Point of View in Novels

Posted by Backyard Urban Gardening on Friday, November 10, 2006

I read an interesting blog post today at Tennessee Text Wrestling titled "Point of View: Decisions, Decisions" written by Thomma Lyn a self described cat wrangler, biker chick, novelist from Eastern Tennessee.

I'm sure most of us have struggled with this decision making process from time to time. When I write, I seem to gravitate to "Third Person (limited) Past Tense". I guess that I naturally write from this point of view because as a History Major with a concentration in English in college, I did a lot of research-based writing. I've been seeing "First Person, Present Tense" used a lot lately and I'm noticing more and more memoirs popping up in bookstores. I've always heard that first person is taboo for serious writers (unless of course they happen to be someone famous composing a memoir).

I found it interesting that Thomma explains that she wrote her first novel in present tense first person and later revised it to third person limited past tense.

Do you think the growing popularity of blogs and blogging is removing some of the stigma of writing a novel in "First Person, Present Tense"?

1 comments:

Kristen King, Inkthinker said...

I think the confessional nature of blogging is going to make first person more accepted, but I don't know if it's going to make it more published. Fortunately, there are a lot of great writers who blog. Unfortunately, there are a lot more God-awful writers who blog. I think it's too soon to tell, but I always enjoy talking about POV: http://tinyurl.com/hl9a2

-kk

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