Just out of curiosity ...

[sholio]

Yeah, I'm using radio buttons so you have to pick one. *g* This doesn't mean that you'd never read something written in first, or rotating third -- just what you're most comfortable reading, or what might tip the balance if you had to choose between two very similar-looking books or stories. (I'm leaving off second entirely ...)

[Poll #1600796]

Feel free to elaborate on your answer in comments, if you like!

Comments

[zillah975]

In fanfic, I'll read 1st- or 2nd-person POV if the summary grabs me hard enough or if the writing is outstanding at the start, but for some reason I really do prefer 3rd-person for fanfic. I really don't know why, since in original fiction I really don't have a preference. It's odd.

[sholio]

Yeah, see, that's true of me too -- I was actually a little surprised when I was uploading some of my old fic to AO3 to discover that I used to occasionally write fanfic in 1st, because it seems really awkward to me now. And yet, in original novels, I seem to default to 1st; I have trouble getting myself to write in 3rd, even though I think I have a slight preference for reading in 3rd.

It's confusing.

I think at least part of it is that some fandoms have a very strong preference for 3rd -- SGA fandom almost never uses 1st person, but I've been in fandoms that weren't that way.

[miscellanny.livejournal.com]

For me I think there's a - it's odd, but it feels like arrogance to write in first person, like that person just has the character so very down pat.

It's a bizarre mindset, I totally admit that, but it is way more likely to chuck me out of a fanfic if the characterisation is even slightly not meshing with mine.

[sholio]

No, that makes sense! (Although I agree with Zillah, below, that OCs and 1st-person canons don't strike me the same way, which is interesting ...)

I wonder if part of the problem is that it's a lot more challenging to write different, identifiable "voices" in first person -- that is, most people who write first person tend to write a very similar first person no matter which character they're writing. This is fine for original fiction -- I'm thinking here of mystery writers, who have multiple series about hard-boiled PI's who all sound pretty similar, and readers who pick up a book of the Lance Manpole series are expecting a similar reading experience to the Dick Magnum series, or, you know, whatever. But in fanfic, we already have a pretty clear idea of what John or Rodney or Teyla sounds like, and having their narrative voices sound just like the author's inner monologue voice throws you right out of a story.

(I'm not saying it's impossible to distinguish first-person voice. I've read authors who could do it really well. But I don't think you get that in fanfic much, unless they're emulating an established first-person voice, like with Dresden Files or Sherlock Holmes fic...)

[zillah975]

I saw someone once suggest that we (generic "we") don't care for 1st-person fanfic because we know the author doesn't "own" the character the way they own an original character, so it tends to throw us out of the story. And while that doesn't make sense to me intellectually -- because it implies that in order to be "in" the story we have to be aware that the story is about a character that's "owned" by its creator, which would imply that we're outside the story, conscious of it being a fiction -- I have to say, the 1st-person POV fanfic that never gives me trouble is if it's 1st-person outsider-POV from the POV of an original character. So...apparently it does make sense on a gut level. Or something does....

[sholio]

Actually ... you've got an interesting point, because you're right. I've read 1st-person original-character POVs that I really enjoyed, and I've also never had a problem with 1st-person fanfic in fandoms where the source canon is in 1st person (like Dresden Files).

I wonder how much of it is ownership and how much of it is just being used to seeing the characters from the outside, so to speak -- so a 1st-person OC is still the same thing (watching the characters from the outside). I'm not sure why it should make a difference, and yet, it does seem to.