I've discovered something interesting and slightly disturbing about writing in first-person. I've got three novels on the go at the moment, two of which are first-person narratives. It came home to me the day before last like a thunderclap over my head.
When you're writing in third-person, your necessarily disconnected from everything you're doing. You have a distance, an omniscient presence that doesn't have to be so involved in things. You can be as coy or gleefully detailed about character fates as you please without much of a pang. True, you do get emotionally invested in them, but there's always that distance because you're speaking about them from an outside perspective. Almost as if you're a god.
But with first-person, there's an investment. You're necessarily looking at the world through one character's eyes. In the concept stages you may be drafting the story from an overhead view, but for other things you're confined to a single viewpoint. Whether it's a life-or-death struggle, a romantic or sexual encounter, or just describing the outside world, there is a connection. It's far deeper than anything else, because you have that need to think as they think.
At least I know it now. I can think through this. I can stop myself feeling too much of what the characters feel. And I should be able to finish these and write more in this style without too much bother.
