As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve started out writing this second novel using three different first person voices. When I wrote my first novel, it started out being in first person but then I rewrote it in third person (limited). All I keep thinking is this – why couldn’t language just have one possibility for voice, so I wouldn’t have to um and ah about which voice I choose to write in?

I thought I should try and break this down a bit for myself, to see if that can help make it clear how I can use the different voices best, for my situation, stories and style. So let’s start with the downsides:

Problems with first person: One of the reasons I didn’t like my first novel being written in first person was it sounded too much like the narrator was really me. Perhaps I just need more experience to find a good stylistic voice, but that’s the main reason I rewrote in third person. Of course, the other obvious limitation is that you can really only talk about the experiences and point of view of one character at a time, but my third person rewrite had this fairly limited perspective anyway.

Problems with third person: When I rewrote my first novel I got so tangled up with trying to avoid using the characters’ names ten times in one sentence. Using too many he and she pronouns isn’t much better. That problem seems to vanish with first person. Plus I sometimes feel like the third person is too detached, or it feels artificial to hear about a character’s thoughts or emotions.

What does this mean for me? Heck, I’m just a beginner, I don’t know. But I will keep trying to write this Bratislava novel in first person. Because there are three different characters, each of whom gets their own turn at telling parts of the story, that overcomes the limitation of only knowing one point of view. And so far, I think I’ve been able to give each character their own voice. Whether or not I can keep those voices up (and sufficiently different) for an entire novel remains to be seen.