, there goes Lila again being her same conceited self" sort of attitude. It was super fun to write in that way and to give the audience a view into the narrator's mind, who she liked, who she disliked, and what her moral boundaries were because yes, Lila gets pregnant and the narrator becomes judgmental, since pregnancy outside of marriage was a humongous deal back in those days.

 

[Firefly]

Try different voices and characters for your omniscient narrator. I agree with Malik in that it's kind of like--well, really more like acting out voices.

I mentioned already that my 1940's romance series is written in omniscient. The same narrator tells the story, and I imagined them to be a voice over like in those black and white movies that were narrated back in the 50's. The narrator was highly critical of Lila, the actress, who was the villain in book 1 and the heroine in book 2. She (the narrator) tones it down some in book 2 but there are parts where she basically says, "well, there goes Lila again being her same conceited self" sort of attitude. It was super fun to write in that way and to give the audience a view into the narrator's mind, who she liked, who she disliked, and what her moral boundaries were because yes, Lila gets pregnant and the narrator becomes judgmental, since pregnancy outside of marriage was a humongous deal back in those days.

That sounds aweesome. 1940's romance is not really my thing, but I especially like the idea of making the the narration echo the common views of the era. And snark is always fun
Irony/dichotomy between narrator and character is really fun to write and to read, and it's one of the hardest things for me to give up when I write in first. I wish it were utilized more often I the books I read. I think you can push it further in omniscent, but I've seen subtler versions work excellently in third.

I think people's POV preferences are probably influenced by what they're used to. I read mostly YA, and so first person sounds natural to me. Omniscient feels alien and distant because I haven't read a lot of older books.
I guess that's one more benefit of third past; it exists in nearly every genre, so the chances of jarring your reader are much lower.