What a pleasant morning surprise! Thanks, John. I've enjoyed your newsletter for some time now (thanks to Austin Kleon), so I'm just thrilled at the mention.
This verbalizes a lot of feelings I have about POV, and first person in particular. So often it's a turn off for me, but I couldn't really pinpoint why because there are some books that use it—like Giovanni's Room—that I love. That might not be fair, because Baldwin is Baldwin, but you know what I mean.
I hope you will be doing interpretive dance engagements within easy traveling distance of Philadelphia.
As a non-fiction writer, I've always been fascinated by the intimidating freedom writing fiction affords. Creating plausible characters and situations out of thin air is scary enough, but then thinking about the choices around perspective...whoa.
Nothing planned in Philadelphia yet, but I'm very open to any invitations! I think my career has benefitted somewhat from getting into creative writing first because the storytelling impulse is still part of my method for other things. I do sometimes wish writing fiction was more than a private hobby again, but it is what it is at the moment.
This was very helpful. I’ve found myself irritated with first-person books where the narrator spends a fair bit of time describing their own facial expressions, because who thinks that way? And how would you even know? (“My face darkened in anger” or “I looked at him through slitted eyes.) I appreciate the larger picture you paint, that some first-person narration ends up being a weird visual thing that contributes little to learning anything at all about the narrator.
Thinking a bit more, (and this is probably widely discussed discourse that I’m unaware of), but there seems to be a “movie-fication” in some writing, where the author goes into exhaustive detail about the visuals of the scene. I have enjoyed fantasy writing throughout my life, and have, in the last few years, run into books that do what I guess is called “world building” and which I find painfully dull. I’ve felt as though the author wants me to see exactly what they see in their mind, and that is some boring reading.
The things like telling one's own facial expressions are the kinds of things I used to comment on in intro fiction writing student work as something that took me out of the moment in the story, but its only become more prevalent, as though the audience now expects to be given a "video-like" experience. I don't like it. When it comes to world building, I only need enough to appreciate that story, and really, not an ounce more.
I'm with you about worldbuilding, John. However, there *are* readers who thrive on those details and get really annoyed with perceived inconsistencies or lack of hard systems, especially in fantasy. I had one contest reviewer give me the worst four-star review I'd ever had because they didn't like the fact that I never completely spelled out my magic system with hard and fast rules. I blame a lot of role-playing games for this demand to have exquisitely detailed, consistent worlds in fantasy, in particular.
I'm very happy to buy into the illusion as long as there's nothing that throws me out of it, so those hard and fast rules aren't necessary to me, at least not explicitly. It's interesting to see connections to role-playing games. It's similar to how first-person video games may be influencing perceptions of first-person narration.
I am much the same way--I don't want or need hard and fast rules as long as the author does that tap dance to convince me of the story's internal logic.
I'm a solid tight third person writer, myself. Oh, I've tried first person and the voice just doesn't work for me as a writer.
As a reader, I also have a stronger preference for third person POVs than I do for first person. Part of that is due to the frequency of it being used in YA and specific genres; part of it is that in my opinion it's rarely done well. I've found that I really don't care for first person in mysteries or urban fantasy (I'm trying now to remember if the Mercy Thompson books by Patrica Briggs are first person but I think Briggs mixes it up as she gets deeper into the series).
I've written one POV in a multi-POV book that was second person and *that* was interesting...and chilling. That particular POV was someone in the throes of being possessed by a malign entity and becoming delusional...and lemme tell you, a very delicate touch is required. But...when I was done with that book, the results gave me chills because to me, at least, it was a strong depiction of that particular character's decline...and how she escaped and recovered.
I've been thinking about how I often like unreliable first-person narrators for similar reasons to what you're talking about, that there's a transformation in my perception of the narrator over the course of the book that, if it's well done, is really pleasurable.
That's interesting because unreliable first person narrators often annoy me. But that's my own preference, and probably due to age plus things I've gone through in real life. I have a much more pleasant reading experience if the unreliable character is third person--I just don't want to be that emotionally close to an unreliable character. Tight third is plenty and, well, I've kinda experimented with that unreliable narrator in a way...oh wait, that was the second person character. Marjorie Sandor introduced me to the concept of using second person to depict an unbalanced character in a workshop and...yeah, it works.
This was interesting and fun, John. I'm usually comfortable with first person, probably because Jane Eyre was so foundational to me, an I got imprinted. But I'm good with third person too. If the writing is well done, or to put it another way, if I'm sufficiently into the story, either one is fine. On the world building/wordiness question, that's tricky. I need enough detail to make the movie in my head, but not so much that I'm sighing and thinking, OK, let's get on with it, ie taken out of the story. So the author has to guess if I need to know the colors of the rug, or if it's OK to just say that they had lunch, and skip the menu. I don't actually know where the line is. As a writer, I struggle with it. As for Mercy Thompson, in the comments above, I'm through #5, and the first person narrative works for me. Mercy is a very lovable character, and I like seeing her world through her eyes.
SPOILER ALERT ABOUT WHITEHEAD’S _THE NICKEL BOYS_!!!
Elwood’s story couldn’t be written — or at least couldn’t be written as effectively — in _The Nickel Boys_ because, as we only find out in the last few chapters of the book, Elwood’s story isn’t really “his” own, since Turner has taken on his identity since their mutual escape from the “school.”
Whitehead would have had a much harder time disguising this fact if he’d had to focus on Turner’s interiority throughout and I suspect that the changes that would have wrought to his book would not have been beneficial. I can’t recall him using first-person in anything other than his poker/divorce memoir, so he may share Taylor’s disdain for it.
That's right. The perspective has to be consistent with what I call the storytelling "intelligence." This is how I'd refer to it when I was teaching introductory fiction writing and students would frequently paint themselves in a corner with an initial POV choice and then realize they needed access to something a particularly narrator wouldn't be able to relate.
The most common pitfall was students writing in a first-person past POV where the narrator is killed at the end of the story. They often didn't realize it until someone pointed it out in discussion. I liked it when this kind of thing cropped up because it gave us an interesting storytelling problem to gnaw on.
Can't remember if Sag Harbor is in first person as a coming-of-age novel, but yes, everything else is in third.
Yes! _Sag Harbor_ is very much first-person, which is probably why every reviewer wants to read it as autobiography rather than fiction! Thanks for that reminder.
Whitehead is very sensitive to genre conventions in his novels, which is why I assumed without remembering Sag Harbor is in first. Most of his other preoccupations, particularly his noir/crime strain (which I date to his first book, The Intuitionist) demand third person narrators in order to hit the right tone and perspective for the story.
You should toot that horn! This looks fascinating: https://uscpress.com/Understanding-Colson-Whitehead-revised-and-expanded-edition. I never had a super strong drive to do any kind of PhD work, but if I did, it would've been on Whitehead. I remember reading The Intutionist when it first came out and thinking that here was a guy who was combining so many of the kinds of writing that I loved, but I couldn't' fully put my finger on what he was up to.
For me it was _John Henry Days_, which I picked up in a used bookstore around a year after it was published, read in one sitting and then turned around and started right over again. That book is deserving of way more attention and love than it has gotten in the twenty-three years since it was published.
The book behind the link you provided doesn't cover the two recent Ray Carney novels -- the revised and expanded edition added discussion of _The Underground Railroad_ and _Nickel Boys_ because the original edition came out right before Whitehead ascended into the stratosphere of American authors -- but I think it puts forth at least a somewhat compelling argument for what he's been doing over the course of his career. He and Percival Everett have given me ample material for speculation over the past few decades, though I would never say I've figured either of them out (thank goodness...).
I'm a Whitehead completist save the poker book. I loved John Henry Days too and wish it was more appreciated. Colossus and Apex were not as successful for me, but I'm never disappointed that I took the time to read one of his books.
I think _Apex Hides the Hurt_ actually sneaks up on you after multiple readings. I think there's something going on in that novel with a much bigger commentary on historiography that is in many ways obscured by our understandable readerly focus on which name the nomenclature consultant is going to pick for the town.
A lot of his books since the first two actually do that to me. I was underwhelmed by _Zone One_, _The Underground Railroad_,_The Nickel Boys_, and both of the Ray Carney books until I read each of them a second and third (and fourth and...) time. He does so much narrative layering and easter-egging in his textual construction that it really bears, if not requires, multiple reads. I look at the reviews of _Sag Harbor_ and _The Nickel Boys_ especially and see so many instances of readers who just accepted the face value of what they saw in a first (often cursory) pass and got hoodwinked as a result.
In this morning's NYT, I was intrigued to read that Adam Haslett's new novel title was modeled after one my favorite Russian novels, and now he's in your newsletter. The universe is telling me that I need to read Mothers and Sons.
I'm also very picky about the point of view in the books I read. If a book is written in third person and slips into omnipotent, or mentions something that wouldn't be in the awareness of that 'third person', it's enough to get me to stop reading.
Speaking of first person POV, I think the absolute best example is Agatha Christie's "Murder of Roger Ackroyd." --SPOILER ALERT--
In terms of unreliable first person POV, this one is, IMO, the absolute best ever written. The other one I love with first person POV is Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assasin. I'm a sucker for an unreliable narrator, if it's done well, of course.
I am currently reading a very popular book in first person and, well…I’m torn. I don’t think we like people because we can see inside their heads—I think it is because we can’t. People are interesting because they are puzzles. That said, some minds are more interesting than others, and I think it CAN work. But in the case of this book, I’m not sure I’m supposed to like the “protagonist” but instead see how easy it is to rationalize our own racism and poor choices with just everyday vanilla-variety thoughts and anxieties. Still, it somehow feels weirdly indulgent, but I wonder if that is the point of this particular novel.
What a pleasant morning surprise! Thanks, John. I've enjoyed your newsletter for some time now (thanks to Austin Kleon), so I'm just thrilled at the mention.
This verbalizes a lot of feelings I have about POV, and first person in particular. So often it's a turn off for me, but I couldn't really pinpoint why because there are some books that use it—like Giovanni's Room—that I love. That might not be fair, because Baldwin is Baldwin, but you know what I mean.
I hope you will be doing interpretive dance engagements within easy traveling distance of Philadelphia.
As a non-fiction writer, I've always been fascinated by the intimidating freedom writing fiction affords. Creating plausible characters and situations out of thin air is scary enough, but then thinking about the choices around perspective...whoa.
Nothing planned in Philadelphia yet, but I'm very open to any invitations! I think my career has benefitted somewhat from getting into creative writing first because the storytelling impulse is still part of my method for other things. I do sometimes wish writing fiction was more than a private hobby again, but it is what it is at the moment.
This was very helpful. I’ve found myself irritated with first-person books where the narrator spends a fair bit of time describing their own facial expressions, because who thinks that way? And how would you even know? (“My face darkened in anger” or “I looked at him through slitted eyes.) I appreciate the larger picture you paint, that some first-person narration ends up being a weird visual thing that contributes little to learning anything at all about the narrator.
Thinking a bit more, (and this is probably widely discussed discourse that I’m unaware of), but there seems to be a “movie-fication” in some writing, where the author goes into exhaustive detail about the visuals of the scene. I have enjoyed fantasy writing throughout my life, and have, in the last few years, run into books that do what I guess is called “world building” and which I find painfully dull. I’ve felt as though the author wants me to see exactly what they see in their mind, and that is some boring reading.
The things like telling one's own facial expressions are the kinds of things I used to comment on in intro fiction writing student work as something that took me out of the moment in the story, but its only become more prevalent, as though the audience now expects to be given a "video-like" experience. I don't like it. When it comes to world building, I only need enough to appreciate that story, and really, not an ounce more.
I'm with you about worldbuilding, John. However, there *are* readers who thrive on those details and get really annoyed with perceived inconsistencies or lack of hard systems, especially in fantasy. I had one contest reviewer give me the worst four-star review I'd ever had because they didn't like the fact that I never completely spelled out my magic system with hard and fast rules. I blame a lot of role-playing games for this demand to have exquisitely detailed, consistent worlds in fantasy, in particular.
I'm very happy to buy into the illusion as long as there's nothing that throws me out of it, so those hard and fast rules aren't necessary to me, at least not explicitly. It's interesting to see connections to role-playing games. It's similar to how first-person video games may be influencing perceptions of first-person narration.
I am much the same way--I don't want or need hard and fast rules as long as the author does that tap dance to convince me of the story's internal logic.
I'm a solid tight third person writer, myself. Oh, I've tried first person and the voice just doesn't work for me as a writer.
As a reader, I also have a stronger preference for third person POVs than I do for first person. Part of that is due to the frequency of it being used in YA and specific genres; part of it is that in my opinion it's rarely done well. I've found that I really don't care for first person in mysteries or urban fantasy (I'm trying now to remember if the Mercy Thompson books by Patrica Briggs are first person but I think Briggs mixes it up as she gets deeper into the series).
I've written one POV in a multi-POV book that was second person and *that* was interesting...and chilling. That particular POV was someone in the throes of being possessed by a malign entity and becoming delusional...and lemme tell you, a very delicate touch is required. But...when I was done with that book, the results gave me chills because to me, at least, it was a strong depiction of that particular character's decline...and how she escaped and recovered.
I've been thinking about how I often like unreliable first-person narrators for similar reasons to what you're talking about, that there's a transformation in my perception of the narrator over the course of the book that, if it's well done, is really pleasurable.
That's interesting because unreliable first person narrators often annoy me. But that's my own preference, and probably due to age plus things I've gone through in real life. I have a much more pleasant reading experience if the unreliable character is third person--I just don't want to be that emotionally close to an unreliable character. Tight third is plenty and, well, I've kinda experimented with that unreliable narrator in a way...oh wait, that was the second person character. Marjorie Sandor introduced me to the concept of using second person to depict an unbalanced character in a workshop and...yeah, it works.
This was interesting and fun, John. I'm usually comfortable with first person, probably because Jane Eyre was so foundational to me, an I got imprinted. But I'm good with third person too. If the writing is well done, or to put it another way, if I'm sufficiently into the story, either one is fine. On the world building/wordiness question, that's tricky. I need enough detail to make the movie in my head, but not so much that I'm sighing and thinking, OK, let's get on with it, ie taken out of the story. So the author has to guess if I need to know the colors of the rug, or if it's OK to just say that they had lunch, and skip the menu. I don't actually know where the line is. As a writer, I struggle with it. As for Mercy Thompson, in the comments above, I'm through #5, and the first person narrative works for me. Mercy is a very lovable character, and I like seeing her world through her eyes.
PS You recommended Some Tame Gazelle by my girl Barbara Pym. 💖💖💖
She's the best!
SPOILER ALERT ABOUT WHITEHEAD’S _THE NICKEL BOYS_!!!
Elwood’s story couldn’t be written — or at least couldn’t be written as effectively — in _The Nickel Boys_ because, as we only find out in the last few chapters of the book, Elwood’s story isn’t really “his” own, since Turner has taken on his identity since their mutual escape from the “school.”
Whitehead would have had a much harder time disguising this fact if he’d had to focus on Turner’s interiority throughout and I suspect that the changes that would have wrought to his book would not have been beneficial. I can’t recall him using first-person in anything other than his poker/divorce memoir, so he may share Taylor’s disdain for it.
That's right. The perspective has to be consistent with what I call the storytelling "intelligence." This is how I'd refer to it when I was teaching introductory fiction writing and students would frequently paint themselves in a corner with an initial POV choice and then realize they needed access to something a particularly narrator wouldn't be able to relate.
The most common pitfall was students writing in a first-person past POV where the narrator is killed at the end of the story. They often didn't realize it until someone pointed it out in discussion. I liked it when this kind of thing cropped up because it gave us an interesting storytelling problem to gnaw on.
Can't remember if Sag Harbor is in first person as a coming-of-age novel, but yes, everything else is in third.
Yes! _Sag Harbor_ is very much first-person, which is probably why every reviewer wants to read it as autobiography rather than fiction! Thanks for that reminder.
Whitehead is very sensitive to genre conventions in his novels, which is why I assumed without remembering Sag Harbor is in first. Most of his other preoccupations, particularly his noir/crime strain (which I date to his first book, The Intuitionist) demand third person narrators in order to hit the right tone and perspective for the story.
At the risk of sounding my own horn, I may have published a book on that very subject! ;-)
You should toot that horn! This looks fascinating: https://uscpress.com/Understanding-Colson-Whitehead-revised-and-expanded-edition. I never had a super strong drive to do any kind of PhD work, but if I did, it would've been on Whitehead. I remember reading The Intutionist when it first came out and thinking that here was a guy who was combining so many of the kinds of writing that I loved, but I couldn't' fully put my finger on what he was up to.
For me it was _John Henry Days_, which I picked up in a used bookstore around a year after it was published, read in one sitting and then turned around and started right over again. That book is deserving of way more attention and love than it has gotten in the twenty-three years since it was published.
The book behind the link you provided doesn't cover the two recent Ray Carney novels -- the revised and expanded edition added discussion of _The Underground Railroad_ and _Nickel Boys_ because the original edition came out right before Whitehead ascended into the stratosphere of American authors -- but I think it puts forth at least a somewhat compelling argument for what he's been doing over the course of his career. He and Percival Everett have given me ample material for speculation over the past few decades, though I would never say I've figured either of them out (thank goodness...).
I'm a Whitehead completist save the poker book. I loved John Henry Days too and wish it was more appreciated. Colossus and Apex were not as successful for me, but I'm never disappointed that I took the time to read one of his books.
I think _Apex Hides the Hurt_ actually sneaks up on you after multiple readings. I think there's something going on in that novel with a much bigger commentary on historiography that is in many ways obscured by our understandable readerly focus on which name the nomenclature consultant is going to pick for the town.
A lot of his books since the first two actually do that to me. I was underwhelmed by _Zone One_, _The Underground Railroad_,_The Nickel Boys_, and both of the Ray Carney books until I read each of them a second and third (and fourth and...) time. He does so much narrative layering and easter-egging in his textual construction that it really bears, if not requires, multiple reads. I look at the reviews of _Sag Harbor_ and _The Nickel Boys_ especially and see so many instances of readers who just accepted the face value of what they saw in a first (often cursory) pass and got hoodwinked as a result.
In this morning's NYT, I was intrigued to read that Adam Haslett's new novel title was modeled after one my favorite Russian novels, and now he's in your newsletter. The universe is telling me that I need to read Mothers and Sons.
I'm also very picky about the point of view in the books I read. If a book is written in third person and slips into omnipotent, or mentions something that wouldn't be in the awareness of that 'third person', it's enough to get me to stop reading.
Speaking of first person POV, I think the absolute best example is Agatha Christie's "Murder of Roger Ackroyd." --SPOILER ALERT--
In terms of unreliable first person POV, this one is, IMO, the absolute best ever written. The other one I love with first person POV is Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assasin. I'm a sucker for an unreliable narrator, if it's done well, of course.
Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a top classic for me too. If I was ever going to attempt an unreliable narrator, it's one of the models I'd use.
I am currently reading a very popular book in first person and, well…I’m torn. I don’t think we like people because we can see inside their heads—I think it is because we can’t. People are interesting because they are puzzles. That said, some minds are more interesting than others, and I think it CAN work. But in the case of this book, I’m not sure I’m supposed to like the “protagonist” but instead see how easy it is to rationalize our own racism and poor choices with just everyday vanilla-variety thoughts and anxieties. Still, it somehow feels weirdly indulgent, but I wonder if that is the point of this particular novel.