Previously I have been writing in Third Person Omnipresent but I have had a new idea for a book and I want to write it in first person.
I am currently drafting it and testing out some ideas for content and style. I want to write it in first person because I want the story to feel personal and I want a single character to embody the reader and carry them, it's very crucial that that character has an internal dialogue because of the nature of the story.
Thing is, when I read back the first drafted extract it seems too diary-like, to much tell and not enough show. Too much use of 'I' and 'then.' With all the research and googling I have done to try and make my literature flow I just don't seem to be getting there.
I was wondering if any of you have any pointers I could try out? Any tricks that are useful to use when working in first person?
Hi, SAB, I've had a look at your piece, and I think you're doing well. I've made a few pointers - everything on the page has to be available to the narrator in some form for it to be stated, for instance; and you should try to avoid saying 'I' so often.
Take your penultimate sentence here:instead of 'I was wondering, I could try', you could turn the sentence around. 'Does anyone have any ideas about how to approach that?' Turn the onus from 'I' to the other person.
'I want to write it in first person because I want the story to feel personal and I want a single character to embody the reader and carry them' - 'Writing in first person will make the story more personal, and the single character will take the reader along with him...' - not a single 'I'!
You can lose the pronoun altogether, and have the narrator comment upon something instead of doing it. That's not telling - it's hearing through his voice/thoughts, rather than seeing through his eyes.
The other thing is to avoid lists. If you say, 'I did this, then I did that', everything becomes linear; what you have done on a couple of occasions is to say, 'I was able to do this because of something I did five minutes ago that I hadn't mentioned', which doesn't work. It's a con, if you like - it's you making him do something after the fact for convenience, whereas we need to see him actually doing it five minutes before - or at the very least be in a position to do it then.
Have a look at what I've written, and I hope it helps.