First Person Point of View: Character-Driven Narration

If point of view is the “eye” through which a story is told, then first person points that eye inwards. That’s because first person point of view is where the writer (or fictional narrator) relates information from their own perspective. If the main pronoun in a piece of writing is ‘I,’ you’re probably dealing with something written in the first person. 

As a way of writing that seemingly never goes out of fashion, first-person POV is something that all authors should strive to master. That’s why we’ve created this guide to reveal the power of first person point of view.

What is first person point of view?

First person point of view is when a story is told from a character’s own perspective using the pronoun ‘I’ and it’s relatives: we, my, and our. Because the narrator interprets events in their own voice, this POV gives the reader direct access to the narrator’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions and is arguably the most intimate out of all of the POVs.

An example of first person POV looks something like this: 

I feared what might greet me as I entered the kitchen.

What are the advantages of first person POV?

First person POV is common in fiction as it involves the reader directly in the story and allows authors to accomplish powerful characterization. It comes with a wealth of advantages when it comes to writing prose and creating memorable stories — but it can also be tough to get right.

Let’s go through its pros and cons.

First person point of view creates an immersive experience

The biggest benefit of first person POV is in the intimacy and connection it creates with the audience. It feels like the story is being told to you by a confidant, which makes you care more about the protagonist and their struggles.

For Tracy Gold, Reedsy editor and Adjunct Professor of Composition at the University of Baltimore, writing in first person brings the reader closer to the narrator:

“With first person, the writer or reader becomes the character as they get deeper into the story, and that's the kind of immersive experience that makes me love a book.”

Character voices are at the forefront

The plot of a novel may fade from our memories over time, but we’ll always remember the characters and how they made us feel.

This is even more true of first person perspective, where the protagonist tells us their story in their own words. Every line is filtered through their motivations, vices, and worldviews — while in other POVs the only opportunity you get for this kind of filtering is through dialogue.

Unreliable narrators using first person POV can create intrigue

First person narratives often excel at establishing intrigue by posing questions about the true nature of the narrator. Are they representing an objective truth or are they pulling the wool over our overly trusting eyes?

As mentioned before, first person narrators are limited by their own personal understanding, biases, and motivations. They can easily become unreliable narrators, turning the concept of honesty and trust on its head. An unreliable narrator will make you wonder if they’re telling you the full story or leaving out details that completely alter what we’re seeing, which creates an intriguing reading experience that challenges the reader to put the puzzle together themselves.

However, there is one big con you have to be aware of if you try writing in first person…

Exposition in first person is tough to get right

When a character is directly relating a story, it becomes far too easy to fall into the trap of “telling” rather than “showing,” especially when it comes to exposition. This poses a challenge to the writer who chooses the first person POV, the classic example being how to introduce your narrator. 

Sure, the POV character could just say what color their eyes are and some key personality traits they believe they have, but that will come across as unrealistic and shoehorned into the rest of the narrative. There are a few different ways to seamlessly include exposition in your story and avoid the dreaded infodump. 

Using dialogue to drip feed the reader important information is common — as is using the narrator's voice to get across personality. Self-description can also be sprinkled throughout instead of being listed in a paragraph.

Examples of first person point of view in action

First person POV examples are everywhere. Pick up ten books at random, and we’d wager there’s a good chance that at least five of them will turn out to be books written from the first person perspective. That’s how popular it is.

Here, we’ve pinpointed some particularly illuminating examples of first person POV. 

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

I give Pirrip as my father’s name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister, – Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. 

This passage, told in Pip’s voice, immediately puts the reader into his shoes. They must process the casual tragedy of Pip’s short life through his eyes and feel the same loss he does. The readers of Dickens’s time would now more likely empathize with the main character even though they likely haven’t met a blacksmith before, let alone been a close relation to one. 

2. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Tom’s most well now, and got his bullet around his neck as a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I’m rotten glad of it, because if I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it, and ain’t a going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I’ve been there before.

A particularly illuminating example of how first person POV can establish character voice. This is a novel in which a young boy recounts his adventures on the Mississippi River, together with a runaway slave.From this excerpt, we can clearly hear the childlike spirit that is characteristic of Huck. His voice also echoes the time and place the story takes place in, giving us further insight into the kind of world he inhabits. This is ultimately what makes him such a memorable character and the driving force behind this beloved novel. 

3. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That’ll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now I know my being a carer so long isn’t necessarily because they think I’m fantastic at what I do. 

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s subtly dystopian novel, Never Let Me Go, we follow a group of students at Hailsham, a fictional English boarding school. Ishiguro uses the first person point of view to play with the concept of reliable and unreliable narration through an exploration of memory.

In this passage, Kathy reveals that she’s become privy to new knowledge that has changed her perception of the past. But she’s not telling us what that knowledge entails. By slowly letting more doubt creep into the story, Ishiguro explores the fickle nature of memory, creating a creeping sense that there’s more to Hailsham than meets the eye. Readers will start to question not only the picture that Kathy paints, but their own ability to separate truth from reality.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t? We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both right.

A classic example of first person being used to depict an outsider narrator is To Kill a Mockingbird, which takes place in the American South in the 1930s and recounts the trial of a Black man accused of raping a white woman. The story is narrated by a woman called Scout, looking back on the experiences of her 6-year-old self during the time of the trial. 

Young Scout is central to the novel: any impressions the readers have are filtered through her eyes. However, the real drama unfolds in the courtroom and the world of the adults — a world she will only understand when she herself is grown up. Here we see how much Scout respects and values the opinion of her father, Atticus, which hints at how he will serve as the story’s moral compass, even when others in the town turn against him.

5. “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he’d had wonderfully direct brown eyes, and a great gentleness and privacy. I wondered what he looked like now. He had been picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment downtown, for peddling and using heroin.

James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” provides us with a great first person example of how descriptions of other characters can also reveal a lot about the narrator. It follows the reunion between the unnamed narrator and his estranged brother, Sonny, as they try to rekindle their relationship after Sonny’s addiction lands him in prison. 

In this passage, we sense the affection our narrator feels for Sonny. The way he describes him as a younger man is full of love. However, the fact that he doesn’t know what he currently looks like reveals the conflict between them, though he never outright states that they haven’t spoken in years.

When should you use first person point of view?

There’s no one POV that’s best of all — it all depends on what each story requires. So before you commit to first person point of view, you may want to ask yourself a few key questions about the book you’re writing:

• Would your story benefit from the intimacy of being narrated from inside a character’s head? If so, then first person may be the way to go for you: it will connect readers to the narrator immediately, and give you much more room to directly write about thoughts and feelings.
• How much can your character know about the story, or the plot? First person POV, as we’ve discussed, is limited in that once you commit to it, you’re stuck inside one character’s mind and constrained to their subjective experience. The result is that you would have to work with — or work around — a limited POV.
• What genre are you writing in? Some genres, such as the memoir, require the narrator to be writing in first person. The immediacy of first person is also popular in certain other genres as well, such as Young Adult and Romance.

Of course, your choice of POV will also depend on your own style of voice, and what you prefer writing. For a look at second person POV, we recommend reading our guide on it here. And if you’re curious about first person POV’s longstanding competitor in popularity, you can check out our posts on third person POV and its offspring: third person limited and third person omniscient.

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There you have it — the power of first person point of view. If you’re looking for something completely different, check out our next post about the controversial (but always intriguing) second person viewpoint!