Thoughts on First-Person in Fiction and Essays

A unique Bones episode told from

the point of view of a dead boy.

I have mixed feelings about first-person in fiction. It is ubiquitous; these days, I read far more of it than I used to. But I'm always somewhat wary of it. Like with fiction based on letters, I can't drop the sneaky suspicion that it is too easy. Oh, just write a memoir already. 

Additionally, I have formed the uneasy impression in the last few years--I read a great many small press books on my Kindle, and I enjoy many of them--that first-person is a kind of fall-back position for being able to quickly establish character, except it doesn't always work. I sometimes develop less feel for the characters than I do with third-person texts. Everything is being discussed out of the perspective of a single mind, but I can't see the person or sense how that person interacts with others: what makes that person unique. The stream-of-consciousness stuff begins to blend together.  

I think good first-person is so difficult because it requires enormous control. As someone once remarked to me about The Curious Incident of the Boy in the Nighttime, "By the time the book was over, I wanted to get out of the boy's head." 

And the reader admired the book! For that matter, I consider Blossom Culp, the narrator of Ghosts I Have Been, to have a fantastic voice. 

But. Still. 

I use Terry and Alim as first-person narrators in His in Herland because the original text is in first-person. I used the god of love as a first-person narrator in my take on Northanger Abbey because I didn't trust that I could pull off Austen's omniscient narrator (I did the next best thing). In both cases, I tried to remember that THIS narrator would use particular references and vocabulary. Terry is hard-headed, pragmatic, and little wry. Alim, who is looking back on events, is more philosophical. Ven, the god of love, is "what have I signed up for?!" off-the-cuff-smoking-pot-behind-the-convenience-store guy. 

I thankfully returned to third-person in my other books. 

The one entirely valid reason to use first-person is for the reason listed below: the first-person narrator is able to supply a first-hand account.

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Re-post from 2008 with tweaks:

From Ohio Northern University

I occasionally get students who believe they should never use first-person in an essay, especially a research essay. Once upon a time, one of their teachers forbade the use of first-person, and the students took it to heart. The reasoning is that by banning first-person, the teacher will prevent students using non-credible evidence. 

Considering the number of my students who use [the equivalent of A.I.] and still fail their essays, the banning of first-person bears no relationship to the ability of students to think critically.

There's a lot of ridiculous non-first-person evidence out there which has no more credibility than a teenage driver claiming, "I never speed." A claim, introduced with an "I" or not, is still a claim, and any claim is disputable (as is all evidence).

I've seen the results of this logical fallacy in my students' writing; they confuse claims with support, thinking any statement without "I" is evidence (there's a huge difference between arguing, "Cats make great pets" and proving that cats make great pets). They also confuse claims with facts, thinking any statement without "I" is a fact: The United States is having a recession. Newsweek says so. I can use this "evidence" in my paper!

All evidence/claims are testable, both personal evidence ("I experienced") and non-personal evidence. Determining credible evidence has nothing to do with first-person and everything to do with the credibility of the speaker/researcher/study/source.

In a well-intention desire to prevent excessive grandstanding, teachers who ban first-person are confusing cause with effect. A superfluity of "I think that..." "I believe that..." "I must be right because..." may be the result of a me-centered culture (and can get annoying), but it has little to nothing to do with whether the speaker can actually be trusted or whether the speaker's evidence is meritorious. I often tell my students, "Personal evidence is the strongest evidence you have; it just isn't enough except to your parents and your friends." 

But to say that personal evidence carries no weight at all is such an obvious untruth that students are liable to follow the teacher's instructions while missing the point. 

Here's a claim: Non-credible arguments in the college environment will not go away until students are forced to be intelligent (but not cynical) about all information. And...[2025 update]...A.I. doesn't help. Or at least, it rather troublingly enforces how gullible students actually can be. The Internet says it (without "I"!) so it must be true.

Thankfully, I can report that there are students out there who get the problem. They do prefer to think for themselves, which, of course, makes them in the long-run, more objective.