First-Person POV or Third-Person / Author POV?

I'm still new to writing and there's one question I've kept wondering.
Should I stick to mostly First-Person POV or go full Third-Person POV in my writing? Like in general?

Like:
(1st) "My fist connected with her cheek. The flesh caving in as it reaches her teeth."
(3rd) "Jane's fist connected with Anne's cheek. The flesh caving in as it reaches her teeth."
(1st) "In one motion, she brought her hips down, engulfing my member with her most intimate place."
(3rd) "In one motion, she brought her hips down, engulfing Mark's member with her most intimate place."

It really depends on your goals with the story and how you would like to present it. First person allows for the audience to immerse themselves in one character more. It's often used for stories very heavily focused on emotions or one perspective.

Third person is a bit more versatile. You can add more viewpoints to your story, but in turn it can often reduce the immersion aspect-that is to say, your reader may not be identifying with your character as much.

Third person has a few variants. The most popular is third-person limited. This means that you are telling the story from the perspective of one character. Normally, you will not specifically list the thoughts of others in this style, only your protagonist, unless you give a very clear shift in perspective, such as with chapter changes or breaks in the text.

Third person omniscient is used when you're giving the reader the thoughts of all the characters in a scene. You don't have to list literally everything, but it's a way to describe scenes from differing character perspectives. This isnt as popular and can be hard to follow if done poorly.

Personally, I think first person is better to start in, though it can turn out sloppier. When you build your writing skills try a few different versions of third person and use them with different themes/works.

Some stories fit better in different styles for me, so I can only tell you that there's no real answer to be had.

Just write a lot and see what you prefer. Have fun. Don't stress.

Enjoy the process

I closed my eyes to the second example.

Which is better, the first POV or the third POV? The short answer is, it depends on your narrative needs.

If your fiction is centered around a single character, then the first POV might be better at providing an immersive experience for the reader.

If your fiction is based on complex and deep worldbuilding, then the third POV might provide a more epic, grandiose scale, leaving the reader captivated and feeling as if they were living in your world.

Personally, I use both POVs to create an intimate experience based on character-driven, and also providing a grandiose experience based on world-building.

There's no one POV approach that's better; it all comes down to the narrative needs of your fiction.

xizl said:

Third person has a few variants. The most popular is third-person limited. This means that you are telling the story from the perspective of one character. Normally, you will not specifically list the thoughts of others in this style, only your protagonist, unless you give a very clear shift in perspective, such as with chapter changes or breaks in the text.

Click to expand...

I think this approach is practically the same as "first-person." It doesn't really make it any better. I do allow myself to add more of my own thoughts and sometimes take a detached view of the situation without delving into the main character's thoughts.
But there's a fine line here. When you write in the first person, whatever the author does or thinks is all automatically attributed to the character. But in the third person, both the author and the reader can get lost in the confusion between the character's thoughts and the author's remarks.
Here, we need to be able to distinguish between these two precisely. This introduces additional difficulties, but also opportunities.

I used to do third person all the time, because that's how a lot of paperbacks I read were. I tried first person a couple times and didn;t like the results. Years later,I tried first person again, and suddenly started liking the results. First person si now my go-to thing. Caveat. SInce I do a "ramp up", i learned to add what i call a chapter zero. Tpically this will be short and action oriented, in third person. If not action then in some way none the less, short and jarring. Then, I shift to first person and I can do my usual slow build up.

example. my first person character was going to have my usual slow build up and things mount slowly and build. But a short action piece from the MCs past comes as chapter "zero". Now when I drop out to the first person and go into my slow build up, the reader has been assured that my "boring" (for now) MC is... you know... he can handle himself.

I call it chapter 0, because I had to go back and add this, to 'fix" slow start first person novels. Now its my standard thing.

you see this in action movies all the time. Any james bond movie? always opens on a short high action sequence. you don;t know why its happening, it just is. its a short dramatic opening, then the action comes. Then? the long credits intro comes, and... the slow build up begins to the real movie. You see this in practically any action movie, and in most books.

its a "gear shift" to go from third person opening chapter, to the rest of the novel is first person. Now that I'm used to this, I'm eventually going to start adding the occasional "third" chapter every once in a while, to shift gears quick and go back to the story. Its used a lot to "check in" on the (un-named) bad guy, to keep you involved and not get too bored. Little gear shift and right back to the main story.

its easiest on both writer and reader, to just shift POV and hold it through a chapter.

Katanashii said:

I'm still new to writing and there's one question I've kept wondering.
Should I stick to mostly First-Person POV or go full Third-Person POV in my writing? Like in general?

Like:
(1st) "My fist connected with her cheek. The flesh caving in as it reaches her teeth."
(3rd) "Jane's fist connected with Anne's cheek. The flesh caving in as it reaches her teeth."
(1st) "In one motion, she brought her hips down, engulfing my member with her most intimate place."
(3rd) "In one motion, she brought her hips down, engulfing Mark's member with her most intimate place."

Click to expand...

I'll talk about personal taste.

Imagine this, if you meet your friends or other people, which one you prefer the most :

1. Telling your own experience, Like : "Dude, listen up, do you know what happen yesterday when i was visiting Walmart? I saw this girl ....."
2. Telling what you see about other person, Like : "Dude, do you see what happen with Tommy? Look, tommy was walking inside that new store ...."

Since i was more like the first type, I become enjoying more writing using First POV.

Well, that's my opinion, brotha, hope it helps.

TinaMigarlo said:

I call it chapter 0, because I had to go back and add this, to 'fix" slow start first person novels. Now its my standard thing.

Click to expand...

It looks like a prologue. I create short interludes with characters whose POV will not be constant, temporary.

First person is easier.

Third person is more flexible and hard to do well.

First person paints the writer into corners, particularly in long work.

Third person is typically underutilized by new writers. Beginners think in terms of action and see the benefit of third person as allowing them to narrate multiple locations at once. Action can be narrated effectively in first or third, so beginners understandably fail to see the point of third person.

When third person is fully utilized, when it's done well, it can place the reader in the characters more effectively than first person. The principle advantage, over and above being able to tell the story from multiple locations, is that third person enables the writers to get into the characters' heads. One can describe their motivations, their differing goals and priorities, their perspectives. One can describe each character's interpretation of a given scene or action, contrasting the differences. When third person is done well, the grammar and lexicon of the narrative are varied from character to character, to mirror their intellects, their experience, their education. The result, when it's done well, is a richly textured narrative with multidimensional characters that the readers can more effectively internalize.

First person narrative can't achieve the same depth. It is too constraining. First person narrators can't see into the minds of the rest of the cast. In complex stories, beginning writers find themselves struggling against the limits and fall back on amateurish devices like flipping the point of view between scenes, or worse, endowing their main characters with extraordinary powers, like telepathy. (Why is this generally bad? Because readers can't relate. People don't have ESP. How are they supposed to empathize?) In either case, the devices turn into crutches, at the expense of development, and the characters tend to remain one-dimensional.

Katanashii said:

I'm still new to writing and there's one question I've kept wondering.
Should I stick to mostly First-Person POV or go full Third-Person POV in my writing? Like in general?

Like:
(1st) "My fist connected with her cheek. The flesh caving in as it reaches her teeth."
(3rd) "Jane's fist connected with Anne's cheek. The flesh caving in as it reaches her teeth."
(1st) "In one motion, she brought her hips down, engulfing my member with her most intimate place."
(3rd) "In one motion, she brought her hips down, engulfing Mark's member with her most intimate place."

Click to expand...

Personally, my favorite writing style is third person limited with a little sprinkles of first person when necessary. For example, during an interaction between two characters, you can insert the thoughts of both of them just below describing their actions during the interaction.

An example of this from one of my current fav chinese webnovels:

"Waaahhh!!"

Yan Qiuyue was crying so hard that her whole body was shaking. Between sobs, she recounted the entire ordeal of being forced into an arranged marriage.

Su Muwan listened intently, nodding along.

So that's how it was.

Click to expand...

As you can see, it's basically third person limited from the POV of Su Muwan in this specific part, with that last sentence added as Su Muwan's inner thought. (first person? idk)

In this webnovel, it stays as third person limited + first person (tbh i don't know if these little inserts count as first person but since it's their inner thought I think it should?) that revolves around the main characters.

JordanIda said:

First person is easier.

Click to expand...

No it is not. It often flows more naturally, but it can be tricky, and it can be VERY limiting. Granted, my three surviving stories are all first person...
First person is more intimate and immediate, but it keeps you from moving away from the MC without either "head hopping" or having an "I didn't witness this myself, but others described it as:" moments.

Easier to do badly, then. It's exactly how kids tell stories. "I'm rolling down the hill, and I'm going faster and faster, and the brakes aren't working, and I'm like, oh no I'm gonna die." First person accounts are easier in the sense that it's the way we first learn to tell stories. It's how we talk about ourselves.

i'm not going to address any particular post, i'm just going to say I don't agree with labeling first person as some inferior writing thing, and leave it at that. to me, first person when I was young, I thought of it as "detective novel style". For certain kinds of stories, I think it might well be superior.
but everyone else can argue this. I'm not joining on.

JordanIda said:

First person is easier.

Third person is more flexible and hard to do well.

First person paints the writer into corners, particularly in long work.

Click to expand...

i'm probably wired up weird.
third person came naturally and easier to me.
first person, i couldn't write in for a long time, then it just "caught" and worked.
and i don't necessarily agree with the paints you into corners.

I think it depends on the story and type of story.
Lord of the rings? Maybe first person wouldn't get it.
but a hardboil noir detective or investigation novel... it might be the ideal thing.

the reader gets to self insert into the detective, and gets to freaking "live"... everything. from discovering the problem, to deciding to look into it, and all the frights and ups and downs along the way. The terror of being trapped alone suddenly with the killer, whatever. Here, first person is like investigating your damn self. "seeing" into the mind of other people, doesn't fit this.

how "immersive" is it, to suddenly be seeing into someone else's actions three states away or into their thoughts in their head.
immersive to me, is looking out through their eyes of the MC. talk about self-insert.
you wish you were a detective, and now you get to live it for a couple hundred pages.