Persons Are People

After hearing my three-year-old refer to a group of kids he'd met at the park as "persons" (pron. "pawsons"), my mother reminded me that when I was roughly the same age, angered that she wouldn't give in to some random demand of mine--an army toy or a twelfth chocolate chip cookie--I declared with Hollywood-level drama, "I'm a person. And persons have feelings too."

Which got me thinking about persons and my novel. The story is told in alternating chapters from the points of view of a father and son on two different continents in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I had been writing both narratives in close third person, as I often prefer to do with my fiction, but still hadn't found the exact voice I wanted for the son's chapters. The story is intended to be his story, and I needed to nail the voice.

On a whim, late one night last week, I went back and rewrote one of his chapters in first person, and eureka!, I hit on it. You know what I mean--when you knock right into a voice you've been searching for and you feel it resonate almost bodily?

So, I'm planning to keep writing the son's chapters in first person, at least for a while, as I think I'm onto something and it's suddenly feeling like less of a struggle with him. Certainly possible that when I get to the end of the book, I'll choose to switch his chapters back to third person, but by then, well, I'll have the book, and it will hopefully just be a matter of tinkering.

You writers out there--do you prefer to write from a certain point of view in your own fiction?

SWKTR8UPRAMP

Comments

[Bhaswati]

Sounds like an intuitive bend to come to, Seth, and glad it makes the writing process smoother for you. From what little you have divulged, I already want to read your novel! The premise sounds so interesting.

[Seth Fleisher]

Thanks, Bhaswati. Many words still to write, but feels like I'm onto something.