Thread: First person or not?

Okay so I'm completely rewriting a story that I've been working on for a while now. I have my outline done, characters done, ideas ready, the only thing I'm having trouble with is if I should do it in First person or not?
The story more revolves around the main girl so I would think first person but I started the first few lines with both choices and they both seem to work well...

Which one usually catches readers?

Any suggestions?


Thanks in advance!

Either one will work for a reader, provided it's done well. The more pertinent question is, "Which one best tells the story?"

Generally, I prefer to write in the third person, but my current novel is in the first. My editor and I bounced exactly these sorts of things around for a good month, and the conclusion was that first person would best tell the story. Ultimately (and for the moment), you're going to be the best judge of that.

There is no "better" POV. What's better is the one that fits the narrative voice of your book, the way it "wants to tell itself". Try it both ways, sit around seeing the scene and hoping to get a feel about what works.

Just because a story closely follows one character doesn't mean First is easier or better. You can use third person to follow that character "looking right over her shoulder". And still get the immediacy and inner thoughts.

Darla walked into the party like a queen. If queens tried to smile without showing their braces. She looked around from under a protective fall of streaked hair and prepared to freak. Oh, shit, it's Johhny! And he's with that little slut Charise. Oh, crap, I should bail. Or wait, maybe I could trip her into the punch bowl and save her or something.
To gain time to sort things out she plunged across the room for the bathroom line.

See, this is the sort of thing people like first person for, but it doesn't have to be first person. And you have the ability to see the main from outside.

But if you want to show thoughts of others, or scenes in which the main isn't present, it can get tricky in first person.

Another difference is that first person requires a very strong character voice, since the character is the one telling us the story. If your character has a boring voice, it can turn readers off. There are also the limitations Lin mentioned above.

I think first person is trickier to write well because the POV is very narrow but that's what also makes it interesting and exciting (for me, anyway), adding to the overall tension. As previously mentioned that also means that you might have the occasional work-around to convey something that the narrator doesn't know but in that case I'd think really, really hard about whether that information really needs to be conveyed or if it makes the story stronger by waiting till the character finds out about it.

I wrote a few parts from first person and a few from third, I'm really thinking I like the first person better and it seems like some parts can be a challenge for me, lol. I thank you all for your help. I hope I get the same response when I start posting this for some critique and advice.

I liken writing in the first to a landscape painting, and writing in the third to a Picasso.

It's difficult to philosophise in the first, your views are restricted to the protagonist; in the third you can paint on a much larger canvass.

But there's nothing wrong with a tight story in the first; for an impatient writer looking for a quick return it's ideal. And unless you do it well, excessive philosophising is boring.

I would suggest you follow your own voice, it's the best you've got.