Preffered Writing Style?

[-Polaris-]

So i also want to see how everyone likes to write.

Wether it be 1st or 3rd person. Maybe the off-chance you like to write in 2nd Person? Or maybe even scripting?

Myself, I prefer writing 3rd person, as i dont think i write well enough in 1st person and i havent even thought of trying second. As for scripting, i have pulled it off a few times. But then i have just given up on the story :-/

 

[The Dude]

I'm taking a run at first person. It's challenging as hell. Third person limited omniscient definitely seems like the default, and I keep wanting to go back to it.
But there are significant storytelling reasons why it HAS to be first person. We see everything through the eyes of one character, and it involves the reader as co-conspirator in the character's journey, rather than detached observer. Plus, the main character's view distorts everything based on her biases, attitudes and moods.
Unreliable narrator's one of my favorite literary devices ever, famously used in such media as Fight Club and Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

It's also worth talking about tense, here. Everyone tends by default to past tense. Why is that? It makes it seem like the story has already happened, and we're witnessing it on playback. I'm writing in present. This, too, is thematically appropriate. There's a tinge of "fuck destiny" to the story. The future is unwritten, you are witnessing it as it happens, in a sense. Also for that reason, I'm not planning ahead too much, because if it reads as really planned out, that defeats the whole purpose. I have three important mileposts that will be hit no matter what, but how the characters get to them? I'll find out soon, and shortly after that, so will anyone following my story.

 

[Persephone]

Present tense is generally only used in RPGs and other games because the player is experiencing events as they happen in universe. Logically, if you are reading a story being told to you and it isn't a live feed or a transcript or some other gimmick, it will be past tense. When is the last time you told someone a story in present or future tense in real life?

I've used both to be fair, but one was a second person meta story told in the style of the games and the other had an alleged time traveler for a narrator. These are hardly standard situations.

First person is hard because it requires knowing your characters really well, but I find it to be more entertaining for me to write.

 

[Vivillon]

I have really only done well in third person, with little dialogue at that. I always feel more comfortable getting inside what my characters think rather than what they say. It's probably not the best, and I'm working at it with my latest story (which I really need to stop procrastinating on and continue the story, however hard it may be for me). I've tried doing first person before, but it didn't work out too well and I can't seem to pull it off. I really, really want to try out second person at some point, though.

 

[Life]

Funny. I find first person much easier to write then third. That's not to say I write first person better than third, just that I think it's easier.

Depending on what kind of story I'm writing and what message I want to portray, I'll switch the narration. For example, if I'm trying to portray a more meaningful or deeper message, I'll use third. If I'm writing a somewhat laid-back or carefree story, then I'll use first. I like using first because it allows me to tell the reader what's going on in the protagonist's head without having the narrator explain it.

 

[Pinball Wizard]

It's usually third person that I like to use. I also like to use the present tense rather than the past tense. Sometimes it seems a little stilted, but I like the effect it has of events seeming to happen at the moment of writing.

 

[Lord Kyuubi]

I write in third person, focussed from the viewpoint of a specific character for the duration of each chapter. It lets me go about as deep as with first person, except that it's technically still third person because I just don't really like using first person. Using 'I' for a character who's not me feels kinda unnatural to me, and for some reason I get a better connection with someone writing about them than pretending to be them. But maybe I'm just odd.

The reason why I use a specific character's viewpoint for each chapter is partly because it lets me go deeper into them personally than if I was omniciently (is that even a word) overviewing everyone, or if I flitted about between different points of view all the time. Those techniques just annoy me. Not that they're any less valid, mind, I personally just don't like them.

 

[CrystaI]

In most of the time of my current fic, I wrote from 3rd-person viewpoint, thought depending on the story content, I often switch between 3rd-person limited, 3rd-person omniscient, or 3rd-person objective.

But when come to the omake chapters (the little side stories that readers doesn't need to know for the main story flow, I just wrote it for fun), I wrote in 1st-person. Yeah, it is just as mentioned by Rediamond, you need to know your character very well in order to wrote good from 1st-person view. Though, writing those omakes help me in understands my characters much better, which in turn help me in writing my main story.

And then, in order to understand my character bios, I also wrote monologues to express their feelings at one point and on one topic.

And finally for writing style, I wrote completely in Japanese, no English. I preferred the visual light novel writing style because it is easier and have a causal tone which is friendly to read, unlike the academic literature novels.
And it is kind of strange for me to come to here for writing advice as this is an English forum...... Well, I'm not native Japanese, so......

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

After changing between a number of different perspectives over time, I've found that close third person is the most robust, at least in my mind. It lets you follow a character's thoughts, observations and experiences without restricting yourself to just their internal monologue, and there's just enough leeway to squeeze in narrator's comments if you so choose. It also reads well, which is probably the real reason it's so prevalent. When reading seocnd person or present tense, I'm constantly reminded that I'm reading words, not experiencing the story they're conveying - it breaks immersion a little.

 

[Barfing Ogres]

Speaking only for my writing style of pumping out page after page upon receiving inspiration and then taking a brief hiatus when said inspiration leaves:

I typically write third person. For me as a novice writer, it is easier to come back to after an extended break of not writing because I can simply read a few paragraphs and remember what it was I was writing about. With my attempts at first person, I would come back and not have a clue about what was happening and it just utterly wrecked my writing flow which made an already bad story even worse.

One of the things that I feel is a flaw of mine is when I explain absurd back story in the middle of a scene, though there are times when it makes sense to put it there. On the other hand, I have managed to get around the flaw somewhat by writing up what I call the "Appendices" where I can include the absurd amounts of back story without it intruding on the plot. This typically takes the form of a journal entry, an article, a lab report, or even email conversations. This allows me to get in some first person narrative and allows me to get the engineer out of me before I go and write my main prose, but that's just me.

 

[Drakon]

I'm a huge fan of writing in the third person omniscent. Honestly, it seems like this is the best format for writing thrillers and war stories.

 

[Medusa Gorgon]

I used to right completely in third/second person, but that's gone the other way and I mainly do first person, then again I also worry sometimes as I feel I need to make sure that I stay totally true to the character

 

[Dorothy LaRouge]

I use third person almost exclusively.

 

[Prez]

While I definitely prefer writing in third person omniscient, there are times when I'll choose to write in first instead. I feel like it depends on what I'm writing. Like, first person can be a bit tricky when writing action sequences and other parts similar to that. But as for third, it's a little more difficult to get into each character's thoughts (even with third person omniscient). It all depends really. As for tense, I like past tense much better than present. In the end, I guess it's just a matter of taste.

 

[Silverwynde]

I prefer third person omniscient but I will write in third person limited or third person objective. I rarely write in first person; when I do, I have a tendency to have one chapter from one character's perspective and a following one in a different character's perspective.

 

[Legacy]

I prefer third person omniscient, both reading and writing. I've never tried writing an entire story in first person, but I do enjoy doing interludes in the form of letters in my stories.

 

[indigohex]

I prefer first person for my writing, but sometime in the future, I may try third person in my writing.

 

[PiccoloX]

In The Story of Yewer I've been using different writing formats, but the general chosen format is used throughout a single post. However, I want the reader to feel as if they are a part of the story, which became a premiss for the villain Tregrenos becoming the narrator. What I've found is that the options available within a forum setup like this one can add dynamic flavor to the chapter.

You can throw something in like a quote to represent internal monologue. You don't have to mention this, let the reader discover it for themselves due to this type of monologue being entirely 1st person.

The more a reader deciphers the more involved they become with the story. From there I try to drag them further by making it seem like they are being directly spoken to by being broad enough with what is being said that it encompasses more than the character being spoken to. Words such as "you" and "we" aim more toward the reader, breaking the 4th wall while maintaining the story context.

 

[Dieter]

Third person limited, but it also really depends on what I want to tell. And especially with anything that's more lengthy, different forms tend to blend a little (cause there's never truly just one narrator)

But I also have a story which is written from first person perspective, though I must admit it's easier to use when just writing vignettes (cause at some point you catch yourself going to a different style)

also am I the only one in this, or do the things you've recently read tend to influence you as well (like, I read Northanger Abbey not too long ago, and I found myself constantly wanting to write something Gothic, while Agatha Christie makes me want to create suspense and mystery everywhere)

 

[PiccoloX]

Wanting to write in a style close to what you read is pretty much the same thing as writing a fanfic. The style of what you just read was interesting, you put some thought into a similar story then decided to write what you were thinking.