First person POV…

Yes, this post is about the dreaded first person point of view… And yes, people write in it well… And again yes, I am one of them… well… err… okay. At least I think I so.

I wrote my first MS RINGS OF TIME (Mandorian Prophecies – YA Fantasy) in third person. Since it was my first book and it took me upwards of five years to write, it was awesome and didn’t need much to be perfect.

*cue the bozo the clown music*

Ahem… Then I wrote RUNAWAY CHOICES. Which literally ran away with my brain and didn’t return until the WIP was over. And strangely enough… I wrote it in first person.

Hmmm… Now I have thought about it long and hard and wondered why I wrote it in first person. I think because I wanted to capture all Beck’s inner turmoil without the fudgement of a narrator (You like that word… I just made it up…). She was a very complex character dealing with a lot of inner emotions and experiences she had to be able to play off to really see where the action was taking us.

My beta readers cheered at the pace of the book and how it wrapped up. I entered it into the ACFW contest under Contemporary Women’s Fiction (I think–lol) and got two raving reviews! Then the third was a big crap-load. Though, the third judge did say she wanted to find out what happens. Which is positive… though why she would want to finish a book she rated under 50… I will never know. But we are moving past that…

So, right… My betas came back and loved it. One of whom is my Fantasy Friend, Debbie (*Waves* Miss ya!). She has read RINGS OF TIME and when we got together after she read RUNAWAY CHOICES she says, “Eisley, I couldn’t help but wonder what ROT would be like if you wrote it in first person…”

Of course, since it’s my baby I wanted to tell her she had grown a third head sometime during the night. But the more I thought about it… the more I wondered. And hey, what would it hurt?

In April 2010, I did rewrite RINGS OF TIME. Added a few scenes, took out a few scenes… and now it’s resting.

When I started DEGAN RISING (Middle Grade – Fantasy) I knew for certain it was going to be split POV in first person, cuzz it’s fun and has no limits.

However, my whole point of this post… about first person POV…

Most agents hate it.

Yup, you heard me right… hate hate hate it…

Why, oh why, would I write three (or four) novels in first person when agents hate it?

Because my audience loves it! All the children who have read DEGLAN RISING so far are thrilled with the story and come away with a big cheesy grin on their face… I wish I could have taken a picture of the last one. It’s priceless! This is why I write… This is why I will continue to write… This is why first person worked.

A ten year old said, “I felt like I was right there in the action and that I was the character…”

#Win/#win if you ask me!

So what do I do with this knowledge now….? Agents hate first person and audiences love it.

*shrug* I guess I just keep plugging away at the agent lists to find a first person lover of Middle Grade Fantasy… there has to be a couple out there… otherwise Percy Jackson wouldn’t have been published I just have to find them.

Oh and two children have asked me for the sequel to DEGLAN RISING.

#win/win/win/win!

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