In general, I don’t like novels written in first person. I think they make stories small and lead to heroines who are either boringly self-absorbed or irritatingly perfect.
I also think first person is a trap for authors. It seems easy to write – but it’s only easy to write badly.
The story I’m working on now is challenging my prejudice against first person. It’s crying out for the intimacy of I did this, I felt this, I needed this.
This is a ghost story and a love story, but the further into it I get, the more I realize it’s fundamentally the heroine’s story. Not the ghost’s. Not the lover’s.
She doesn’t really want to tell it herself. She’s not gregarious that way. But I’m the author, and I’m mean, and I think I’m going to make her do it anyway.
When is it coming out?
I’m still hoping for the end of October – but everything is subject to the demands of the day job 🙁
Someday, I hope writing will be my day job!
One day writing will be your day job! I love it when you give us little tidbits into the worlds that you write about. It makes it feel so much more intimate! I can’t wait to see what this heroines story is all about!
Julie – your lips to god’s ears!
Speaking from a reader’s perspective, a well-done first-person POV (and from what I know of your writing I think you could do it) is a great way to really get into a character’s head. The hard part is not “cheating” and giving us more information than that character would know. I just read a book that will probably frustrate the crap out of 3/4 of the people who read it because it is a really well-done first-person POV and the reader just never learns about things they want to learn about, because the character doesn’t learn it. But I thought it was brilliant. *shrug*