Saturday, August 3, 2013

First Person Point of View Pt.II

After a month of squeezing in time to practice writing first person point of view between other projects, I think I may have finally realized why my writing style feels different compared to other writers' (besides the obvious fact that we are individuals, therefore there are going to be differences in our writing). I believe because of the way things are phrased and the way the main character's narrative digresses it comes off more conversational than literary. In other words, instead of the reader and main character becoming one, or the reader just being an invisible parrot on the main characters shoulder with access to the character's thoughts, it's more like the main character knows the reader is there and is prattling off his/her experiences.

Is that a bad thing? No. Is it a good thing? Eh, not really sure. It was never my intention to have a narrative like that. I can only think of one positive thing about such a narrative, which is that because it so conversational/friendly it might be more engaging/inviting for the audience. The negative side, though, is that the reader could get jolted out of the narrative. After all, if you are reading a story and suddenly the main character is talking directly to you (so far that isn't the case with my work, but it could be), you may be taken out of the story. Second, the narrative sounds immature, or at least mine does.

Anyway, I will continue with this first person point of view experiment for now.

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