Aspiring Writers Info: Rhiannon Frater on Why Third Person Narrative Rocks

[alfreda89]

So, do you prefer first person POV or third person POV?  Or third person limited POV, where the book has the slight distance of third person, but it's told from one person's POV throughout?  Rhiannon Frater listens to her characters to see if they want to speak in first or third person, but she tends to prefwr third person.  Here's why.  (I tend to agree with her.  I tried to write the Allie books in third person, but they just didn't work.  Nuala is third person, Alfreda first person--and the new book?  I think third.  Maybe a blend.  We'll see how it goes.)

The publishing aspect isn’t the only part of the publishing industry that changes, but also books themselves. When I was a kid, Young Adult meant books like Where The Red Fern Grows and Catcher in the Rye. There was also fluffy fun stuff like Sweet Valley High, scary Goosebumps and old standbys like Nancy Drew and the The Hardy Boys, but it was tweens that were eating up these books. Teenagers had already graduated to the likes of Ann Rice and Stephen King.

Now Young Adult is huge. It’s not just tweens and teens reading  the genre, but adults as well. Urban Fantasy didn’t even exist in its current form when I was growing up, but now it sits beside its fraternal twin, Paranormal Romance cluttering huge portions of bookstores.

With the advent of these newer, more popular genres, first person storytelling has become the dominate voice. Most of the books I read now are from first person points of view (POV). It’s rare to find a book in this genre that is not first person. Because readers are so used to first person POV, they sometimes find it difficult to immerse themselves in third person narratives. Add in multiple POVs, and some readers balk completely.