Thankfully I’ve been directed to the crossroads of hyperfiction journeys by Mark Bernstein and now that I’m back on track, ordered some stuff and wandered around to find Diane Greco’s website and this:
First-person narration in fiction ought to do something that other, superfically similar forms, like memoir, cannot. Rather than reinforcing commonsense ideas about subjectivity and testimony, about identity and language, it ought to destabilize these things. First-person narration ought to make readers — who too often rush to identify with the "I" that speaks — think twice about that easy identification. It ought to make readers nervous.
Diane is a writer and at the forefront of new media fiction, so I was pleased to note that while I’ll be seeking out her site as I explore hyperfiction, she holds some great insight into the basic storytelling skills and takes them beyond the page. It’s one of the biggest problems with first person pov and the reason so many readers shy away from it. You feel you are being asked to take on this persona and if it doesn’t feel comfortable, you don’t enjoy the read.
But that’s not what Diane is saying with "It ought to make readers nervous." She means, I think, that we need be more openminded and willing to accept the character and let it bother us, explore it. In a way, it offers the different paths of hyperfiction in the possible conflict of what we think we know about ourselves and what we may not.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I would have expected that post to have been in the first person. Gotcha.
Interesting post Susan, I’ve always struggled with reading the I,I,I of first person POV.
Yes, first person represents problems for many readers and yet it’s one of the easiest for the writer if he can get fully into character. What the reader needs to do is exactly that as well, shedding self to become someone else.