When writing, do you find it easier to write in 1st person or 3rd person?
I have started my novel in 3rd person but am starting to think that it would work better as 1st person. Have any of you changed your POV after you've started writing? Which one do you prefer to use? And, is one easier than the other?
Personally I find it easier to write description if I'm using a third person POV, because then any metaphors that I use won't sound as 'soppy' as though they're being said by the main character. And I agree with what's been said previously - I like to follow more than one person throughout my novel, and I find it far smoother to do this when I don't have to switch between person X and person Y's view.
I went to a really interesting talk yesterday given by two women writers. One of them said that she liked to use third person because it made the characters more 'truthful' - ie, we all perceive things differently and have various opinions about others and ourselves. If the main character's views 'taint' the novel it can make the reader more hesitant to believe what they're reading, whereas an omniscient viewpoint can tell us, if necessary, whether the narrator is mislead or biased in some way. But then again, this is exactly what some authors strive to do - and sometimes the reader likes to work out for themselves whether they can trust what the main character is saying.
Another interesting technique - which was used far more in early literature - involves the author putting themselves into the story. Henry Fielding, in both 'Tom Jones' and 'Joseph Andrews' has made himself into a sort of character and often takes up whole chapters to debate philosophy and theology and so on ... and so on .... Personally, I found this rather annoying, but the other writer who was giving this talk said that she had recently been experimenting with a similar technique, making the narrator both first person and omniscient.
Anyway, sorry for the long post - I thought it was an interesting question! Good luck with whichever you choose.
Different material benefits from different approaches.
I don't think that it is even essential to stick with one position throughout an individual work - but it is essential to clearly demarcate when one is shifting from one to another.
I really do think that this is very much a matter of how the material presents itself to the writer's mind rather than a decision to be made and stuck to rigidly. This might be because my own efforts tend to be "organic" rather than planned.
While I am certain that many excellent books I have read have been meticulously developed I do hope that others just flowed from the pen.
I can tell you that it is much easier to switch from one perspective to another - and possibly back - when it is appropriate as a story progresses than to start in one mode and then go back and change it all to another. (I have just had to shift the season of several thousand words and that was bad enough!)
Something else that I have done...
I became stuck in work that looked through one set of eyes and used the 3rd person. I really had buried myself. The solution - after some time - was to write a number of pieces in the 1st person telling the stories (recent history) of several of the other characters. These effectively short stories can stand alone if I choose. The important thing for the main story was that they told me a whole lot of things about the people that my primary character is working with - from there all sorts of things have developed in the original mode. There is a possibility that I could insert the 1st person pieces into the 3rd person piece - which I suppose would be a sort of "flashback".
The easier part of writing is when whatever one is writing is pouring happily onto paper or the keyboard... The slow part is tidying it up and making it presentable. This takes no heed of perspective...
The thing to do is to write it - adjust things later.
David.
I write third person which sort-of naturally lends itself to historical fiction, though I've read a great 1st person HF (Mutiny on the Bounty by John Boyne).
As far as POV is concerned, I like single-person rather than 'omniscient narrator'. As a reader I think it's easier to visualise situations through one character at a time rather than continually jumping about, though it is limiting, as far as constructing a narrative is concerned, when writing,
I tend to agree with Andrew and Terri re personal choice: if you're comfortable then stick with it - your writing is likely to be all the better :)