Let the writer decide!

Once when I presented a few chapters of my latest manuscript to an editor at a conference, she suggested changing it from third person to first person. "More immediacy," she said. I tried it and it seemed to work better for me. But then so did third person. How does a writer decide? And just what does first person versus third person really mean?

The following definitions of first and third person and the advantages and disadvantages of both are posted by author Vickie Britton on the website www.suite101.com.

She writes: “First person makes the narrator close up and personal. The reader can identify with the character and experience their deepest, innermost thoughts and feelings. While third person and omniscient points of view distance the reader, first person allows the reader to enter the world of the narrator, privy to his personal thoughts and feelings.”

Read more on this blog to find out the advantages and disadvantages of writing in either one.

Author Nathan Bransford also addresses this issue on his post First Person vs. Third Person. 

Visit both blogs and then you decide. Have a great Fourth of July!