First or third person?

I finished a draft of a short story I had been writing on Monday which I'd written in the third person. When I asked my Mum to read it, she pondered with the idea that maybe a change of narrative voice would have allowed her to feel closer to the main character.

I hadn't thought about my main character, Terry, much when I was writing. I wanted to focus on the plot and keeping it connected. As I was writing, I was learning more about Terry that I hadn't originally known. I started with a '60 year old man' which doesn't characterize him well at all. It was only as the narrative progressed, that I discovered more about the old man.

I reasoned that this was probably the reason why my Mum felt a disconnection with my main character - if I, the person who created the character didn't know much about him - how was my Mum supposed to? Nevertheless, I considered whether I should change the narration to his perspective.

When I read a first person narrative, I always tend to feel more empathy with the narrator. It is sometimes like I am that person - his/her problems are my problems. This can be particularly enjoyable at times. Yet, I sometimes find it easier to write in third person as you can add details into the narrative that the main character is unaware of - it's almost like your one step ahead of them for most of the story. 

Of course, having said this, third person narratives do leave the reader as an outsider to the main story. They are less involved in the goings on of the overall plot, although they have more of an insight because of the omniscient narrator.

To be honest, when I began the story I thought that since my story was only going to be short, I'd decided it was probably best to use a third person narration as there wouldn't have been enough length anyway to have gotten close to the main character. Yet, I was definitely wrong to have thought this. I believe that you can gain empathy with the main character in a short time. This may depend on narrative voice, but also with an understanding of the character.

The character and their story should gain empathy no matter what the length.

For my English A-level I had to study Michael Frayn's 'Spies' which had a very unusual retrospective narrative voice. It was narrated in the first person by a man looking back at his childhood during WW2 - an especially important time for him. Only, when he referred to himself as a child, he used a third person narration. It was almost like he didn't recognize his childhood self and this shift in narrative voice meant their was a detachment there. Yet, when he started to relate to the young boy, the narrative was first person as he became his younger self.

The main character (Stephen) is who makes the story come alive - the fact that Frayn uses a first and third person narration is a fairly unique style and since his character is older and is struggling to remember the past, makes him unreliable compare to a normal narrator.

I really enjoyed this book and although it may have built up quite steadily, the suspense throughout was enough to keep me hooked.

 

It is the writers decision on what narrative voice they should use for their novel and, like myself, sometimes this big detail can be overlooked when focusing too much on the overall story. You never know - a change in narrator could alter the whole dynamics of the story!