Hi, I am trying to write three series, each with a different perspective. 3rd person is easy for me, but 1st and 2nd are difficult, while enlightening. 1st is kind of interesting because I think it forces me to better understand the person in the story. However, it is still hard. I used to hate it because it sounded arrogant and 2nd person even more so for its presumptious quality.

Anway, surprise; my first try for 1st person is an arrogant individual and I am terrified that I am going to fall into these "traps" described in the quote below. I really do not want to mess up so horribly that I'll toss the plan altogether. I am thinking of writing it in third person (non-omniscient) and transferring it over into first or writing a diary of sorts as if it was from his perspective on my life (just to get the hang of first person narrative). Any advice for what to focus on or avoid with first person, or how to bring out his character without disregarding others in the story (as he would not be focused on them much)?

For the most part, I recommend writing in third person when you're starting out. Why? Because I've noticed that the "I" form to a new writer is like the temptation of the suicide ending--it's not usually done well when you're first starting to write. In first person, it's easy to be stilted and boring in your delivery. It's easy to use too many "I did X" sentence structures. It's easy to forget how to include description and emotion; easy to spend far too much time thinking, and not enough time in the here-and-now of the story.

First person can also force you to contrive trite or unbelievable situations so that the character overhears, sees, or somehow finds out about things which you (the author) want the reader to know. This is where the overused ploys come in. For example, picking up the phone when someone else is on the line, while that other person never notices the other open receiver. Or walking by the open office door during a sensitive conversation. Overhearing the murderer conveniently incriminate himself. Correctly guessing the bad guy's password in three tries, in order to access the encrypted data that was, of course, conveniently left in a directory titled something like "Villainy", etc, and which can be copied directly to disk without having to reset any permissions. You can see where this is going. First person stories can be executed very poorly when it comes to unfolding motivations and plots.

You might ask why first person so pervasively requires such contrived settings and situations. Simple. Because the main character in the "I" form cannot be inside the heads of the other characters. It's obvious, but first person doesn't allow hero to see or hear anything the bad guy is doing if he's not right there to see and hear the bad guy himself. That limits the way the villain and other characters' motivations are unfolded.

In contrast, in third person, the narrator is in the minds of all characters. This allows the narrator to use a simple description or hint of expression, or even a side scene to give the reader the information that the main character can't know, but which the reader must know in order to follow the story.

Third person is often perceived as 'harder' by new writers, since they now have to deal with all characters, not just the main character. However, if that's your reason for wanting to stick with first person, that in itself indicates that you're not using the first-person form correctly.

First person doesn't mean you can ignore the other characters. It means you somehow have to develop them all, with depth and realism, through the eyes of a single viewpoint. Yes, that's often harder. If you can't do realistic, believable character development in first person, then work with third person until you improve your skills. Experiment with the first and second person in short pieces, exercises, or in an experimental novella. Once your characterization skills improve, you should be able to tell a story from any narrative view (first, second, or third) and still have a solid tale.

I can't really offer much in the way of advice for first person, since I've never worked in it before as far as I recall, at least not for conventional fiction or anything I had time to think about how to approach it for - A couple of exam pieces that felt like they require it, nothing else. The closest I've done in first person is a short piece of pokemon fanfiction that was, in essence, an extended monologue from a secondary character surrounded by a... Second person framework for that monologue to exist in. Huh. I don't think any of the other pieces I did in that era of my writing were either first or second person, though it was ten years ago now so I'm not necessarily remembering correctly.

I can, however, point to The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss, which for me is an excellent piece of first person writing - The characterisation of the protagonist is mainly via the style he's chosen to tell us what happened to him in, which is full of personality; i.e. the book never lets you forget that the Narration is in the voice of the protagonist. Throughout this, Gatiss sufficiently doesn't neglect that it's easy for one's favourite character in the book to wind up being someone other than the protagonist. To be fair, arguably him writing a comedy-spy novel in first person arguably cheats away some of the traditional difficulties of first person, I for one can forgive any amount of contrivances in comedy works provided they are funny, and I'm not convinced the way he wrote the narration would work in anything but a comedy. It may be useful to you to read as many works in first person as you can find in order to help get a feel for what works and what doesn't work for you in that narrative view.

Second person is... Odd to work in, since in most cases it prevents you from actually giving the protagonist much in the way of identity - Basically you're writing for the AFGNCAAP of Zork fame by default, which greatly limits the amount of characterisation you can provide for the protagonist, and to a certain extent non-reader characters. I mean, you could write for an actual character and ask the audience to sort of role-play it; I think the way videogames have become mainstream would help that be more palitable to a larger amount of people, but, that would require describing the protagonist to herself if done in prose.

It seems to work well for highly descriptive text due to being more direct in its evocations, and whenever I use it I find myself automatically being more evocative in descriptiveness, it's easier to naturally work in three senses per page when you're describing what the 'reader' is currently experiencing than I find it with third person, but that benefit doesn't nearly compensate for the reduction of characterisation. And I do find myself using it on occasion, though rarely - Most stories work better in first or third person. The first time I used it being a school assignment to write a description of an environment, real or imaginary, in second person. And I've recently started writing a 'fighting fantasy' format manuscript, which uses second person by default and I see no reason to break from the traditions of that franchise (Second person, present tense, 400 passages) in my amateur work. Actually I don't think I've ever written, or read, something in second person that's anything but present tense, I don't know if it generally works better in present tense or if that's simply coincidence.

...So far with that project I've done for that I've found death scenes are particularly interesting to write in second person, present tense.