There was a great thread on Twitter recently that caught my interest. The writer generating the thread asked how to hide the "I" when writing in the first person. As about ninety percent of my writing is in the first person, I was naturally curious. It had never occurred to me I needed to hide the "I."
Most of the responses spoke to the need to be aware of the usage and to restructure sentences when the usage of "I" gets too frequent or heavy. I certainly concur in most instances. Instead of saying, "I watched the rain overflow the gutters and splatter on the concrete," say "The rain overflowed the gutters and splattered on the concrete with a staccato beat." You're writing in the first person so it's all happening from that character's point of view. Using the second sentence engages his/her senses and therefore the senses of the reader who may have a memory of such a sound.
One thing to be cautious of is falling into a pattern of passive voice when your character is not being introspective. If he/she is in a reflective mood, saying, "I watched the rain fall..." is an appropriate tool to bring the reader into the emotions of the moment.
Writing in the first person gets tricky, for sure. I prefer it for writing M/M because when writing M/M in the third person, you end up with a lot of "he," "him," and "his," and if you're not careful, the reader can lose track of just which character HE is. The alternative is using a character's name repeatedly, and that can become annoying to a reader. I know. I am a reader, too.
But, to me, writing in the first person is a more personal way to tell that character's story. You have to step inside that character and go deep. There is no head hopping back and forth between points of view. You're in that POV and you stay there.
Writing in the first person isn't a better or worse way of writing a story. It's equal to the third person and the more narrative style of writing. It's a writer's preference and when done well, the reader hardly notices. I think I've done okay in most instances, with the Amethyst Cove and Sundown series being exceptional examples.
I'm of the opinion that the writer who generated the thread on Twitter is on the right track. She didn't imply that one style is better than another, which is a frequent topic of many who I suspect can't write first person. She asked for a few tips to improve her first person writing and that is always appropriate. I was also impressed at how civil, for Twitter, responses were.
For me, the bottom line is that you should write your story your way and that a writer should never stop in the quest to improve. And now I should take my own advice and finish the current WIP.
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http://www.kckendricks.com
KC Kendricks, Between the Keys, writing styles, first person, LGBTQ gay romance, writers on writing, M/M romance, narratives, Twitter, Amethyst Cove, sentence structure
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