Mixing first and third person?

[Zara]

Hi everyone,
So this is my first novel I'm looking to publish and I've started it without really thinking this potential problem through. Other novels I've written were just for practise, so I did what I wanted, but with this one I'm writing the main character in first person and a few supporting cast in third person. It's very obvious who is who. But would this put an agent/publisher off?

 

[Incanus]

I can't say about agents or publishers, but I know I would certainly be wondering what was going on. As described, it sounds like something that doesn't really work.

I am fairly strict with how I use or interpret POV, and I strongly recommend doing a deep dive into it. It is trickier than it appears to be. POV is not something you make a one-time decision about, and then forget. The way I see it, POV affects every sentence in a story.

I am curious as to how others react to this question. In any event, good luck with your project!

 

[Zara]

I can't say about agents or publishers, but I know I would certainly be wondering what was going on. As described, it sounds like something that doesn't really work.

I am fairly strict with how I use or interpret POV, and I strongly recommend doing a deep dive into it. It is trickier than it appears to be. POV is not something you make a one-time decision about, and then forget. The way I see it, POV affects every sentence in a story.

I am curious as to how others react to this question. In any event, good luck with your project!

Yeah, me too. I just noticed I'd never read a novel that combined the two. And writing it like that wasn't planned.

 

[Gurkhal]

I agree with the other posters in that switching between first and third person POV would put me off. But then again I dislike first person POV in general so that choice would put me off anyhow. Thus I may not be the targeted audience for your book.

But those are my thoughts on the matter anyway.

 

[pmmg]

I suspect it would draw questions, but everything is in the execution. Anything can still become a captivating story and take off... Course, most everything wont, but we dream big.

 

[Mad Swede]

This depends on the agent. They'd be the ones to find you a publisher. I suspect you'll need to re-write the story either in all first person or in all third person. I'd suggest writing it in close third person because that let's you get almost as close to the main character as you would in first person whilst also letting you write other characters in the same way.

 

[Penpilot]

I don't think it's necessarily a deal breaker. If I remember right, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss does this. If you do a google search for novels that mix first and third person, you'll find many traditionally published books that have done this.

As with almost everything in writing, all that matters is if you do it well.

 

[Prince of Spires]

As with almost everything in writing, all that matters is if you do it well.

This.

The only way to know is to give it to a bunch of readers of your preferred genre (preferably not family) and ask their opinion on it. It's the only way to tell. If you pulled it off, then it will be a selling point for the novel. If you haven't, then it will draw a lot of critisizem.

As for coming across it, I haven't. I have read a novel which was all in third person. However, one character had her chapters in third person present tense, while the rest was in third person past tense. It was jarring each time I came across her chapters. In the context of the story it worked (for mental disorder reasons). But it was harder to read.

 

[Karlin]

I generally don't think consciously about persons and so on. But I can understand the difficulty. Once i wrote a short story in first person, and killed the main character. Now What?! His ghost continued narrating.

I gather you need to shift to third person to inform the reader of other events or thoughts, that the main character isn't and can't be aware of. Can you step back and..." gentle reader. Jimmy didn't know this, but Mary had stolen the Falcon two weeks earlier, and given it to Bogart"

 

[Mad Swede]

I generally don't think consciously about persons and so on. But I can understand the difficulty. Once i wrote a short story in first person, and killed the main character. Now What?! His ghost continued narrating.

I gather you need to shift to third person to inform the reader of other events or thoughts, that the main character isn't and can't be aware of. Can you step back and..." gentle reader. Jimmy didn't know this, but Mary had stolen the Falcon two weeks earlier, and given it to Bogart"

I'd advise against that, because it risks becoming telling and not showing. If you want to write in the first person then the character has to deduce or be told things they didn't know. Alternatively, the reader has to be told without the character knowing, e.g. some newspaper headline or poster which is just given a cursory glance by the character but which contains some information which becomes signifcant later.

 

[JBCrowson]

I agree with those who've said it could work, depending on your skill as a writer.
What I would add is that the more unusual your structure / POV, the harder it is to pull it off. I believe this is because when we write, we draw on everything we've read to some degree, and so we have more examples of successful ways of doing things typically to help.
By contrast if we try something no-one did before (or at least that we've never read) we have none of those past examples to guide us, so it is harder.