POV Poll Results

Well, this was enlightening, letting you all pick only one. (Note: I didn’t vote in this one, since I don’t have a least favorite, just as I do not have a favorite.) Okay. Here’s we go:

A whopping 14, or 48% of you, came down against first person present tense POV. Y’all are the ones that like stories told as if they HAVE happened, who like a little bit of temporal distance between the narrator and the events related.

A much smaller minority (6 people, or 21%) disliked this new trend of mixing it up, having one character tell the story in first person with a few side trips into another character’s third person perspective. I admit that this technique seemed a bit fishy to me at first as well, but Cathy Yardley pulled it off in a tremendous fashion in her recent book, Couch World. I was actually considering trying it in an upcoming project since one character speaks to me very strongly in first person, but I need scenes from another character’s perspective. Maybe I should rethink that. Moving on…

I can’t think of any other explanation for our next big loser other than a couple of bitter first person present lovers coming down against that classic old standby, that “Homer used me so it must be all right” POV of multiple third person. But 4 voters (14%) said that it was their least favorite. I have to say that this is the statistic that surprises me the most.

One lone voter hated single perspective third person, which is another classic, used by such literary giants as Austen and Rowling.

And then there are the two voters apiece who disliked first person past and multiple first person pasts. Of course, together, this doesn’t even put a dent in those who dislike first person present. My first book (and its sequel) will be written in first person past tense. I have to admit, that if I were going to pick a least favorite, it would be multiple first person POV, Faulkner be damned, because it’s so rare that a writer is able to keep each voice distinct enough to make the technique worth while for me. But I have read well done versions of this (one I judged in the recent Stiletto contest, and I thought it was fab. Didn’t final though. Sucks). However, I think another danger witht his technique is that you have characters with stronger voices drowning out hte others, whereas I think with the more traditional mix of third person POVs there is a delinieated main character and then secondaries that come in here and there to give their take. With first person, it’s hard to see the character as anything but a main character.

Though, having said that, wasn’t the “first person narrator of another’s story” a classic conceit in 19th century fiction? No one thinks the story is actually about Ishmael in Moby Dick. Much of the novel’s history was shrouded beneath this veil of “let me tell you a story about a friend of mine” or a “found” diary or some other device. You needed that “minor character narrator” to give these outrageous events a veneer of truth. (Actually, this reminds me a lot of the way that nowadays, you have to make musical numbers a figment of the character’s imagination, or due to a demon enchantment, or other kind of nonsense, because the audience simply won’t buy people bursting into song and dance. Old novel readers wouldn’t buy made up stories.)

The mix of first and third, though I’ve seen it welld one, seems like a very writerly device to me. If the idea in a first person story is that someone is telling you what happened to them, what does the mix of third add? The idea that the reader is then not trusting the main narrator and is off finding out the truth for themselves by following other narrators around? The multiple first persons is as if the reader is trying to find the truth of the matter from a variety of narrators, Rashomon-style, which can make for a very interesting story, though, as previously noted, tough to do, and even toughter if you are trying to claim any one character as your protagonist. Better for ensemble pieces, I think.

I’d like to hear other people defend or argue their votes here. Do you think my take on the different styles suitable to each POV is appropriate? What do you think about each?