1st person narrative problems

[Osceana]

I've been trying to master this for a while, but i'm having a lot of problems. I find it hard to make things as descriptive as in third person or second person. I think that this may extend also from the fact that i'm trying to do it all in present tense. I guess that i might just have to go back and reread "the Catcher In The Rye" again, but has anyone had any luck or experience with this? I'm trying to write an entire book using this tense, but it's hard to even get started.

[Jackal]

The odd morning light makes my coffee mug glow. In the reflection I see my sweet chihuahua sleeping, her likeness vanishes as I take a sip.

[Nak Nak]

You must try writing second person in the present tense.

[Trickster]

You must try writing second person in the present tense.

example?

[In Dust and Ashes]

there was a guy in my poetry class that wrote an awesome 2nd person poem. kind'a sappy, but the fact that he was able to make it a ....umm...forget what it's called.....one of those poems where the ending words of each line repeats twice or something. man it's been too long.

anyway, it was a cool poem in the second person that took a very difficult and strict form. he has a lot of tallent to do that.

sufice to say he intimidated me a lot and I'm still scared of him when I see him on campus.

I'm still working on a poem that I think is gonna be in the second person. I originally wrote it in the third person, but second person is more intimate, methinks.

I've never done first person in the present tense and I can't think of a narrative poem that I've ever done well, so I can definately see how that would be difficult, rose, but don't give up. poetry is a hard art form to do well and it's not as appreciated as it should be.

[In Dust and Ashes]

example?

I googled 2nd person present tense and got this:

http://www.newspoetry.org/1999/991209.html

[In Dust and Ashes]

care to expand on that?

[Jackal]

2nd person/present tense

I think some lines in "A-100" are.

"you are love
you are soul"

--ha ha--
The example I saw used "you are love" "if you love" and "you love" .

also these:
thou
thine
you
your.

My sentence:

You are quiet, and you decorate like a blind fruit-fly.

[In Dust and Ashes]

in the 1st person?

beg your pardon?

[Osceana]

There's omniscient, first person, second person, and third person. Then there are the tenses. Writing first person past tense is easy, and it's my stock and trade. Second person, present tense is....hideous. "She turns to you and tells you to leave, but you say 'No'..... You fight with her for an hour and then embrace, yelling in wild pangs of ecstacy." Second person past tense is interesting though. It's used in "Achilles Last Stand" by Led Zeppelin. Third person is just stupid.

But yeah, Jackal, i can write first person present tense, it just seems awkward. The idea of using it over the span of a hundreds of pages seems weird. I want to use it though because i like the idea of writing a story that unfolds in "real time" as the reader experiences it.

The bus is blurring in with the other traffic by the time i get outside. I'm not going to be late this time.

There's a man mounting his motorcycle. I run over over to him and push him off. This is going to be interesting because i've never ridden a motorcycle before. But i have no choice.

....That's just awful! I just pulled that out of my ass, so i could maybe do a little better but i don't think it would be very good.

I don't know.... Ugh. Aside from "the Catcher In the Rye" are there any other books written this way? I haven't had any success. I just keep going back to my standard.

[Atomsk Iscariot]

Third person is just stupid.
Wrong. 90% of my favorite books are written in third person, and beautifully so. In fact, my advice was going to be to try some third person past tense, because I had a long and difficult battle with my first person writing coming off as... too self-involved? Yeah. So I tried writing in third person for a while and it did me okay.

[Atomsk Iscariot]

Also, first person present tense generally makes for an awful read. Just giving you a heads up. The Catcher in the Rye is also not written in that style.

[Osceana]

Wrong. 90% of my favorite books are written in third person, and beautifully so.

Maybe i shouldn't have brought this up, haha. I'm having a bit of trouble now keeping them straight. Omniscient is third person, you're right, which is the narrative that many books use ("the Fountainhead"). I was thinking about people that refer to themselves in third person, sorry (i've been watching too much "Seinfeld").

[Osceana]

Also, first person present tense generally makes for an awful read. Just giving you a heads up. The Catcher in the Rye is also not written in that style.

I guess i should read it again. The only part i remember is when he's walking downtown (?) and he sees that "FUCK YOU" written on the wall and he's waiting for his sister. Isn't that part written in present tense? I do remember now that there are flashbacks employed.

[TheImplodingVoice]

I wrote a little story in first person for an assingment in a creative writing class and I think it wasn't that bad, but it was very, very short and no inner dialogue was used, which I think is the worst thing you can do when writing with that kind of narrator.

Third person sounds less awkward 90% of the time. If you want to write in first or second person and you can't pull it off, it will surely sound uncomfortable and forced.

But I guess the trick is to try till your hand falls off.

I
M
O

etc

[Atomsk Iscariot]

"While I was walking up the stairs, though, all of a sudden I thought I was going to puke again. Only, I didn't. I sat down for a second, and then I felt better. But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them--all cockeyed, naturally--what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddamn dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed. I hardly even had the guts to rub it off the wall with my hand, if you want to know the truth. I was afraid some teacher would catch me rubbing it off and would think I'd written it. But I rubbed it out anyway, finally. Then I went on up to the principal's office."

[In Dust and Ashes]

Also, first person present tense generally makes for an awful read.

that's why I refused to read more than one chapter of I Capture the Castle. it made me hurt.

is there any other way to write in first person present besides through journal entries?

for a short piece like Poe's Message in a Bottle or whatever that thing was about, it's not so bad, but to write an entire 200+ page novel in journal entries saying crap like "now my sister is soaking her feet because she is cold. she just told me to shove it." it's retarded.

[Osceana]

Excerpt from "The Catcher In The Rye"

Touché

[Osceana]

it's retarded.

Well, so much for that idea. No more 1st person.

[Jackal]

I don't care which tense or person someone uses. A great writer can pull off anything, a crappy writer can't. All I know is, if a story is in 1st person, and I don't care about that person at all, or I'm not intrigued by his thought process, I don't care to finish it.

I hated "Catcher in the Rye" and was very dissapointed when I read it, like 20 years ago.

[In Dust and Ashes]

Well, so much for that idea. No more 1st person.

first person is fine. most of my stuff is first person masculine (cus I hate women), but first person in the present tense is atrocious.

[Squirrel]

Hey, if you write in French, can you do first person neutral? That must be a fucking pain in the arse.