First Person Making a Comeback?

All my career as a published author – decades now – I’ve heard the mantra repeated. Don’t write in the first person. Most editors won’t even read a manuscript in the first person. It’s the death-shot to the arm; only good in literary fiction. Oh, sure, a few best-selling authors get away with it, but once you’re a best-seller the rules change. Yada Yada. I’ve also heard that the holy grail for writers is to get into the “mainstream” – where the books are just classified as “fiction”.

I’m currently involved in something that requires me to read a large quantity of mainstream books – those bearing the label of “fiction” – apparently because it lends them some air of seriousness that the publishing world doesn’t ascribe to other “genres” – or possibly because none of them fit quite as smoothly into other categories. Those would be good reasons, I suppose, but they don’t seem to be accurate.  In this category I’ve seen women’s lit, a lot of it, historical fiction that borders on romance, and several thrillers.  Most of the books should be in other categories, but have mysteriously migrated to this catch-all, and suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a wondrous thing to be there.

In any case, much of this fiction has seen some rung on one or another of the bestsellers lists. Most of it came out in hardcover from major publishers. I am betting that most of the advances were considerably higher than what I’ve seen of late. I’ve noted a few things about these books, and most of the things I’ve noted run my emotions through the gamut from irritated to dismayed. Seriously.

For one thing, all of the editors seem to have forgotten their supposed prejudice against 1st Person narrative. I would guess that easily 75 percent of the books I’m reading are in first person. Most of the authors handle it well enough – that’s not the problem. The problem is that I would be willing to bet authors are STILL being told not to write in this style, while most of the success I’m seeing in mainstream fiction appears to go to those who do. Odd, at best.

I have never really paid attention to this sort of rule. I’ve learned from my earlier mistakes, you see. I have a vampire novel – “The Path of the Meteor” – that I once ruined trying to convert it from 1st to 3rd person. I still have to go back and fix it so I can (someday) try to sell it. A book, to me, presents itself in the manner in which it needs to e written, and I rarely argue. The truth of the matter is, first person narrative is harder to write well.

The further truth is, writing is hard. It’s also difficult to teach. You can teach the mechanics of it, and you can teach most people to string sentences together and make sense, but to really write? To “get” what you’re doing intuitively and know when you have shown all of the angles a particular POV would see, or delivered an image as you saw it in your mind’s eye? You can’t teach that. It’s part natural ability, part confidence, and part craft, and without any of those three things, the outcome is not going to be a masterpiece.

Let’s get back to this “fiction” category. Most of these books are written about women. In fact, probably 80 percent of these books are by women. Is that a problem? Of course not; a good writer is a good writer – that’s how I’ve always viewed it, and how I’ll view it until the day I die, but listen – the CATEGORY? That might be a problem. Either we have skewed things so that the general fiction category is mostly first person narratives by women and historical novels about women, and should just re-name it to fit what it is – or we need to start asking the same sort of questions the genre readers ask about women and Science Fiction, or Horror. Where are the men?

And here’s a real kicker. The few titles that are included that ARE by men include one artsy-novel, and several outright thrillers. They belong in the thriller category very clearly, and seem to have been tacked onto this list because someone else noticed – as I did – that the titles were skewed very sharply in one direction. I’d be pretty shocked if one of the thrillers won an award in the fiction category, even though – after reading the better portion of the books – I have to say one of them is the best choice, if quality and story are the criteria.

I am coming to understand that the literati in the sky who determine what is good, what should and should not be written and published, and what will be popular are as clueless as the rest of us. We rush to categorize everything so it can be marketed and targeted, but in doing so we take all those works near the graying of the lines and rob them of potential readers by stating they are this, or that sort of book – often without any real basis for that classification.  In trusting awards, book marketers, and trade publications to attach genre, style, and quality tags we participate in the process of distancing ourselves from great bodies of work that we might – in all actuality – love.  In listening to “rules” about how we should, and should not write – quite often handed out to us by people who have never successfully written anything themselves – we distance ourselves from our own work.

I’m not sure I’ve gone anywhere with all of this.  I am sure that I’ve uncovered some sort of low-lying, inherent problem in the system, but equally certain there’s little to be done about it on a personal level.  I will say that, as far as the POV of my novels and the books I choose to read, I’ll be making my own choices – as always.  I suggest you do the same.

-DNW