First Pov

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First Pov

February 5, 2022 February 1, 2022 by Barrie Davenport
What does it mean to write from the first-person point of view?
And what are the top benefits and pitfalls of a first-person narrative ? 
Think of the stories you’ve enjoyed reading.
How many of them used first-person perspective instead of third person (limited or omniscient)? 
If you’re debating whether to use first or third person (or even second) with your work in progress, we hope this post will help you decide. 
Let’s start with the obvious question: what is first-person ? 
Point of view, in writing, has to do with the perspective from which you tell your story. First-person perspective is the default with nonfiction works like memoirs and other autobiographical pieces. 
You’ll know first-person point of view by the use of first-person pronouns, “I” and “we.” And when we talk about first-person in a story, we mean one of the two different types: 
Here are some examples of sentences written in both central and peripheral POV. 
If you’ve read any of the first-person point of view examples listed below, you know better than anyone how the use of first-person perspective drew you in and made the story more important to you. 
As a writer and storyteller, think about how your own experiences have formed your perspective and voice. 
Now that we’re clear on what first-person is, let’s explore the benefits of using it. Whether central or peripheral, your first-person narrator brings certain advantages over a third-person storyteller: 
That last point is worth making. Authors who feel immersed in the story find it easier to draw their readers more deeply into it, too. And even with nonfiction, the first-person narrator’s personal experience lends credibility to the content they’re sharing. 
Having a story to share and a preference for first-person perspective doesn’t guarantee you’ll find it easy to write or even get started. 
The following steps can help with that. 
The best place to start as a writer is to read the kinds of books you want to write. 
If you want to earn a living as a writer of sci-fi romances, for example, find and read stacks of highly-rated sci-fi romances, as well as sci-fi and romance novels of various types. 
If you’re not sure which ones use first person, download a sample and read it before buying the book.
Create a reading list and tackle it one title at a time. 
Will this story occur in the present, or is your first-person narrative telling a story from their past, relating it from memory (as if it were only yesterday)? 
The past tense works for both the central and peripheral types of first-person POV since either one could be telling the story from memory, as long as they survive. 
Present tense can make your story feel more urgent, though, because the narrator is living the moments as they share them. 
They don’t know how the story ends because, to them, it’s still unfolding. 
Interview your first-person character and build a profile based on their answers and what you picture when you think of them. Make them real enough to speak and to have opinions of their own. Put them to the test and see how they handle it. 
Give your first-person character a backstory, even if they’re not the protagonist. And decide how much of it you’ll share throughout the story. How much does the reader need to know to feel connected to (or at least interested in) the narrator’s perspective? 
One of the pitfalls of first-person POV is all-knowing characters whose omniscience robs the reader of the chance to figure things out along with the narrator. 
As with the present tense, an unreliable narrator raises the stakes and makes a satisfying outcome less of a given. There’s a chance it will all go wrong, so the reader has to keep reading to find out whether or not it will.  
Make it clear as soon as possible whose point of view you’re using and what role they play in the story. This is one thing your reader shouldn’t have to guess. 
Think of openings like “Call me Ishmael” from Moby Dick — or the first line from David Copperfield : “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show…. ” 
Both authors make it clear from the beginning who’s speaking. 
You’re already telling the entire story from the first-person narrator’s perspective. Everything that isn’t another character’s dialogue comes from this character’s head. 
In most cases, italics are more distracting than helpful: “Icicles as long as my arm hang from the gutters over the garage. When will this winter end?”
Italics can be helpful, though, when the narrator remembers someone else’s words, which come to mind at a moment when their full meaning hits home.
The italics set the spoken words apart from present-moment thoughts and dialogue.
Those opinions can be stronger than those of other characters, or they can be more flexible. 
As with real people, a character with strong opinions—and zero qualms about sharing them—but who can still laugh at themselves is more endearing than one with more flexible views who can’t bear to be criticized. 
That said, your narrator doesn’t have to be the most likable character in your story. 
Just because your narrator is the one telling the story doesn’t mean you have to make it extra obvious whose senses are involved in the description of the story’s setting and other characters. 
Reading a series of sentences starting with “I” gets old in a hurry. Mix it up by interspersing these I-sentences with less I-centric ones, as in the following example: 
“I felt the presence of someone behind me before I heard the sound of their boots on the snow-covered sidewalk. The snow fell in flakes the size of dandelion heads, and when one landed between my jacket and the back of my neck, I felt a hand sweep it away before it melted and dripped down my back. He stopped beside me and gently pulled up my hood…. “
The more familiar you are with your narrator’s unique voice, the easier it is to stay true to it throughout the story.
If the main story doesn’t do enough to help you develop the narrator’s voice, spend some time voice journaling as the narrator about anything that matters to them. 
Be your narrator’s ghostwriter, and write the way they would speak. 
At the very least, each chapter should have only one character with a first-person point of view. The only way to be inside everyone’s head all at once is with third-person omniscient, which doesn’t use first-person pronouns (except in dialogue). 
Too many first-person speakers confuse the reader. They should know who is speaking as “I.” Readers tend not to finish books that confuse them. 
One voice at a time is enough for anyone to process. 
Now that you have a better handle on first-person point of view, which stories come to mind as great examples? And how will you use first-person perspective in a story of your own? 
There might be affiliate links on some of the pages of this site, which means we could earn a small commission of anything you buy. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Please do your own research before making any online purchase.


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The first person point of view is one of the most common POVs in fiction. A first-person narrator is a character who tells the story from their own perspective using the pronoun “I.” In this type of narration, the reader has direct access to the narrator’s thoughts and feelings, interpreting events through their voice. 
A passage written in the first person point of view might look something like this:
I feared what might greet me as I entered the kitchen. Something was about to happen. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what made me so sure, but it was a certainty unlike anything I had ever experienced before. 
As a way of writing that seemingly never goes out of fashion, first-person POV is something that all authors should strive to master. That’s why we’ve enlisted the help of our Reedsy editors to put together this guide to the first person point of view. 
First person narration brings readers directly into the story, experiencing its events as the POV character. It can lend authority and credibility to a tale, and has plenty of other useful storytelling functions. While it may not perfectly suit every story — hence why we also have second person and third person alternative — it’s definitely a popular POV, and one that’s important for authors to master. Here’s a little more on why first person is worth learning to write well.
One of the main benefits of first person POV is what is sometimes referred to as the ‘close psychic distance’ between the reader and the character. That is, many authors and readers prefer first-person-POV writing because it creates intimacy. Tracy Gold , Reedsy editor and Adjunct Professor of Composition at the University of Baltimore, corroborates this:
Writing first person makes it easier to get deep inside a character's thoughts and feelings. With first person, the writer or reader becomes the character as they get deeper into the story, and that's the kind of immersive experience that makes me love a book.
That’s not to say that second person POV or third person POV can’t create intimacy, but first person tends to be the most intimate, as you’re getting direct access to the character’s internal thoughts and feelings. There’s often a sense of honesty and trust that first person narration can communicate, pulling the reader into the story by evoking empathy.
In nonfiction, a first-person voice can also lend credibility to the writing: “I know this to be true, because I actually saw or did these things.” Readers get to relive the experience through a primary source, safe in the knowledge that this person knows what they’re talking about.
Of course, neither fiction nor nonfiction is immune to the phenomenon of unreliable narrators (more on this below), as real people are just as likely to suffer from biases as fictional ones. 
Dickens’ classic , about a young boy born into poverty hoping to improve his station in life in order, showcases the immersive effect and intimacy that a first person POV can offer Told in Pip’s voice, this early passage deftly captures his internal conflict over his identity, which drives much of the novel’s plot. Because we can follow his thought process from start to finish, we understand why he makes the decisions he does, however imperfect they may be.
First person narratives also excel in establishing intrigue and questions about the true nature of the narrator — are they representing an objective truth or are they pulling the wool over our overly trusting eyes? 
As most first person POVs are inherently limited by the biases and personal motivations of the narrator, authors can easily create intrigue through unreliable narrators who turn the concept of honesty and trust on its head. An unreliable narrator makes the reader second-guess whether the narrator is telling the entire story — which is extra-exciting if you only find out they’re unreliable partway through the tale.
While this lack of credibility can be fatal in non-fiction, it can be a real delight in fiction. Aja Pollock — an editor who has worked on books by writers like Neil Gaiman, George W. Bush, and more — summarizes it well:
When the narrator has questionable credibility, it keeps the reader guessing about the gap between reality and the observations of the POV character. Unreliable narrators can be tricky to pull off for inexperienced writers (or even experienced ones) — but they add an extra layer of mystery and tension that keeps those pages turning.
In this subtly dystopian novel about a group of students at Hailsham, a fictional English boarding school, Ishiguro uses the first person point of view to play with the concept of reliable and unreliable narration through an exploration of memory. In this passage, Kathy reveals that she’s become privy to new knowledge that has changed her perception of the past. But she’s not telling us what that knowledge entails. By slowly letting more doubt creep into the story, Ishiguro explores the fickle nature of memory, creating a creeping sense that there’s more to Hailsham than meets the eye. Readers will start to question not only the picture that Kathy paints, but their own ability to separate truth from reality, making for an exceptionally intriguing reading experience.
What may seem like a limitation of first person POV — that you only get one person’s perspective on a story at a time — can actually be an opportunity to get creative. Maybe you decide to tell the story from the POV of a bystander (which would address the issue of neutrality), a pet, multiple characters with conflicting memories, or even an all-knowing god-like figure.
First person omniscient is when a first-person narrator is privy to the thoughts, actions, and motivations of other characters. It’s what one might describe as an exception to the rule of first person narration — and it's a rare one at that, in part because it's tricky to pull off and in part because it doesn’t feel very realistic.
However, there are certain cases where first person omniscient narration is relevant and interesting. One such example is Markus Zusak's The Book Thief , in which the first person omniscient narrator is (spoiler alert) Death itself. Another well-known example is Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events — the narration is first-person and has a very distinctive voice, yet the narrator always seems to know what’s going on with all the characters.
Another characteristic of successful first person narratives is that the entire tone and style is dictated by who the narrator is: their worldviews, motivations, and vices. Not only does every plot point reveal something new about them, but the prose itself is deeply informed by their unique character.
A particularly illuminating example of how the first person POV can help establish tone and style is Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn — a novel in which a young boy recounts his adventures on the Mississippi River, together with a runaway slave. Told from Huck’s POV and in his own language, this passage manages to capture not only the narrator’s childlike spirit, but a sense of time and place which sets the account apart from others. These evocations remain strong throughout the novel, and indeed have become a hallmark of Huckleberry Finn in the many years since it’s been published.
Though many first person POV stories are focused on the inner lives of their narrators, sometimes the first person narrator isn’t actually the key character that the story revolves around. Instead, they’re simply the lens through which we view everything. 
In a story told in third person, they might have been a side character, but here they get to tell us their version of events. And if they’re not personally involved in the conflict, they may actually be free of some of the biases that first person narrators usually get saddled with. So while the reader gets an inside perspective of the narrator’s mind, they also get an outside view of key events and characters. Some would call that the best of both worlds. 
To Kill a Mockingbird — an account of the trial of a Black man accused of raping a white woman in the 1930s American South — is narrated by a woman called Scout, looking back on the experiences of her 6-year-old self. While young Scout is certainly central to the novel in many ways and filters the impressions the readers receive, the real drama unfolds in the courtroom and the world of the adults — a world she will only understand when she herself is grown up. Here we see how much Scout respects and values the opinion of her father Atticus — a hint at how he will serve as the story’s strong moral compass, even when others in the town turn against him.

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Writing in first person may be one of the first things we learn as children, but like any narrative technique, it comes with its own set of challenges. And though challenges can often provide opportunities for creativity, it’s still crucial to know how to handle the pitfalls and clichés outlined below. 
One of the first problems that authors will encounter when they decide to write in first person is the issue of scope — how much can the narrator actually know about what is going on? Aja Pollock explains:
If first-person narration discusses the interior life of another character, it has to be couched as the POV character's speculation or perception — not as absolute knowledge of what the other character is thinking or feeling.
You might see this as a roadblock if, in a particular scene, you want to show what a secondary character is thinking. However, as Pollock notes, your narrator can always indicate what other characters are feeling with a small observation. You might want to write:
I told Karen what I’d heard. She was nervous at the news.
Of course, your first-person narrator can’t know what Karen is feeling (unless they are literally a psychic), but to convey the same idea, you might write:
As I told her the news, Karen looked away nervously.
Narrated from a child’s POV, Room uses the first person to create a sense of mystery and intrigue for the reader. The incredibly limited scope and understanding that Jack, the 5-year-old narrator, exhibits forces the reader to search for clues to piece the puzzle together themselves. It also adds a mitigating layer of innocence to an otherwise bleak narrative, and serves as a strong contrast to the depiction of evil.
First person point of view doesn’t mean that you have to stick to the same person’s first-hand account throughout your novel. Many
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