Help with 1st person writing... - Writers Forum

BrizieBoomtastic · 01-25-2008, 08:53 PM

How do you get inside the head of a character when writing in 1st person??

Katastrof · 01-25-2008, 09:18 PM

You write from their perspective, what they feel about the situation. Essentially you write as if you were them, but with their feelings and thoughts instead of yours. Like, you know the saying, "Walk a mile in someone else's shoes". It's the same thing except you're walking for thousands of miles and writing down what they experience.

BrizieBoomtastic · 01-25-2008, 09:22 PM

That's how I'm writing now. But I'm writing as Emma. I need to get inside Billy's head, without him talking yet.

Do I just have to wait for the moment for him to talk... or???

Katastrof · 01-25-2008, 09:38 PM

I don't think you can really do that without jumping from his perspective from Emma's perspective. Which might (defiantly) be confusing unless done properly. Why not just have Emma interpret what his thinking through his actions. If not, honestly just use 3rd person, it would be easier.

Mike C · 01-26-2008, 02:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrizieBoomtastic

That's how I'm writing now. But I'm writing as Emma. I need to get inside Billy's head, without him talking yet.

Do I just have to wait for the moment for him to talk... or???

You go into a store. There's a girl behind the counter, looking at you. Do you know what's going on in her head? No. That's what first person is all about, it's both a strength and a limitation. The reader finds stuff out as your protagonist does, not before.

sir_writealot · 01-26-2008, 04:38 AM

You could have two people telling the story in the first person, but if you do you should really give them their own chapters, or sections, so that the reader knows where they are all the time. A good example of this is The Time Traveller's Wife.

missmia86 · 01-26-2008, 07:51 PM

Write characters you KNOW!

No use trying to "get inside the head" of a character who, if you met them in real life, you wouldn't understand. If you are a 30 year-old man, make your protag a 30 year-old man. Write from a place you have been before. If you once had your girlfriend cheat on you, make your protag's wife cheat and so you can use your experience and filter it through your (poor) protag.

xoxoxo

Katastrof · 01-26-2008, 09:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by missmia86

Write characters you KNOW!

No use trying to "get inside the head" of a character who, if you met them in real life, you wouldn't understand. If you are a 30 year-old man, make your protag a 30 year-old man. Write from a place you have been before. If you once had your girlfriend cheat on you, make your protag's wife cheat and so you can use your experience and filter it through your (poor) protag.

xoxoxo

I'm sorry, but I have to call BS. So Shakespeare should never have written about Julius Caesar? He was an Englishman after all, not a Roman and could not have known how Romans acted from his own personal experience. Or what about Homer? He was blind after all, should he have not written about the epic battles of Achilles and Hector? Oh, some say he was a soldier, but he was certainly no hero. Issac Asimov was not a rocket scientist (he was a biochemist) but somehow he wrote about space travel.

Nothing limits a writer more, than saying "write about what you know". That's like saying, since you were born poor you should stay poor. We have imaginations for a reason. How the hell do people describe what an alien is, if they've never even seen one or had an "experience with one". As a writer you don't have to know every single logical explanation for why a character does this or that, just like you don't need to know how a car engine works to describe that it powers car. You just need to explain enough detail that it makes the reader believe you.

"Write what you know" comes from the notion that all writers must have had experiences that influenced their work. It's the other way around. Writers have influenced their work with their experiences.

Note: I do know that some writers do write about/are influenced by their experiences. However, they still have to use their imaginations to fill in gaps or characters or whole plot lines. They also can't just record an event and then sell it as fiction, they have to be creative with it. My point is telling a person to write about what they know is irrelevant because you have to use your imagination and fill in the gaps either way. What does it matter if you fill in all the gaps or just a few?

lin · 01-26-2008, 09:28 PM

But maybe you DO know what's in the head of the girl behind the counter?

She's looking at me like she thinks I'm going to pull a gun.

I'm like, "Hi, Girl," and she's like "Who the hell is this dweeb?"

I could see her working it out: he looks like an unmade bed, but those are expensive trainers and check out that manicure....hmmmmm.

She didn't go to sleep right afterward. Wanted to cuddle. She whispered, "When I first saw you come into the store, I thought you looked Jim Carrey in need of an enema."

So from that.... The first time Girl saw me she thought I needed an enema. I didn't know it at the time, but it came out after I'd fucked her six ways from Sunday on a sliding chaise behind her parents' house.

People whine about the limitations of first person, but when they do they are really talking about the limits of their own imagination. You can figure out how to get across what needs to be got across.

Quote:

If you are a 30 year-old man, make your protag a 30 year-old man.

Yes, this is absolutely a sentence that needs to be ignored, and preferably edited out. Jesus Christ!

Arin · 01-26-2008, 11:56 PM

If you're writing in the first person, the character can only speculate what another person's thinking. Of course, that sometimes works (as you described, lin), but one can never know for sure. It's not a lack of imagination, it's just reality.

I am, however, very glad for the debunking of the "Write what you know" myth. It irks me to no end. Flannery O'Connor said it best: "I write to find out what I know." ...Thank you, Flannery, thank you. =D>

QuothTheRaven · 01-27-2008, 01:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrizieBoomtastic

How do you get inside the head of a character when writing in 1st person??

The number one thing that you can do to improve your writing is to read. Why are you trying to write something if you don't understand something as simple as how 1st person works?

Listen to the first line of what missmia86 wrote, ignore the rest. You need to know your characters, but that doesn't mean that a 30 year old man should write about 30 year old men. To be a good writer, you need to read, be observant, and be analytical. Don't believe people that think writing is creative fuzzy pussy crap. Writing is difficult and requires a shit load of knowledge. 99% of people can't write and shouldn't write (about 80% of published writers are in there as well). Just like you need a specific set of skills, a large amount of knowledge, and a particular way of thinking to be a good Engineer or a good Mathematician, you need to same thing to be a writer. You need skills (creativity alone won't get you anywhere), you need to know A LOT (this includes history and literature, current events, and marketing information about your target audience), and like I said, you have to have a specific and rare kind of logic. People that think being a writer or majoring in English is an easy way out of studying something like math or science are idiots. You're a lot more likely to survive as a crappy engineer or scientist than as a crappy writer.

missmia86 · 01-27-2008, 04:53 AM

I definately know what you mean, Katastrof. I guess that is just my way of doing it, but you are right in a lot of what you say.
BUT, just because I am a girl and my protag is a boy, or I am poor and my protag is rich, doesn't mean I can't take my experiences and inject them into my characters. For example, if the protag was betrayed, I would ask myself "how would I feel if this happened to me?"

I personally don't feel limited when people have said to me "write what you know" because I haven't taken it literally (if I did, all I would write would be boring as hell- shopping, making a sandwich, getting into a uni degree, nothing novel-worthy). I interpreted it as- take what you know from yourself or other people in your life who you know well, and use it to make your characters authentic.

You can still write all you want about fauns and eagles with lizard heads, Romans and Greek Goddesses in loin cloths, etc, but the situations you put them in and, as a consequence, the responses they have to the situations, (I think) work best (and are easier to write) when they are from a place you have been before.

That's just me. Maybe I'm a wimp

slayerofangels · 01-27-2008, 11:32 AM

First person past tense, or first person present tense?

In Past tense, your character is speaking to the reader (more or less) and is looking at these events with the benefit of hindsight, which can be an interesting standpoint if done right.

lin · 01-27-2008, 11:38 AM

Quote:

If you're writing in the first person, the character can only speculate what another person's thinking.

Not so. He can hear about from the character or a third person. He can, as indicated my one of my examples, later turn it up and therefore be able to tell the reader about it even though he himself might not know about it at the moment.

I'll say it again. Limitations are nothing more than opportunities to the inventive mind.

lin · 01-27-2008, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Listen to the first line of what missmia86 wrote, ignore the rest.

No.

Ignore all of it. These are comments that come from reading about writing, not actually doing it.

This whole bullshit of "know all about your characters" and create big lists of their favorite colors and cock size and kindergarten teachers is a load of crap.

An analogy would be saying, "Don't get involved in any kind of relationship with somebody unless you know everything about them."

I say this because it's a harmful attitude, leading to stiff characters, choking off the creative excitement of working with the personae, and deadends growth of the story.