"You've really made a lot of work for yourself," one test reader said when she began reading my book. She was referring to my use of a first-person narrative, and she wasn't kidding! Believing in taking on challenges I chose a particularly tricky one at that. A major influence in me writing directly from the character's point of view is because he's a detective, and though he's not particularly hardboiled, first person narration works best. But first-person narration has always appealed to me more easily than the usual third person works. Having spent much of last week compiling a 'recommended reading list' I realized that are several of my stand-out favourites that are first-person narratives. Digging deeper I into my reading past I managed to track down three books that I suspect influenced my current narrative subconsciously.
Firstly, we come to a book I haven't read in years, and absolutely have no real desire to re-read. Its name is The Computer that Ate my Brother by Dean Marney, an author whose books all seem to be about inanimate things 'eating' people. It was not really my favourite when I read it at the age of 12 or 13, but it has a haunting last few pages that I appreciated back then. To a degree I still do. But I have no nostalgia filter and I will probably dislike it more should I read it as an adult. This book, more than anything, made me realize that something always bothered me about first-person narratives. The main character narrates the novel competently, but something kept bothering me. I asked myself, 'when exactly is he writing this? As an adult, a young man in his late teens, an old man?' I could not say, nor discern it from the text. I began to realize that it kept bothering me as it felt like the author left out something important, and that most first-person narratives seem to have this problem for me. I should note that this did not make me abandon third person narratives or first-person narratives that did not have that extra bit of context. The works of Raymond Chandler has none of this but are still favourites of mine as I came to them as an adult. Yet if I read books that contain this rather post-modern element I appreciated it.
Secondly, there is The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe, part of the series called The Book of the New Sun. Ostensibly a tome from a distant future translated by Wolfe, it contains the (highly unreliable) narrative of a man writing a memoir at a specific period towards the end of his life. At the end of the first chapter he gives away the ultimate ending of the four-book series (though he does not give away how this ending is achieved). What appealed to me was that the author was certain that the reader will continue despite knowing the ending of the destination.
Lastly, there is The Assassin's Apprentice, by Robin Hobb. Also written in first person the 'author' of this memoir does not give away the ultimate ending, but implies a situation beyond the climax of the trilogy (The Farseer Trilogy) where he is comfortable enough to write it down. Excellent quality aside, if this book proved anything, its this: when someone say you shouldn't write a thriller or mystery or adventure in first person because being first-person means there is no tension and the ending is a foregone conclusion, then you should not believe them. Quite frankly, they don't know what they're talking about. During the final 50 pages or so the main character is lying on the verge of death but having a duty to do, and I did not once think "he's going to make it because I'm reading something he wrote down". It was a page-turning ending in the best meaning of the phrase. The magic of good writing is that it drop-kicks disbelief over the fence, regardless of narrative.
My book does not give away the ending, nor do I play around with unreliable narrators or behind-the-scenes time-jumping like Wolfe does, but simply nailing down the narrative from one single point of view is proving difficult but ultimately rewarding for me as an author. The negative side is that it is a lot of work, but I'm willing to go with that. If I was asked to rewrite it in a third person narrative I believe I would lose all interest in the book. At the start it would have been possible, but by now it is the only way it can be told for me.
PS: On the other hand, I found that first person narration hardly ever work in movies. There are exceptions, but on the whole I tend to find them tedious if used badly, or extensively.
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