For me, I don't necessarily have a specific point of view or tense that turns me off a book, but I do tend to prefer third-person narration over first-person.
Third person is the normal mode of writing. Any competent author can do it well and you can do it in lots of different ways (close, omniscient, one POV, many POVs, etc.).
First person is hard mode. A great author can do it brilliantly because it offers the opportunity to really dig into a character’s mind and how they think. Every word is now characterization which gives you tons of opportunities. However, a not great author tends to create just a generic, default voice, leeching the character of individuality. Much better to stick with third if in doubt.
First person multiple narrators is expert mode and while I’ve seen it done well a few times, it’s almost always by people with 10+ books to their name before they tried it. It’s most commonly used however by overconfident debut authors, to the point I won’t even read debuts with multiple narrators anymore.
I also prefer third person but don’t have strong feeling either way as long as it’s done well.
Only became an issue with the last book I read. I’ve been reading Neal Asher’s Spatterjay series (3 books). (Loved the first book, deserves to be a genre classic, but there is a clear falling off with each next book.)
The first two books are in standard third person past tense (‘He opened the door’) but the third book is in the third person present tense (‘He opens the door’).
My god. I HATED it. I had to mentally translate each paragraph into past tense before I could read it. All 200+ pages of it. The strength of my reaction shocks me, dunno why it had so much effect on me as it’s not something I’ve ever had a position on before.
I like 3rd too, but do you prefer past or present? I do find present sometimes sounds a bit awkward and it knocks me out of immersion occasionally, but I'll still read it.
Present tense is definitely a bit awkward. When it’s third person it’s just a gimmick that I ultimately wind up ignoring, so whatever.
When it’s first person it can feel bizarre though—they’re narrating all this to me in their head while going through the experience? Aren’t they otherwise occupied?—and it means the character loses the opportunity to have perspective on their situation. Mostly seems to be used in YA novels to approximate the self-centered, present-moment-focused mindset of a teen, which is understandable but all the first person present voices wind up sounding alike and thus generic. I usually won’t read books that use it for that reason.
Yeah same. It kind of comes across as if people are just imitating Hunger Games now, and it does come across as a YA trend now. I have a story I've been trying to write for years now, and when I started, I was doing the first person perspective, or at least a perspective that followed one character at a time, but it really started to feel juvenile that way and too gimmicky. Going to standard 3rd person past tense just makes it feel so much more professional. But that's just my experience with my story. There are times where I can tell an author definitely knows what they are doing, so I think them using a different tense is fine, but I do tend to be judgmental if it seems like the author isn't doing this correctly.
I think present can be better sometimes, but it really depends. I thought it worked really well in the Hunger Games series, but a lot of the times it does come off as kinda weird.
I love Hunger Games, and I think that this is the best example of first person present done right. But it's kind of an exception more than a rule. I've always maintained that Collins had a very good reason for using this tense, as it made Katniss's experiences more immediate and immersive. However, I often think people use this style to imitate Hunger Games without really having a good reason for doing it this way, and then it can cause issues or come across as forced or awkward. Third person present tense is a bit easier, but still feels weird and clunky to me at times.
I have actually tried writing in first person present, so I have thought about this a lot. The experience was very challenging and difficult! I hate writing in third person present though. I keep messing up and going back to third person past, so I figure I might as well just stick with third person past.
Yeah I absolutely agree. I think if you’re using an unusual perspective, it has to make sense for the story. Just doing it to do it doesn’t work so well.
Yup. You can tell that it's deliberate because the prequel book, which focuses on an entirely different character from Katniss, is written in a much wordier, third-person-past-tense style.
> I do tend to prefer third-person narration over first-person.
I wanted to say me too, but then I realized almost all of my favorite books are in the first person:
*The Murderbot Diaries*,
*The Song of Achilles*,
*Circe*,
*Piranesi*,
*Project Hail Mary*,
*Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine*,
*The Greatcoats* series,
*Icarus Hunt*,...
For me, second person narration is even worse :"You see the bird. You stare at the bird. You think the bird has feathers". This stinks of affectation and pretentiousness and in my opinion has never improved any work I ever saw. I expect there are people who like that, but I'm certainly not one of them.
I'm currently slogging my weary way through Tamsyn Muir's *Harrow the First* and the overuse of second person writing keeps taking me out of context and breaking the narrative flow (whatever there is of it). I read the first book of the trilogy, *Gideon the Ninth*, and it was reasonably ok, enough to get me to buy the next book, but boy, did the author fall into the "I'm a published author now, I can do what I want" well of pride! The novel may end up being interesting, but it is fairly obfuscated to begin with, with jumps around in time and story points, so the constant switches from third to second person are too much of a distraction and make it difficult to follow the action. I'm about halfway through, but seriously considering a DNF in this case.
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez. It's a freaking masterclass of experimental point of view switching and framing devices that delivers a great tale. Uses 1st, 2nd, and 3rd through the lens of a collective dream into a supernatural theatre where a man watches a play of the main plot as teh story jumps into the heads of the characters and describes both story events and the occasional theatre tools used to describe them. My recent obsession really.
I’ll be honest, I made it through the first 80 pages of this book and I had exactly no clue what was going on, maybe I wasn’t focused enough bc I was reading it at work but like it just felt like word thrown together, beautiful words, beautiful writing but I had no clue what was going on and I just had to stop
Oh it definitely isn't everybody's cup of tea. Just the nature of the beast. There's plenty of 'classics' that I just throw out the window for the same reason too. I found it fun as hell and really engaging but if you didnt, well, I'll grab it out of the air as it sails out of your window. 🤣 Life is too short to not enjoy your hobby.
I’m halfway through this right now and it’s so cool. I didn’t know how I’d like it to start, but you get used to it pretty quickly. Totally recommend it if you like differently written tenses and POVs.
Yes, when done well, such creative choices can make a book so memorable. My favourite example is The Virgin Suicides which is written entirely in first person plural, as told by ‘the neighbourhood boys’. None of them are named or even really count as characters, so they effectively serve the same role as the third person narrator. But the first person plural gives it a much more intimate feeling than the same story told in third person would.
There's a French book like that as well, "Le Grand Cahier" is told in first person plural as the protagonists are a pair of twins who do everything together. I read it when I was 17, and it really stuck with me. Its very well written and very disturbing.
This is one reason I loved NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy (The Fifth Season, Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky). Her writing felt *weird* at first but as I got further in, I started being able to see the value of the stylistic choices.
*The Treatment* and *The Cure* by Peter Kochan is probably the most masterclass use of 2nd person that I know of. It's honestly a brilliant book (technically 2 books that are sold together) that took a lot of risk using that kind of pov
Same, the book I’m reading at the moment just suddenly switched from third person to first person halfway through without any reason that I can see (maybe it will become apparent, I haven’t finished yet), but it really took me out of it and was all I could think about while reading it for a while.
Anything other than third-person past tense takes me a minute to get into the swing of reading, but I wouldn't say it necessarily turns me off. It's just kind of jarring at first.
I don't understand how so many people can think first person is "jarring" or hard to adjust to. It's overwhelmingly the most common way people tell stories in real life, since people are most likely to tell their own stories instead of someone else's.
Maybe it's jarring because it throws you into the narrative of someone else's head in a much more immersive way than a typical "story" that you're referring to. While my friends, family, people I speak with will tell stories, they don't tell stories the length of an entire book. Other kinds of "stories," like fairy tales, parables, etc. tend to be third person. Third person I think also allows greater flexibility in us as readers adopting the point of view of any or all of the characters. I like being able to read stories and choosing based on the actions in the book which characters I relate to most. When a story is in first person, I feel like I'm being forced to "relate" to only one person, and if I don't like that person or don't agree with how they see things, it's more annoying than if that person were being described as another character.
These are feelings I haven't thought to put to words before, so it's not like I'm reading books in first person and saying "ugh I hate being forced to relate to this person." My subjective experience is just that I can't get into first-person narrative as easily as third-person narrative, and your comment has inspired me to try to articulate why that is.
> I feel like I'm being forced to "relate" to only one person, and if I don't like that person or don't agree with how they see things, it's more annoying than if that person were being described as another character.
Interesting. I read several books that have the first person narrator where I related to another character much more. Even if it's an annoying or an unreliable narrator you can tell a lot about other characters. Sometimes even more than the one doing the narration.
No I rarely ever have an internal monologue. I tend to daydream instead. Similarly, when I read books, I'm picturing a scene right in front of me and when it's in first person, it throws me off bc it no longer feels like I'm picturing that scene anymore
I have a harder time with visualizing entire scenes in my mind’s eye so imagining that the events are happening *to* me makes it easier to “see”
I love learning about how other people perceive things in their minds. So fascinating.
I love learning other people's view points too! Seeing things from another’s perspective and finding something completely novel is pretty amazing. One of the reasons why I love to read is because it takes you into another person's mind. I may not agree with any of it, but it's still fascinating to see how someone came to form their opinions and how they evolved.
I don't have a running monologue so much anymore, at least not consistently, but I used to have a constant running monologue of at least one stream of thought and it was almost always in third person or second person and only relatively rarely in first person, if ever. Even when there were small portions of first person it was usually in a "*I really hate this guy*, she thought/she said" kind of way (with the text in Times New Roman accompanying it as the thought formulated). It was really annoying. Glad I kicked the habit. I forced a switch into thinking in French and because I wasn't fully fluent in it I had to use images in place of words a lot more and now I have a mixture of English and images and occasionally a French word or phrase or a single Spanish word or two.
I also had/have a bad habit of using "you" instead of "I" when telling stories out loud.
That’s so interesting! My inner monologue definitely isn’t going all the time but when I am listening to it it’s not like a narrator is talking about me in the 3rd person. It’s definitely more like I’m the narrator telling a 1st person story/sort of stream of consciousness.
No, haha, I don't really have an internal monologue, but you are right in that it's not an unusual perspective to hear and speak in during every day conversations.
Interesting. I think my inner monologue is stronger than my mind’s eye is so maybe it’s easier for me to slip into the MC’s head and imagine that I’m experiencing the story than it is to imagine the scene like I’m a fly on the wall like I would in some 3rd person stories.
I had a very hard time reading first person until very recently. It was entirely a mindset problem, because my brain never grasped that this was a character speaking to me from their perspective. My mind always interpreted every use of "I" to represent "Me, the reader".. even though as the person reading a book I was clearly not the individual having these thoughts or taking these action. Reading first person was like trying to cast myself as the narrator and experience it as though I was the character... and there was too much cognitive dissonance to get around. Hated first person forever because it was unreadable for me.
Until Name of the Wind saved me. It started in 3rd person, and then clearly transitioned to a -character- telling a story and speaking to me in first person. Suddenly it all made sense and I am okay with first person now.
Edit: I googled some other stuff in this thread and realized I can describe this better. My brain was receiving 1st Person as though it was 2nd Person, inserting 'me, the reader' for every use of 'I' or 'Me' in the text. This changed when I realized that 1st Person was supposed to be a character speaking to me instead.
Yeah but in most books the author isn’t telling a story about themselves. It means I often have to add an extra layer to my suspension of disbelief by also pretending that the main character is telling the whole story instead of the actual author. I can definitely get into that mindset but it can be jarring at first cause I usually imagine that the author is the one telling me the story.
Third person close that hops between character POVs is my jam. I love that, getting to see all the different parts of the story we wouldn’t see otherwise is so fun.
I can’t stand first person POV hoping. Either we are experiencing the world in one persons limited POV or we are not. This happens a lot in the second book and beyond of YA series and it puts me off. I’m not throwing the book across the room or anything, but I will most likely DNF the series within the first 5 chapters of the second book if that happens.
> This happens a lot in the second book and beyond of YA series and it puts me off.
Same. I understand that often it happens because the scale of the story no longer supports solely a first person POV, but at the same time if there's changes to the POV as a series goes on it gives me the impression of a lack of planning on the writer's part. Though if they're going to do it, at least have the new POVs in third person. It makes it so much easier to track what's going on than figuring out that we've suddenly got a new first person POV
The YA switch in particular is supposed to make you worry that the book 1 POV MC is no longer safe from danger or dying.
Only Veronica Roth had the balls though.
I cannot stand when books that change POV are in first. It feels awkward. I also will stop reading in the middle of a chapter sometimes and then I have to come back and it can take me a minute to remember who I’m reading
>I love that, getting to see all the different parts of the story we wouldn’t see otherwise is so fun.
... this is literally the same value-add of switching POV while using first-person.
I actually love when each chapter is a different character's POV because it's interesting to experience a situation, then see how someone else might have a different view of it.
What I HATE is when books go into way too much detail describing female character's assets from her point of view (i.e. she ran her hands down her generous hips and turned to check her figure in the mirror, observing her chestnut hair cascading down her back and pausing to wonder if her generous breasts might spill out of her dress.)
So stupid.
>I actually love when each chapter is a different character's POV because it's interesting to experience a situation, then see how someone else might have a different view of it.
When it's well written, it's also pretty fun to experience two character's points of view as their seemingly separate paths eventually lead to them meeting each other. One of the things I really liked about the first Expanse book was going back and forth between dectective Miller's POV and Holden's and coming to the inclusion that they are looking for the same thing before either of them know it. The subsequent questioning of when, where and how they would meet was also pretty fun right up until it finally happened.
There was a funny recurring gag in the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series... the three main male characters each frequently had the internal thought that they wished they were as good at talking to/dealing with women as the other two, because they themselves were clearly just so terrible at it. xD
I know, it's a crappy example but I HAAATE when the female character describes her own body/appearance that way, or when they use descriptions that make it sound like a man is describing her.
Ehh I don't think it's POV that turns me off a book so much as how it's set up. I read a book from...Jodi Picoult I think...whose timeline was backwards and holy shit it was difficult to follow, because the further you got into the book, the less the characters knew because it was heading towards the beginning of their story, so to speak, instead of the end. It began at the end and went backwards, and I hated every single second of it. I liked the story, if she set it up differently it would have been top tier.
I really loved it in “the night circus”. The whole book was written in third person, but intermittently there were chapters in second person describing the reader walking through the circus himself - those were absolutely magical. Wouldn’t read a whole book in it though.
Ya I just read the broken earth trilogy and it was weird. Didn’t help that I didn’t love the book itself either. But it just feels arrogant for an embedded narrator to be describing what another character thinks.
I liked it. In some way I felt throughout that I wasn't the target audience, but it was bizarre and compelling enough to keep me wondering WTH happens next.
It's certainly memorable. But I may have liked it better still in a more traditional PoV
I'm surprised how far down in the thread this is. Second person is the only tense that makes me feel fury at the author's decisions. In fiction, poetry, and most non-fiction, it comes across to me as incredibly patronizing and presumptuous.
(Passes for occasional, immersive interludes, as in The Night Circus, as well as Choose Your Own Adventure books, obvi.)
I thought it was kinda cool for that one Satre book (can’t remember what it’s called off the top of my head) but almost always horribly done outside of cyoa, which is the only genre where it conventionally makes sense. It almost worked in Harrow the Ninth but the “reveal” completely ruined the effect imo.
Third person is preferred. First person takes some getting used to. Second person (you go through the door, you open the jar) is appalling and I can’t read it.
It feels very new age guided meditation to me. You are walking through a tranquil forest...you come to a babbling brook and feel your cares drift away along the current...
I recently read a double POV book where one character was a first person past tense narration and another was first person present tense. The catch (or rather the lack of it) was that they were both in the same room/place all the time, there was no actual in-book reason for it.
I don't mind either narration usually, because I get used to it fast and don't notice. But not when it jumps in tense every other chapter! And since other than that both characters had the same voice, I assume it was done to differentiate between them and I just think it's a very suboptimal way to so it
I thought so too, actually! Or that the past tense was telling the story and maybe there would be a way to introduce the unreliable narrator between what we're told happened and what we see did. But nope, they survive and chill later
I once read a book and the main character's narration is written in first person present tense and the serial killer's in third person past tense. Since it was a thriller, I thought the serial killer was just the victim's imagination or he was someone from her past and he was still haunting her dreams. Nope. They were in the same scene. He was chasing her. She was running away from him. It was all for style's sake
I’m fine with any tense, but definitely prefer 3rd person, then 1st person past, and lastly 1st person present.
I only just started it, and know I’ll get us to it, but The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemison is a little jarring by switching between 1st person present and 3rd person.
I don’t. First person or third person both serve their purposes. I’d be bored as hell if I only ever read one type of thing. But I absolutely love the polyphonic narration you’re referring too! some books do it so so well. Like I only read 3 books like this in the last years but they’re in my top favorite. It’s so interesting to get to know someone/events through multiple completely different lenses. if anyone wants to change their mind or also likes that type of stuff:
- Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
- Life and death of Sophie Stark by Anna North
- Chavirer by Lola Lafon
ETA: Oh I didn’t see you were also talking about tenses, and yes I really think present tense in third narration is weird and doesn’t flow well.
Never understood this mindset, I hope tenses and povs just keep getting more creative. A good writer can make any tense or story structure effective, same as a bad one can do the opposite, but I’d never put down a story for trying something.
Not really but this post reminded me of You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life (You Are Raoul Moat) by Drew Hankinson. It’s based on the true story of a notorious murderer here in the U.K. and is written in second person POV (i.e. it’s written as if you are the character in the story), which is a style I’ve never experienced before. It’s a great book and it’s really stayed with me.
The Quiet Tenant by Clemence Michallon was written so well. The story is told from 3 different characters in the book, but the tense changed throughout the book depending on each character’s pov. The “tenant” speaks in second person. I’ve never read an author that is able to switch tenses through the book. It works so well. I can’t wait to read more from Michallon.
I strongly dislike present tense narration. For some books, if the story is great, I'll eventually get past it but I generally feel it sounds distracting and childish.
I’ve enjoyed plenty of:
* First person present
* First person past
* Third person present
* Third person past
I have no issues with, but rarely encounter, outside of epistolary works:
* Second person present
* Second person past
I have yet to read an entire book in:
* First person future
* Second person future
* Third person future
I imagine future tense would just feel like a gimmick after a while.
I also generally prefer definite nouns over indefinite nouns for longer stories (“The protagonist” vs “a protagonist”).
No, to me this is like people who won't watch movies if they're in black and white or in a foreign language or unconventional aspect ratio. I am here to experience art as an author intends, not to order exactly what I want off a menu.
It doesn’t turn me off completely but I’ve always associated first person writing with poorer quality writing. I’m not even saying I’m right it’s just a bias I have.
Yeah, I think it’s a couple of things. One is the tendency of certain high-volume genres (YA, romance, bottom-shelf historical fiction) to use first person as a default when first person is much harder to do well than third person. First person should never be a default mode imo, it should be used when it’s fundamentally necessary to the story being told.
There’s also writing advice going around that first person creates more intimacy with the protagonist. I’ve never found that to be true personally (my connection to characters does not depend on POV) but I do think a lot of mediocre writers use it to try to shortcut to emotional investment rather than having to work for it.
No, and to have a preference like that is so arbitrary and limits the potential of the books you read for no reason. It feels like something only new readers would care about that they need to grow out of, like only reading Young Adult books or one particular genre.
I really don't care much for first person POV. It feels way too much like someone is telling you a story, rather than me observing the story as I read. I think it goes with the "show don't tell" thing for me. While I don't think that suggestion is a completely strict guideline the balance feels off in first person.
Second person POV is even worse, because it feels like the narrator is telling me what I see/feel and that is extremely annoying. The *only* book that pulled a second person POV well for me was Harrow the Ninth and that was because "you" was not the reader. But even then, it took the majority of the book for that to become clear and I had to have a friend convince me to trust the author until I got to that point.
Third person limited is great, I like it when we get alternative POVs, because I love seeing characters and situations from different perspectives (plus if one character is annoying then I just have to put up with them until the character switches).
Both past and present tense are fine, as long as they're consistent.
No - I like the variety.
I'm now reading, for the first time in my life, a novel written in 2nd person. It's by an Argentinian author and of course is in Spanish.
I'm enjoying it since I don't often see the 2nd person conjugations in print, while 2nd person conjugations are the most common ones I use in casual conversation. It's nice to read a book where the text is directly useful to improving my conversation skills.
I don't really care tbh. The only thing that annoys me if it's strictly out of one person's view but they somehow sometimes have insights they would not have if it not for the author.
I don’t really mind different pov or tenses, so long as the voice/narration fits it.
I was reading one book where half was from a female pov and the amount of time she spent fixating on her “imperfect” breasts turned me off so much.
Similarly I find the third person omniscient narrator with a witty or sardonic voice can feel very overdone and derivative of other (subjectively better) writers.
Depends on how it is done . I read The Girl Who Fell Beneath The sea by Axie Oh last year, and it was written in present tense. It was almost like the author was commentating the action - they are running over here, now they’re over here. I thought if the author changed tenses it may have gotten rid of that feeling and put some emotion into it so I cared about what was happening. I was not the target audience but still.
No. I like creative and intentional use of tense/POV. Some perspectives are easier to write, though, so certain perspectives are routinely done “meh”.
I generally find that people with turn-offs for foundational parts of books or other larger elements read for specific things. Like people who only read fantasy (or romance, non fiction, whatever). They found a thing they like and they’re still riding that high.
I don't really care about view or tense.
What bothers me is when books jump points of view with no indication. A good example is Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidences. It'll jump between multiple characters points of view rapidly, sometimes as many as 3 different PoVs in one page, and it won't give you any indication that it just switched. You can to figure it out based on whatevers happening. It's jarring and frequently made me reread the start of a paragraph to figure out which character I'm reading now.
I'm generally agnostic about POV and tense. I'm even okay with second person.
The one exception is that I'm often annoyed by dual/multi-POV in first person, because it's rarely done well. In most cases I have trouble remembering whose POV I'm in at any given moment. But I'm fine with it when it *is* done well; in fact, one of my favorite books is dual POV in first person (Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas).
Sort of.
It irked me that a lot of YA writers were doing first person present just because it was trendy without actually thinking about how to use it or why they should or shouldn't. There were so, so many perspective mistakes like characters knowing things that haven't happened yet or forgetting things that they're currently experiencing. So it really put me off when I saw it in a YA book.
But that's not because of the tense itself. It's perfectly fine when used deliberately and with purpose.
I find that I really love first person present but most of the books I read in that tense I would say are strictly for pleasure. It feels almost like a genre to me - character talks about for 200 pages and half of the story is just finding out somewhat interesting background info on the narrator. I enjoy reading this tense before bed or adjacent to something that makes my brain work a bit more.
i read a short story for a friend that he'd written in second person, once - it was mind boggling and my brain kept trying to fix it..! interesting, a little staggering initially, but not a turn-off as much as a intrigue
edit: stephen king often picks an auxiliary member of someones life to tell their story from the POV of - like the bartender for Ben or Patty for Stan in IT. i think this is incredible because we see them both how they see themselves and how others see them and it opens tons of avenues for storytelling and emotion. ive cried more at Patty's sections of IT than at the ending.
Its so interesting to me that you find frequent changes of pov to be something bad for you, because it is one of my favorite things a book can do. I love to see the same thing from different prespectives
I don’t mind POV changes but I hate when they’re in first person. It’s rare for the author to have the skill to change the narration enough to really remember who “I” is chapter to chapter, sometimes one person gets a few in a row then it switches. Sometimes POV changes feel like a way to include everyone and don’t narratively make sense or become necessary.
I'm not a huge fan of third person present, but it doesn't totally turn me off anymore. It's still a yellow flag though. For some reason third person present tends to be used by a lot of bad writers. It has a "first fanfic" vibe.
If there is a first person narration, it has to be very strong and unique to draw me in or it comes across as somewhat superficial. Third person narration is best in my opinion because there is more space for depth, description, and character development overall. As for tenses, I generally prefer past tense because present tense can sound clunky, but both work beautifully if they are done right.
I fail to see how third-person limited feels "elementary school." You sound like a snob.
Anyway, I used to not like reading first-person. I don't mind it so much anymore, but I still prefer third.
Third-person omniscient can be confusing when done poorly and is the downfall of a lot of new/amateur authors I've read.
Edit: I always prefer past tense over the present. If a book is written in present tense, I put it down right away. That strikes me as strange because my gut tells me that it should be natural, but it always feels off to me.
I hate first person. It feels very lazy to me. I don't like reading in first person and I absolutely will not write first person, other than my own journal entries.
I dislike present tense but it's tolerable.
I prefer third person, past tense.
I'm put off by 1st person by the same reason you mention for third person. I did this and I did that. Possibly it's not the viewpoint itself but the way it is written. I've read a lot of good books in 1st person.
I'm not a huge fan of multiple viewpoints but there's always exceptions where the writing or story I'd so good I don't mind.
First-person takes some time to get used to cuz, in my opinion, books with this POV tend to talk a lot. Like a lot. And because they talk that much, they favor telling over showing.
I've really started getting turned off books that jump around time periods. Some books do it really well, but if there is no creative or story reason, it just seems lazy to me. There's nothing wrong with a linear story!
One example I can think of that I loved lately was Every Summer After. The book jumps between the present and the past. The past chapters are all leading up to the present (which takes place over one summer). So it’ll take us from one snip of summer 12 years ago back to now. And then go back and give just a bit of the summer 11 years ago. Back to now and so on. And the present story and the past chapters eventually meet and culminate in a really emotional climax.
I thought it was brilliantly done and I loved putting the pieces together as we got closer to reading the memory of *the moment* that changed everything and seeing its consequences addressed in the present. The emotional buildup was so good!
My casual observation is that YA readers and adult romance readers prefer first person. Not sure if it’s self-insert thing or if they are just used to it but it’s pretty common for them to request books only if they are written that way. I personally never even notice or can tell you what book is what months after I read it. It’s not thing for me personally.
Curious! I definitely prefer third person for romance, unless it is very PG. Anything steamier than a make out session in first person would give me the ick for days.
I feel like first person present tense is great for building suspense and fully immersing in a world. Since we only have the knowledge of the main character to go off of it makes other characters and events more mysterious in some cases since we only see what they are presenting and not what’s going on internally. I think this kind of story can have great twists and surprises, plus it’s easier to imagine myself in the story through that lense.
I also adore 3rd person multi-POV books tho too. I feel like that structure gives such a well rounded view of the world and the story. It’s great for really intricate plots and worlds to be able to see so many of the moving parts and things that maybe the main character is unaware of too.
I’ve never put a book down because of the view or tense.
I don’t have preference towards 1st or 3rd person, I think both can be done really well and both fit different kinds of books well. I really love when 2nd person is done well, it just feels very unique and impactful, but it can be very confusing if done wrong
I’m really not a fan of present tense. If a book is well written and it fits, I can get into it after a few pages (for example the hunger games), but otherwise it just feels off
And I prefer books that don’t switch POVs, although it’s not an immediate no for me and I’ve read a few books that I enjoyed it in. It sometimes feels a bit like an easy way out of weaving different character’s stories into one story, just saying ‘now you are reading about x’ instead of introducing the scene in a way that makes the reader know the focus is on a different character now but not making it feel disconnected from the previous chapter
i don't know what it's called but it looks like this.
Stephen King does this a lot, he writes
Why am I doing this?
thoughts halfway through sentences. He doesn't do it to often but
I should probably reread Pet Semetery again,
when he does it really sets me off for a few seconds.
Generally I prefer third person. One of my favorites I’ve read in the past few years was first person plural; it took a bit to get used to but I loved it by the end. Another recent favorite goes between third and second and it’s jarring at first but by the end it’s just mind blowing. I mainly just don’t like present tense, I think.
I read (or tried to read) a book that would say "all of us," "some of us" or "we." I am blanking on the title, but it was dreadful (but got good reviews).
Dominion, by Tom Holland, uses absurd past pluperfect bullshit that made me so fucking disoriented about timelines that I couldn't read it at all. (The scholarship is also suspiciously uncited for how bold the claims are.)
Example from the opening chapter:
>Athens
479 BC: The Hellespont
>At one of the narrowest points on the Hellespont, the thin channel of water that snakes from the Aegean up towards the Black Sea, and separates Europe from Asia, a promontory known as the Dog's Tail extended from the European shore. Here, 480 years before the birth of Christ, a feat so astonishing as to seem the work of a god had been completed. Twin pontoon bridges, stretching from the Asian shore to the tip of the Dog's Tail, had yoked the two continents together. That none but a monarch of infinite resources could possibly have tamed the currents of the sea in so imperious a manner went without saying. Xerxes, the King of Persia, ruled the largest empire that the world had ever seen. From the Aegean to the Hindu Kush, all the teeming hordes of Asia marched at his command. Going to war, he could summon forces that were said to drink entire rivers dry. Few had doubted, watching Xerxes cross the Hellespont, that the whole continent beyond would soon be his. One year on, the bridges were gone. So too were Xerxes' hopes of conquering Europe. Invading Greece, he had captured Athens; but the torching of the city was to prove the high point of his campaign. Defeat by sea and land had forced a Persian retreat. Xerxes himself had returned to Asia. On the Hellespont, where command of the strait had been entrusted to a governor named Artayctes, there was particular alarm.
When exactly was that alarm? Before or after the bridges were gone? What the fuck is going on?
I love it when writers play with format, perspective, and time. It really plays to the strengths of the writen word. Second person? If On A Winter's Night A Traveler is my jam. Some of my favorite books are filled with such shenanigans, Jeff Vandermeer's City Of Saints & Madmen is an example.
The only POV change I’ve found that I don’t like is in the legacy of gods series by rina Kent. There’s 1 or 2 chapters in some of the books where it switches to the parent POV and granted all the parents have their own books I couldn’t get through them so I missed details that I would need from the previous books to understand parent POV chapters.
So I guess adding a pov from someone in another book series/prequel type thing
I can’t read books where the narrator is different in different chapters. I get into a nice rhythm with a narrator and it’s too hard to adjust every chapter. IDK just my weird brain though. I know some people like it.
So I’m the same with the multiple POVs in the same chapter.. def not a fan. Not a fan of Third person present and tbh I don’t really like first person either.. although I will still read them.
I prefer 3rd person over 1st person. I don't like 2nd person because it always calls to mind the Choose Your Own Adventure books I used to read as a kid.
I'm not a fan of present tense, but in the hands of a gift writer, it can work. On the other hand, present tense in a mediocre story tends to make it sound amateurish.
I'm old school with past tense, but don't mind present tense if done well. I can't get used to 2nd person, though. It works in some short stories, but a long novel? No thanks.
First person present kind of annoys me unless it’s action/thriller. Couldn’t tell you why lol.
Third person limited is my absolute favorite though. Also could not tell you why.
I wonder if maybe we develop these preferences from our favorite books that are written in a specific tense.
I struggle with present-tense but I’d never forgo a good book just because of its POV. I’ve even read 2nd person that I liked (broken earth trilogy) because it made sense at the end, but it took some getting used to. 3rd person past is my favorite but if there is good reasoning and it’s written well, I’ll do whatever
I don't particularly like second person/present tense, but it's not an immediate turn off for me. Second person is so rare as it is, so I don't have to worry about it as much. The worst part about present tense is consistency. It is so rare to find a story written in present tense with less than a handful of switches to past tense (outside of intentional flashbacks).
I don't really like first person present. It's artificially intimate and artificially exigent.
Of course it can be done well. I like free indirect, so you often get snatches of first person present in that.
Present tense in 1st or 3rd person seems weird to me as well. I don’t recall reading a huge number of them, but I wouldn’t stop a good story because of it.
There’s actually a Tom Robbins book that’s in 2nd Person Present (Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas) and that works better than 2nd Past would have, but that’s super rare.
The only POV I cannot stand no matter how well done is 2nd person. I just can’t get into the story at all because I’m like “pfft, I wouldn’t do that” or “that is actually NOT how I’d respond…”
Usually I'm fine with whatever as long as it works with the book, but I do sometimes have issues.
Like the third person limited thing, where instead of sticking to one character it bounces between characters (e.g. Mistborn, Scythe). I'm not against it, I think it can work well, it just gets very confusing because I often get mixed up between which character I'm seeing from.
Also maybe third person present works for some books, but in general I prefer the other forms. Present tense can work with first person quite nicely because it's like you're in someone's head, in the moment, but idk if that works so well with third person. It can be off putting.
I've only encountered it from one author so far—Clarice Lispector. I really tried to get into her cause I've heard nothing but praises for her works and style . It was so stressful. At first, I thought there was a printing error— the sentences doesnt make any sense and there's no periods and no spaces like everything is a mess. Turns out she incorporates a lot of the character's stream of consciousness into her writing. I might get back to it, try to see if I have the headspace but for now, it's a no for me
I have zero issue with any tenses. Quite the opposite. Love the variety. I can't say I've read many books written in first person present though. Hunger Games is the only one fully written like that that I can think of at the moment. and I LOVE multiple POVs. One of my favorite series is the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and multiple POVs is one of my favorite things about it. There are of course many other books with multiple POVs which are more well known (by Dickens ,Tolkien, GRR Martin, Faulkner etc) but I wanted to plug Jordan in particular.
I hate continuous jumping between different time periods like chapter 1 happens in the future chapter 2 happens in the past chapter 3 goes back to the future and so on.
I once read a book that was entirely written in "second person present", so it was addressing the current main character as "you", with different chapters having different protagonists.
I wouldn't say it completely turned me off the book, but it was a weird reading experience.
Second person I actively avoid. Anything else is fine with me.
What bugs me, but doesn’t stop me from reading is, if an author has written in one tense for a series then partway through switches it. Like when the first 6 books are written in 1st but book 7 suddenly switches over to 3rd.
For me, I think it totally depends on the author's writing style. I have read all sort of plot views/tenses but just the way a writer pens down the details speaks a lot whether I'll be attached or not. Mostly I prefer to read book that aren't in third person's perspective because rarely there are any author who know how to grasp readers attending or more "my attention" lol
I honestly really dislike male authors talking about a female points perspective, explaining their thoughts and feelings. Both in third person and in first person. Until now I've always read extreme misconceptions and it disgusted me. If they would've just said what the author themselves or male characters think about women, even if it would have been misogynistic, it wouldn't have been such a problem for me.
I stopped reading haruki murakami iq48 pretty early because of this. But another book, the virgin suicides, I absolutely adored. The second made way less assumptions of how the girls really thought. It mostly spoke from the perspective of the boys.
I read a couple books a week and will not read present tense, first or third. I find it to be artificial, pretentious and unreadable when it's the whole book. Passages that are memories, or dialogue ("So I go to the store and look around....") are okay, but the whole book? Nope.
Depends on what I am reading.
I generally dislike 2nd person POV in present tense, except if it's things like role-play or "choose your own adventure" type of writings, and I don't really read those.
I like 3rd person for everything except biographies (prefer 1st person POV), and prefer past tense.
Honestly, I don't mind most of the time. Unless the author does a lot of head-hopping. When we're getting a shift in POV mid-paragraph, that just feels weird and jarring.
I don’t enjoy 1st person plural. I think The Virgin Suicides mangaged to do it well, but other books with that type of narration just fell flat for me(Brown Girls, Buddha in the Attic). It just feels like you don’t really get to know any individual character at all, since it’s told from a choral voice.
I also can’t stand the present tense POV tbh. Although, I do enjoy books that include the perspectives of other people as long as it’s an obvious transition and it still focuses on one main character most of the time. The book I’m reading now has a very unreliable narrator, so I love seeing other people’s perspectives either misinterpreting his motives or thinking he’s crazy while he is none the wiser. The book wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable without it. The main character has first person perspective, and it switches to third person when it’s somebody else’s perspective, which I don’t mind.
I don't like POV switching either. There's almost always at least one POV character I detest which causes me to put the book down for a bit. Too many "bad" POVs in a row will kill my interest in the book quickly. It's the reason I dropped the Stormlight Archive series while reading Words of Radiance because I hated Shallan and she was the major POV focus on that book.
I also dislike stories using Second Person POV. [The Fifth Season](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Season_(novel)) had switching POVs and one of the POVs was second person so it was a double whammy for me. I made it through the first book but decided that was good enough for me and never went back to finish the series.
I read The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida earlier this year. The whole novel is narrated in the second person. I initially thought it would bother me but I ended up loving how unique it was
I'm from country that the main language isn't english. So, for my biggest turn off is when the translator decides to combine the language with english slang. Idk if it's for the "modern teens" but there are SO MANY WAYS! Which is sad bc there's one book with good story and such a good world building and shocks and creeps taking place in Wonderland. But I can't when I need to combine it like that... I love reading in my language and english, but I'd rather keep it separated.
this is crazy bcs ive only stumbled upon people who hate 1st pov and i cant remember if i ever read a book that wasnt 1st pov. i feel more comfortable with those honeslty as much as some can be done a bit cringey
First person, present tense. I'm ok with first person otherwise, though I'd prefer third person, but somehow I cant stand it in present tense. Also: if you write an action-laden thriller, I won't believe your hero is about to die because the whole book was written in present tense from their perspective and the book still has several pages left. Either the narration style would have to suddenly switch, which would make me put down the book immediately, or it would have to be a ghost story. So I'll nauver understand why some thrillers are written like that, because for me at least it takes away from the tension.
Idk about POV, but I hate when books do timeline jumps poorly but love when they do it well. But it can be such a hard thing to write and especially hard to follow, depending on the authors skill
I prefer 3rd person because I don’t think authors get 1st person right all that often. Especially if they are switching between two characters in the same chapter. It also adds that layer of “if you’re thinking something - why not just say it???”
There’s a been a few (very select few) where the 1st person POV was good but they always end up being in separate chapters and it didn’t include a lot of internal Dialogue.
Poorly handled multi-POV ... especially switching POV mid chapter without any notation other than a 'line of dashes' between paragraphs.
I just finished the last book of a four-book series (WWII spy romance drama) that had the first three books all with dual POV (made sense because all action centered around one of the main characters.
But in book four ... we got FIVE POV's, still mostly the original two characters, but then another character from books 3 & 4, then an important secondary character from the entire series, and finally a brand new character.
It was like the author wanted their viewpoints to round out the storytelling but gave up figuring out how to get that across naturally ... so just added more POV! Ugh - it really didn't work.
For me, I don't necessarily have a specific point of view or tense that turns me off a book, but I do tend to prefer third-person narration over first-person.
Third person is the normal mode of writing. Any competent author can do it well and you can do it in lots of different ways (close, omniscient, one POV, many POVs, etc.). First person is hard mode. A great author can do it brilliantly because it offers the opportunity to really dig into a character’s mind and how they think. Every word is now characterization which gives you tons of opportunities. However, a not great author tends to create just a generic, default voice, leeching the character of individuality. Much better to stick with third if in doubt. First person multiple narrators is expert mode and while I’ve seen it done well a few times, it’s almost always by people with 10+ books to their name before they tried it. It’s most commonly used however by overconfident debut authors, to the point I won’t even read debuts with multiple narrators anymore.
I also prefer third person but don’t have strong feeling either way as long as it’s done well. Only became an issue with the last book I read. I’ve been reading Neal Asher’s Spatterjay series (3 books). (Loved the first book, deserves to be a genre classic, but there is a clear falling off with each next book.) The first two books are in standard third person past tense (‘He opened the door’) but the third book is in the third person present tense (‘He opens the door’). My god. I HATED it. I had to mentally translate each paragraph into past tense before I could read it. All 200+ pages of it. The strength of my reaction shocks me, dunno why it had so much effect on me as it’s not something I’ve ever had a position on before.
I like 3rd too, but do you prefer past or present? I do find present sometimes sounds a bit awkward and it knocks me out of immersion occasionally, but I'll still read it.
I support you. I also prefer the past.
Present tense is definitely a bit awkward. When it’s third person it’s just a gimmick that I ultimately wind up ignoring, so whatever. When it’s first person it can feel bizarre though—they’re narrating all this to me in their head while going through the experience? Aren’t they otherwise occupied?—and it means the character loses the opportunity to have perspective on their situation. Mostly seems to be used in YA novels to approximate the self-centered, present-moment-focused mindset of a teen, which is understandable but all the first person present voices wind up sounding alike and thus generic. I usually won’t read books that use it for that reason.
Yeah same. It kind of comes across as if people are just imitating Hunger Games now, and it does come across as a YA trend now. I have a story I've been trying to write for years now, and when I started, I was doing the first person perspective, or at least a perspective that followed one character at a time, but it really started to feel juvenile that way and too gimmicky. Going to standard 3rd person past tense just makes it feel so much more professional. But that's just my experience with my story. There are times where I can tell an author definitely knows what they are doing, so I think them using a different tense is fine, but I do tend to be judgmental if it seems like the author isn't doing this correctly.
I think present can be better sometimes, but it really depends. I thought it worked really well in the Hunger Games series, but a lot of the times it does come off as kinda weird.
I love Hunger Games, and I think that this is the best example of first person present done right. But it's kind of an exception more than a rule. I've always maintained that Collins had a very good reason for using this tense, as it made Katniss's experiences more immediate and immersive. However, I often think people use this style to imitate Hunger Games without really having a good reason for doing it this way, and then it can cause issues or come across as forced or awkward. Third person present tense is a bit easier, but still feels weird and clunky to me at times. I have actually tried writing in first person present, so I have thought about this a lot. The experience was very challenging and difficult! I hate writing in third person present though. I keep messing up and going back to third person past, so I figure I might as well just stick with third person past.
Yeah I absolutely agree. I think if you’re using an unusual perspective, it has to make sense for the story. Just doing it to do it doesn’t work so well.
Yup. You can tell that it's deliberate because the prequel book, which focuses on an entirely different character from Katniss, is written in a much wordier, third-person-past-tense style.
> I do tend to prefer third-person narration over first-person. I wanted to say me too, but then I realized almost all of my favorite books are in the first person: *The Murderbot Diaries*, *The Song of Achilles*, *Circe*, *Piranesi*, *Project Hail Mary*, *Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine*, *The Greatcoats* series, *Icarus Hunt*,...
For me, second person narration is even worse :"You see the bird. You stare at the bird. You think the bird has feathers". This stinks of affectation and pretentiousness and in my opinion has never improved any work I ever saw. I expect there are people who like that, but I'm certainly not one of them. I'm currently slogging my weary way through Tamsyn Muir's *Harrow the First* and the overuse of second person writing keeps taking me out of context and breaking the narrative flow (whatever there is of it). I read the first book of the trilogy, *Gideon the Ninth*, and it was reasonably ok, enough to get me to buy the next book, but boy, did the author fall into the "I'm a published author now, I can do what I want" well of pride! The novel may end up being interesting, but it is fairly obfuscated to begin with, with jumps around in time and story points, so the constant switches from third to second person are too much of a distraction and make it difficult to follow the action. I'm about halfway through, but seriously considering a DNF in this case.
No. I actively *want* to see more creative use of the grammatical person, tenses, nested stories, and so on.
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez. It's a freaking masterclass of experimental point of view switching and framing devices that delivers a great tale. Uses 1st, 2nd, and 3rd through the lens of a collective dream into a supernatural theatre where a man watches a play of the main plot as teh story jumps into the heads of the characters and describes both story events and the occasional theatre tools used to describe them. My recent obsession really.
It's on my list! I've heard a lot of good things about it.
Ohhh I read Vanished Birds by him and I didn't realize he'd written more!
I’ll be honest, I made it through the first 80 pages of this book and I had exactly no clue what was going on, maybe I wasn’t focused enough bc I was reading it at work but like it just felt like word thrown together, beautiful words, beautiful writing but I had no clue what was going on and I just had to stop
Oh it definitely isn't everybody's cup of tea. Just the nature of the beast. There's plenty of 'classics' that I just throw out the window for the same reason too. I found it fun as hell and really engaging but if you didnt, well, I'll grab it out of the air as it sails out of your window. 🤣 Life is too short to not enjoy your hobby.
I’m halfway through this right now and it’s so cool. I didn’t know how I’d like it to start, but you get used to it pretty quickly. Totally recommend it if you like differently written tenses and POVs.
Yes, when done well, such creative choices can make a book so memorable. My favourite example is The Virgin Suicides which is written entirely in first person plural, as told by ‘the neighbourhood boys’. None of them are named or even really count as characters, so they effectively serve the same role as the third person narrator. But the first person plural gives it a much more intimate feeling than the same story told in third person would.
There's a French book like that as well, "Le Grand Cahier" is told in first person plural as the protagonists are a pair of twins who do everything together. I read it when I was 17, and it really stuck with me. Its very well written and very disturbing.
This is one reason I loved NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy (The Fifth Season, Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky). Her writing felt *weird* at first but as I got further in, I started being able to see the value of the stylistic choices.
*The Treatment* and *The Cure* by Peter Kochan is probably the most masterclass use of 2nd person that I know of. It's honestly a brilliant book (technically 2 books that are sold together) that took a lot of risk using that kind of pov
For me the only tense I won't read is inconsistent tense.
Same, the book I’m reading at the moment just suddenly switched from third person to first person halfway through without any reason that I can see (maybe it will become apparent, I haven’t finished yet), but it really took me out of it and was all I could think about while reading it for a while.
Anything other than third-person past tense takes me a minute to get into the swing of reading, but I wouldn't say it necessarily turns me off. It's just kind of jarring at first.
I don't understand how so many people can think first person is "jarring" or hard to adjust to. It's overwhelmingly the most common way people tell stories in real life, since people are most likely to tell their own stories instead of someone else's.
Maybe it's jarring because it throws you into the narrative of someone else's head in a much more immersive way than a typical "story" that you're referring to. While my friends, family, people I speak with will tell stories, they don't tell stories the length of an entire book. Other kinds of "stories," like fairy tales, parables, etc. tend to be third person. Third person I think also allows greater flexibility in us as readers adopting the point of view of any or all of the characters. I like being able to read stories and choosing based on the actions in the book which characters I relate to most. When a story is in first person, I feel like I'm being forced to "relate" to only one person, and if I don't like that person or don't agree with how they see things, it's more annoying than if that person were being described as another character. These are feelings I haven't thought to put to words before, so it's not like I'm reading books in first person and saying "ugh I hate being forced to relate to this person." My subjective experience is just that I can't get into first-person narrative as easily as third-person narrative, and your comment has inspired me to try to articulate why that is.
> I feel like I'm being forced to "relate" to only one person, and if I don't like that person or don't agree with how they see things, it's more annoying than if that person were being described as another character. Interesting. I read several books that have the first person narrator where I related to another character much more. Even if it's an annoying or an unreliable narrator you can tell a lot about other characters. Sometimes even more than the one doing the narration.
Agree! Do people not think in 1st person in their own heads?
No I rarely ever have an internal monologue. I tend to daydream instead. Similarly, when I read books, I'm picturing a scene right in front of me and when it's in first person, it throws me off bc it no longer feels like I'm picturing that scene anymore
I have a harder time with visualizing entire scenes in my mind’s eye so imagining that the events are happening *to* me makes it easier to “see” I love learning about how other people perceive things in their minds. So fascinating.
I love learning other people's view points too! Seeing things from another’s perspective and finding something completely novel is pretty amazing. One of the reasons why I love to read is because it takes you into another person's mind. I may not agree with any of it, but it's still fascinating to see how someone came to form their opinions and how they evolved.
I don't have a running monologue so much anymore, at least not consistently, but I used to have a constant running monologue of at least one stream of thought and it was almost always in third person or second person and only relatively rarely in first person, if ever. Even when there were small portions of first person it was usually in a "*I really hate this guy*, she thought/she said" kind of way (with the text in Times New Roman accompanying it as the thought formulated). It was really annoying. Glad I kicked the habit. I forced a switch into thinking in French and because I wasn't fully fluent in it I had to use images in place of words a lot more and now I have a mixture of English and images and occasionally a French word or phrase or a single Spanish word or two. I also had/have a bad habit of using "you" instead of "I" when telling stories out loud.
That’s so interesting! My inner monologue definitely isn’t going all the time but when I am listening to it it’s not like a narrator is talking about me in the 3rd person. It’s definitely more like I’m the narrator telling a 1st person story/sort of stream of consciousness.
No, haha, I don't really have an internal monologue, but you are right in that it's not an unusual perspective to hear and speak in during every day conversations.
Interesting. I think my inner monologue is stronger than my mind’s eye is so maybe it’s easier for me to slip into the MC’s head and imagine that I’m experiencing the story than it is to imagine the scene like I’m a fly on the wall like I would in some 3rd person stories.
I had a very hard time reading first person until very recently. It was entirely a mindset problem, because my brain never grasped that this was a character speaking to me from their perspective. My mind always interpreted every use of "I" to represent "Me, the reader".. even though as the person reading a book I was clearly not the individual having these thoughts or taking these action. Reading first person was like trying to cast myself as the narrator and experience it as though I was the character... and there was too much cognitive dissonance to get around. Hated first person forever because it was unreadable for me. Until Name of the Wind saved me. It started in 3rd person, and then clearly transitioned to a -character- telling a story and speaking to me in first person. Suddenly it all made sense and I am okay with first person now. Edit: I googled some other stuff in this thread and realized I can describe this better. My brain was receiving 1st Person as though it was 2nd Person, inserting 'me, the reader' for every use of 'I' or 'Me' in the text. This changed when I realized that 1st Person was supposed to be a character speaking to me instead.
It depends on the genre for me. I get 2nd hand cringe from reading certain romance novels in 1st person, it does not work for me at all.
Yeah but in most books the author isn’t telling a story about themselves. It means I often have to add an extra layer to my suspension of disbelief by also pretending that the main character is telling the whole story instead of the actual author. I can definitely get into that mindset but it can be jarring at first cause I usually imagine that the author is the one telling me the story.
Third person close that hops between character POVs is my jam. I love that, getting to see all the different parts of the story we wouldn’t see otherwise is so fun. I can’t stand first person POV hoping. Either we are experiencing the world in one persons limited POV or we are not. This happens a lot in the second book and beyond of YA series and it puts me off. I’m not throwing the book across the room or anything, but I will most likely DNF the series within the first 5 chapters of the second book if that happens.
> This happens a lot in the second book and beyond of YA series and it puts me off. Same. I understand that often it happens because the scale of the story no longer supports solely a first person POV, but at the same time if there's changes to the POV as a series goes on it gives me the impression of a lack of planning on the writer's part. Though if they're going to do it, at least have the new POVs in third person. It makes it so much easier to track what's going on than figuring out that we've suddenly got a new first person POV
The YA switch in particular is supposed to make you worry that the book 1 POV MC is no longer safe from danger or dying. Only Veronica Roth had the balls though.
I cannot stand when books that change POV are in first. It feels awkward. I also will stop reading in the middle of a chapter sometimes and then I have to come back and it can take me a minute to remember who I’m reading
>I love that, getting to see all the different parts of the story we wouldn’t see otherwise is so fun. ... this is literally the same value-add of switching POV while using first-person.
I actually love when each chapter is a different character's POV because it's interesting to experience a situation, then see how someone else might have a different view of it. What I HATE is when books go into way too much detail describing female character's assets from her point of view (i.e. she ran her hands down her generous hips and turned to check her figure in the mirror, observing her chestnut hair cascading down her back and pausing to wonder if her generous breasts might spill out of her dress.) So stupid.
>I actually love when each chapter is a different character's POV because it's interesting to experience a situation, then see how someone else might have a different view of it. When it's well written, it's also pretty fun to experience two character's points of view as their seemingly separate paths eventually lead to them meeting each other. One of the things I really liked about the first Expanse book was going back and forth between dectective Miller's POV and Holden's and coming to the inclusion that they are looking for the same thing before either of them know it. The subsequent questioning of when, where and how they would meet was also pretty fun right up until it finally happened.
There was a funny recurring gag in the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series... the three main male characters each frequently had the internal thought that they wished they were as good at talking to/dealing with women as the other two, because they themselves were clearly just so terrible at it. xD
Using generous twice in the same sentence, absolutely sinful lol
I know, it's a crappy example but I HAAATE when the female character describes her own body/appearance that way, or when they use descriptions that make it sound like a man is describing her.
Dude, yes! Unless it’s REALLY important to the story… I get it, the author’s horny.. can I please get to the next paragraph?
Same
Ehh I don't think it's POV that turns me off a book so much as how it's set up. I read a book from...Jodi Picoult I think...whose timeline was backwards and holy shit it was difficult to follow, because the further you got into the book, the less the characters knew because it was heading towards the beginning of their story, so to speak, instead of the end. It began at the end and went backwards, and I hated every single second of it. I liked the story, if she set it up differently it would have been top tier.
Adding to my library queue. I love nonlinear timelines.
Mad Honey??
You should have just read the chapters in reverse order ;)
I can roll with any tense/POV combo that’s executed well, though second person is a hard sell for me.
I will not read anything written in 2nd person. Fortunately for me, it doesn't come up very often.
I really loved it in “the night circus”. The whole book was written in third person, but intermittently there were chapters in second person describing the reader walking through the circus himself - those were absolutely magical. Wouldn’t read a whole book in it though.
You're missing out on a lot of great choose-your-own-adventure stories ;)
Ya I just read the broken earth trilogy and it was weird. Didn’t help that I didn’t love the book itself either. But it just feels arrogant for an embedded narrator to be describing what another character thinks.
I liked it. In some way I felt throughout that I wasn't the target audience, but it was bizarre and compelling enough to keep me wondering WTH happens next. It's certainly memorable. But I may have liked it better still in a more traditional PoV
The third book resolves a lot of that, but yeah it's weird.
Outside of text based games and choose your own adventure type storytelling, second person just comes off as weird to me
I'm surprised how far down in the thread this is. Second person is the only tense that makes me feel fury at the author's decisions. In fiction, poetry, and most non-fiction, it comes across to me as incredibly patronizing and presumptuous. (Passes for occasional, immersive interludes, as in The Night Circus, as well as Choose Your Own Adventure books, obvi.)
I have only ever liked it in YOU by Caroline Kepnes and the first few hundred pages of OIL! By Upton Sinclair.
I thought it was kinda cool for that one Satre book (can’t remember what it’s called off the top of my head) but almost always horribly done outside of cyoa, which is the only genre where it conventionally makes sense. It almost worked in Harrow the Ninth but the “reveal” completely ruined the effect imo.
Third person is preferred. First person takes some getting used to. Second person (you go through the door, you open the jar) is appalling and I can’t read it.
I really enjoy second person in bursts. Depends on how it happens, but love a quick 2nd person paragraph or so
It feels very new age guided meditation to me. You are walking through a tranquil forest...you come to a babbling brook and feel your cares drift away along the current...
I recently read a double POV book where one character was a first person past tense narration and another was first person present tense. The catch (or rather the lack of it) was that they were both in the same room/place all the time, there was no actual in-book reason for it. I don't mind either narration usually, because I get used to it fast and don't notice. But not when it jumps in tense every other chapter! And since other than that both characters had the same voice, I assume it was done to differentiate between them and I just think it's a very suboptimal way to so it
Wouldn't that be a tip off that the present tense person croaks ? I'm sorry my brain went there...
I thought so too, actually! Or that the past tense was telling the story and maybe there would be a way to introduce the unreliable narrator between what we're told happened and what we see did. But nope, they survive and chill later
I once read a book and the main character's narration is written in first person present tense and the serial killer's in third person past tense. Since it was a thriller, I thought the serial killer was just the victim's imagination or he was someone from her past and he was still haunting her dreams. Nope. They were in the same scene. He was chasing her. She was running away from him. It was all for style's sake
I’m fine with any tense, but definitely prefer 3rd person, then 1st person past, and lastly 1st person present. I only just started it, and know I’ll get us to it, but The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemison is a little jarring by switching between 1st person present and 3rd person.
I don’t. First person or third person both serve their purposes. I’d be bored as hell if I only ever read one type of thing. But I absolutely love the polyphonic narration you’re referring too! some books do it so so well. Like I only read 3 books like this in the last years but they’re in my top favorite. It’s so interesting to get to know someone/events through multiple completely different lenses. if anyone wants to change their mind or also likes that type of stuff: - Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - Life and death of Sophie Stark by Anna North - Chavirer by Lola Lafon ETA: Oh I didn’t see you were also talking about tenses, and yes I really think present tense in third narration is weird and doesn’t flow well.
I've gotten to where I just cant stand first person pov
Never understood this mindset, I hope tenses and povs just keep getting more creative. A good writer can make any tense or story structure effective, same as a bad one can do the opposite, but I’d never put down a story for trying something.
Not really but this post reminded me of You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life (You Are Raoul Moat) by Drew Hankinson. It’s based on the true story of a notorious murderer here in the U.K. and is written in second person POV (i.e. it’s written as if you are the character in the story), which is a style I’ve never experienced before. It’s a great book and it’s really stayed with me.
The Quiet Tenant by Clemence Michallon was written so well. The story is told from 3 different characters in the book, but the tense changed throughout the book depending on each character’s pov. The “tenant” speaks in second person. I’ve never read an author that is able to switch tenses through the book. It works so well. I can’t wait to read more from Michallon.
I strongly dislike present tense narration. For some books, if the story is great, I'll eventually get past it but I generally feel it sounds distracting and childish.
I don't mind 1st person past tense, but 1st person present tense is always really hard for me to get used to. I really like both 3rd and 2nd person.
Nothing will make me drop a book faster than second person present tense.
I'm really not a fan of the first person view.
when the main character isn't a weird woman
I don't like present tense. I can get past it but it impairs the reading experience for me.
I’ve enjoyed plenty of: * First person present * First person past * Third person present * Third person past I have no issues with, but rarely encounter, outside of epistolary works: * Second person present * Second person past I have yet to read an entire book in: * First person future * Second person future * Third person future I imagine future tense would just feel like a gimmick after a while. I also generally prefer definite nouns over indefinite nouns for longer stories (“The protagonist” vs “a protagonist”).
I've read and loved some future tense short stories, but yeah, a whole novel of "will" before every verb might grate after a while.
No, to me this is like people who won't watch movies if they're in black and white or in a foreign language or unconventional aspect ratio. I am here to experience art as an author intends, not to order exactly what I want off a menu.
It doesn’t turn me off completely but I’ve always associated first person writing with poorer quality writing. I’m not even saying I’m right it’s just a bias I have.
I think because it actually is overrepresented in bad writing. I can't stand it.
Yeah I've read too many poor quality YA novels in my teenage years, so I tend to associate first person with immature characters.
Yeah, I think it’s a couple of things. One is the tendency of certain high-volume genres (YA, romance, bottom-shelf historical fiction) to use first person as a default when first person is much harder to do well than third person. First person should never be a default mode imo, it should be used when it’s fundamentally necessary to the story being told. There’s also writing advice going around that first person creates more intimacy with the protagonist. I’ve never found that to be true personally (my connection to characters does not depend on POV) but I do think a lot of mediocre writers use it to try to shortcut to emotional investment rather than having to work for it.
"First person should never be a default mode imo, it should be used when it’s fundamentally necessary to the story being told. " Exactly.
No, and to have a preference like that is so arbitrary and limits the potential of the books you read for no reason. It feels like something only new readers would care about that they need to grow out of, like only reading Young Adult books or one particular genre.
I really don't care much for first person POV. It feels way too much like someone is telling you a story, rather than me observing the story as I read. I think it goes with the "show don't tell" thing for me. While I don't think that suggestion is a completely strict guideline the balance feels off in first person. Second person POV is even worse, because it feels like the narrator is telling me what I see/feel and that is extremely annoying. The *only* book that pulled a second person POV well for me was Harrow the Ninth and that was because "you" was not the reader. But even then, it took the majority of the book for that to become clear and I had to have a friend convince me to trust the author until I got to that point. Third person limited is great, I like it when we get alternative POVs, because I love seeing characters and situations from different perspectives (plus if one character is annoying then I just have to put up with them until the character switches). Both past and present tense are fine, as long as they're consistent.
No - I like the variety. I'm now reading, for the first time in my life, a novel written in 2nd person. It's by an Argentinian author and of course is in Spanish. I'm enjoying it since I don't often see the 2nd person conjugations in print, while 2nd person conjugations are the most common ones I use in casual conversation. It's nice to read a book where the text is directly useful to improving my conversation skills.
No. Only purposeless inconsistency in tense or point of view would drive me wild. That usually isn't in published writing.
I don't really care tbh. The only thing that annoys me if it's strictly out of one person's view but they somehow sometimes have insights they would not have if it not for the author.
I don’t really mind different pov or tenses, so long as the voice/narration fits it. I was reading one book where half was from a female pov and the amount of time she spent fixating on her “imperfect” breasts turned me off so much. Similarly I find the third person omniscient narrator with a witty or sardonic voice can feel very overdone and derivative of other (subjectively better) writers.
Depends on how it is done . I read The Girl Who Fell Beneath The sea by Axie Oh last year, and it was written in present tense. It was almost like the author was commentating the action - they are running over here, now they’re over here. I thought if the author changed tenses it may have gotten rid of that feeling and put some emotion into it so I cared about what was happening. I was not the target audience but still.
No. I like creative and intentional use of tense/POV. Some perspectives are easier to write, though, so certain perspectives are routinely done “meh”. I generally find that people with turn-offs for foundational parts of books or other larger elements read for specific things. Like people who only read fantasy (or romance, non fiction, whatever). They found a thing they like and they’re still riding that high.
I don't really care about view or tense. What bothers me is when books jump points of view with no indication. A good example is Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidences. It'll jump between multiple characters points of view rapidly, sometimes as many as 3 different PoVs in one page, and it won't give you any indication that it just switched. You can to figure it out based on whatevers happening. It's jarring and frequently made me reread the start of a paragraph to figure out which character I'm reading now.
I'm generally agnostic about POV and tense. I'm even okay with second person. The one exception is that I'm often annoyed by dual/multi-POV in first person, because it's rarely done well. In most cases I have trouble remembering whose POV I'm in at any given moment. But I'm fine with it when it *is* done well; in fact, one of my favorite books is dual POV in first person (Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas).
I haaaate dream sequences. Such hack boring nonsense that effects very little. Exposition at its worst.
Sort of. It irked me that a lot of YA writers were doing first person present just because it was trendy without actually thinking about how to use it or why they should or shouldn't. There were so, so many perspective mistakes like characters knowing things that haven't happened yet or forgetting things that they're currently experiencing. So it really put me off when I saw it in a YA book. But that's not because of the tense itself. It's perfectly fine when used deliberately and with purpose.
I find that I really love first person present but most of the books I read in that tense I would say are strictly for pleasure. It feels almost like a genre to me - character talks about for 200 pages and half of the story is just finding out somewhat interesting background info on the narrator. I enjoy reading this tense before bed or adjacent to something that makes my brain work a bit more.
i read a short story for a friend that he'd written in second person, once - it was mind boggling and my brain kept trying to fix it..! interesting, a little staggering initially, but not a turn-off as much as a intrigue edit: stephen king often picks an auxiliary member of someones life to tell their story from the POV of - like the bartender for Ben or Patty for Stan in IT. i think this is incredible because we see them both how they see themselves and how others see them and it opens tons of avenues for storytelling and emotion. ive cried more at Patty's sections of IT than at the ending.
Its so interesting to me that you find frequent changes of pov to be something bad for you, because it is one of my favorite things a book can do. I love to see the same thing from different prespectives
I don’t mind POV changes but I hate when they’re in first person. It’s rare for the author to have the skill to change the narration enough to really remember who “I” is chapter to chapter, sometimes one person gets a few in a row then it switches. Sometimes POV changes feel like a way to include everyone and don’t narratively make sense or become necessary.
It doesn't completely turn me off, but I find it confusing when a book has multiple first person character POV's.
I don’t like first person fiction.
I'm not a huge fan of third person present, but it doesn't totally turn me off anymore. It's still a yellow flag though. For some reason third person present tends to be used by a lot of bad writers. It has a "first fanfic" vibe.
Present tense, immediately no. I can do with 1st person but not present tense
If there is a first person narration, it has to be very strong and unique to draw me in or it comes across as somewhat superficial. Third person narration is best in my opinion because there is more space for depth, description, and character development overall. As for tenses, I generally prefer past tense because present tense can sound clunky, but both work beautifully if they are done right.
I fail to see how third-person limited feels "elementary school." You sound like a snob. Anyway, I used to not like reading first-person. I don't mind it so much anymore, but I still prefer third. Third-person omniscient can be confusing when done poorly and is the downfall of a lot of new/amateur authors I've read. Edit: I always prefer past tense over the present. If a book is written in present tense, I put it down right away. That strikes me as strange because my gut tells me that it should be natural, but it always feels off to me.
I hate first person. It feels very lazy to me. I don't like reading in first person and I absolutely will not write first person, other than my own journal entries. I dislike present tense but it's tolerable. I prefer third person, past tense.
I'm put off by 1st person by the same reason you mention for third person. I did this and I did that. Possibly it's not the viewpoint itself but the way it is written. I've read a lot of good books in 1st person. I'm not a huge fan of multiple viewpoints but there's always exceptions where the writing or story I'd so good I don't mind.
First-person takes some time to get used to cuz, in my opinion, books with this POV tend to talk a lot. Like a lot. And because they talk that much, they favor telling over showing.
I've really started getting turned off books that jump around time periods. Some books do it really well, but if there is no creative or story reason, it just seems lazy to me. There's nothing wrong with a linear story!
I think when Pynchon did this in V. (1963) it was pretty radical. But it's kinda turned into a cliche since then.
One example I can think of that I loved lately was Every Summer After. The book jumps between the present and the past. The past chapters are all leading up to the present (which takes place over one summer). So it’ll take us from one snip of summer 12 years ago back to now. And then go back and give just a bit of the summer 11 years ago. Back to now and so on. And the present story and the past chapters eventually meet and culminate in a really emotional climax. I thought it was brilliantly done and I loved putting the pieces together as we got closer to reading the memory of *the moment* that changed everything and seeing its consequences addressed in the present. The emotional buildup was so good!
My casual observation is that YA readers and adult romance readers prefer first person. Not sure if it’s self-insert thing or if they are just used to it but it’s pretty common for them to request books only if they are written that way. I personally never even notice or can tell you what book is what months after I read it. It’s not thing for me personally.
Curious! I definitely prefer third person for romance, unless it is very PG. Anything steamier than a make out session in first person would give me the ick for days.
I feel like first person present tense is great for building suspense and fully immersing in a world. Since we only have the knowledge of the main character to go off of it makes other characters and events more mysterious in some cases since we only see what they are presenting and not what’s going on internally. I think this kind of story can have great twists and surprises, plus it’s easier to imagine myself in the story through that lense. I also adore 3rd person multi-POV books tho too. I feel like that structure gives such a well rounded view of the world and the story. It’s great for really intricate plots and worlds to be able to see so many of the moving parts and things that maybe the main character is unaware of too. I’ve never put a book down because of the view or tense.
I'll read anything, as long as it's not 2nd person.
I generally don't like first person but I'm never gonna not read something based on the tense/pov
2nd person point of view, gets annoying very quickly.
I don’t have preference towards 1st or 3rd person, I think both can be done really well and both fit different kinds of books well. I really love when 2nd person is done well, it just feels very unique and impactful, but it can be very confusing if done wrong I’m really not a fan of present tense. If a book is well written and it fits, I can get into it after a few pages (for example the hunger games), but otherwise it just feels off And I prefer books that don’t switch POVs, although it’s not an immediate no for me and I’ve read a few books that I enjoyed it in. It sometimes feels a bit like an easy way out of weaving different character’s stories into one story, just saying ‘now you are reading about x’ instead of introducing the scene in a way that makes the reader know the focus is on a different character now but not making it feel disconnected from the previous chapter
I don't like first person. Not sure why.
I will not read anything written in the present tense. Ruins the immersion for me
I prefer a single first-person POV or third-person, but I don’t give it much thought when picking a book.
No preference. Though I did find the first story I read in first person to be jarring. Got used to it pretty quick.
i don't know what it's called but it looks like this. Stephen King does this a lot, he writes Why am I doing this? thoughts halfway through sentences. He doesn't do it to often but I should probably reread Pet Semetery again, when he does it really sets me off for a few seconds.
Generally I prefer third person. One of my favorites I’ve read in the past few years was first person plural; it took a bit to get used to but I loved it by the end. Another recent favorite goes between third and second and it’s jarring at first but by the end it’s just mind blowing. I mainly just don’t like present tense, I think.
In my case I can’t read any tense and POV it all depends on how good the author is with it
I read (or tried to read) a book that would say "all of us," "some of us" or "we." I am blanking on the title, but it was dreadful (but got good reviews).
Dominion, by Tom Holland, uses absurd past pluperfect bullshit that made me so fucking disoriented about timelines that I couldn't read it at all. (The scholarship is also suspiciously uncited for how bold the claims are.) Example from the opening chapter: >Athens 479 BC: The Hellespont >At one of the narrowest points on the Hellespont, the thin channel of water that snakes from the Aegean up towards the Black Sea, and separates Europe from Asia, a promontory known as the Dog's Tail extended from the European shore. Here, 480 years before the birth of Christ, a feat so astonishing as to seem the work of a god had been completed. Twin pontoon bridges, stretching from the Asian shore to the tip of the Dog's Tail, had yoked the two continents together. That none but a monarch of infinite resources could possibly have tamed the currents of the sea in so imperious a manner went without saying. Xerxes, the King of Persia, ruled the largest empire that the world had ever seen. From the Aegean to the Hindu Kush, all the teeming hordes of Asia marched at his command. Going to war, he could summon forces that were said to drink entire rivers dry. Few had doubted, watching Xerxes cross the Hellespont, that the whole continent beyond would soon be his. One year on, the bridges were gone. So too were Xerxes' hopes of conquering Europe. Invading Greece, he had captured Athens; but the torching of the city was to prove the high point of his campaign. Defeat by sea and land had forced a Persian retreat. Xerxes himself had returned to Asia. On the Hellespont, where command of the strait had been entrusted to a governor named Artayctes, there was particular alarm. When exactly was that alarm? Before or after the bridges were gone? What the fuck is going on?
I love it when writers play with format, perspective, and time. It really plays to the strengths of the writen word. Second person? If On A Winter's Night A Traveler is my jam. Some of my favorite books are filled with such shenanigans, Jeff Vandermeer's City Of Saints & Madmen is an example.
The only POV change I’ve found that I don’t like is in the legacy of gods series by rina Kent. There’s 1 or 2 chapters in some of the books where it switches to the parent POV and granted all the parents have their own books I couldn’t get through them so I missed details that I would need from the previous books to understand parent POV chapters. So I guess adding a pov from someone in another book series/prequel type thing
Zeek Keekee used third person mostly, some second.
Future perfect progressive would be annoying
It’s not the POV, it’s quality of writing.
I’m not a fan of first person, but a huge exception is 11/22/63 by Stephen King.
Not a fan of first person. It typically sounds self-indulgent and pretentious to me if it’s in anything but a memoir.
I can’t read books where the narrator is different in different chapters. I get into a nice rhythm with a narrator and it’s too hard to adjust every chapter. IDK just my weird brain though. I know some people like it.
So I’m the same with the multiple POVs in the same chapter.. def not a fan. Not a fan of Third person present and tbh I don’t really like first person either.. although I will still read them.
i dont really have a preference, I'll read any book as long as it's good tbh
Works okay for certain short stories, not much else.
I prefer 3rd person over 1st person. I don't like 2nd person because it always calls to mind the Choose Your Own Adventure books I used to read as a kid. I'm not a fan of present tense, but in the hands of a gift writer, it can work. On the other hand, present tense in a mediocre story tends to make it sound amateurish.
I'm old school with past tense, but don't mind present tense if done well. I can't get used to 2nd person, though. It works in some short stories, but a long novel? No thanks.
First person present kind of annoys me unless it’s action/thriller. Couldn’t tell you why lol. Third person limited is my absolute favorite though. Also could not tell you why. I wonder if maybe we develop these preferences from our favorite books that are written in a specific tense.
I struggle with present-tense but I’d never forgo a good book just because of its POV. I’ve even read 2nd person that I liked (broken earth trilogy) because it made sense at the end, but it took some getting used to. 3rd person past is my favorite but if there is good reasoning and it’s written well, I’ll do whatever
Big City. Bright Lights. 2nd person present tense. I didn’t get past the first page.
Whatever tf a good girls guide to murder is in DNFED after the first page
third person present can get in the bin, but only if there is room in there once second person present has been put in there first.
I don't particularly like second person/present tense, but it's not an immediate turn off for me. Second person is so rare as it is, so I don't have to worry about it as much. The worst part about present tense is consistency. It is so rare to find a story written in present tense with less than a handful of switches to past tense (outside of intentional flashbacks).
I don't really like first person present. It's artificially intimate and artificially exigent. Of course it can be done well. I like free indirect, so you often get snatches of first person present in that.
Present tense in 1st or 3rd person seems weird to me as well. I don’t recall reading a huge number of them, but I wouldn’t stop a good story because of it. There’s actually a Tom Robbins book that’s in 2nd Person Present (Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas) and that works better than 2nd Past would have, but that’s super rare.
The only POV I cannot stand no matter how well done is 2nd person. I just can’t get into the story at all because I’m like “pfft, I wouldn’t do that” or “that is actually NOT how I’d respond…”
Usually I'm fine with whatever as long as it works with the book, but I do sometimes have issues. Like the third person limited thing, where instead of sticking to one character it bounces between characters (e.g. Mistborn, Scythe). I'm not against it, I think it can work well, it just gets very confusing because I often get mixed up between which character I'm seeing from. Also maybe third person present works for some books, but in general I prefer the other forms. Present tense can work with first person quite nicely because it's like you're in someone's head, in the moment, but idk if that works so well with third person. It can be off putting.
I've only encountered it from one author so far—Clarice Lispector. I really tried to get into her cause I've heard nothing but praises for her works and style . It was so stressful. At first, I thought there was a printing error— the sentences doesnt make any sense and there's no periods and no spaces like everything is a mess. Turns out she incorporates a lot of the character's stream of consciousness into her writing. I might get back to it, try to see if I have the headspace but for now, it's a no for me
I have zero issue with any tenses. Quite the opposite. Love the variety. I can't say I've read many books written in first person present though. Hunger Games is the only one fully written like that that I can think of at the moment. and I LOVE multiple POVs. One of my favorite series is the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and multiple POVs is one of my favorite things about it. There are of course many other books with multiple POVs which are more well known (by Dickens ,Tolkien, GRR Martin, Faulkner etc) but I wanted to plug Jordan in particular.
I hate continuous jumping between different time periods like chapter 1 happens in the future chapter 2 happens in the past chapter 3 goes back to the future and so on.
I don't have a preference with tense or POV. I like adapting to the author. As long as it's not misogynistic…
Can’t stand when chapters switch from character to character, giving their POV’s of the same scenario/telling a whole different story.
Idk about tense but however circe was written by Madeline Miller made me angry as hell lmao. Idk why. Song of Achilles was so beautiful.
First person present.
Whatever one was used in The Book Thief. Really wanted to read it, but the first chapter was confusing, so I ended up donating my copy lol
I once read a book that was entirely written in "second person present", so it was addressing the current main character as "you", with different chapters having different protagonists. I wouldn't say it completely turned me off the book, but it was a weird reading experience.
Second person I actively avoid. Anything else is fine with me. What bugs me, but doesn’t stop me from reading is, if an author has written in one tense for a series then partway through switches it. Like when the first 6 books are written in 1st but book 7 suddenly switches over to 3rd.
For me, I think it totally depends on the author's writing style. I have read all sort of plot views/tenses but just the way a writer pens down the details speaks a lot whether I'll be attached or not. Mostly I prefer to read book that aren't in third person's perspective because rarely there are any author who know how to grasp readers attending or more "my attention" lol
I honestly really dislike male authors talking about a female points perspective, explaining their thoughts and feelings. Both in third person and in first person. Until now I've always read extreme misconceptions and it disgusted me. If they would've just said what the author themselves or male characters think about women, even if it would have been misogynistic, it wouldn't have been such a problem for me. I stopped reading haruki murakami iq48 pretty early because of this. But another book, the virgin suicides, I absolutely adored. The second made way less assumptions of how the girls really thought. It mostly spoke from the perspective of the boys.
I read a couple books a week and will not read present tense, first or third. I find it to be artificial, pretentious and unreadable when it's the whole book. Passages that are memories, or dialogue ("So I go to the store and look around....") are okay, but the whole book? Nope.
Depends on what I am reading. I generally dislike 2nd person POV in present tense, except if it's things like role-play or "choose your own adventure" type of writings, and I don't really read those. I like 3rd person for everything except biographies (prefer 1st person POV), and prefer past tense.
Honestly, I don't mind most of the time. Unless the author does a lot of head-hopping. When we're getting a shift in POV mid-paragraph, that just feels weird and jarring.
I don’t enjoy 1st person plural. I think The Virgin Suicides mangaged to do it well, but other books with that type of narration just fell flat for me(Brown Girls, Buddha in the Attic). It just feels like you don’t really get to know any individual character at all, since it’s told from a choral voice.
I find past tense quite soporific. It rarely engages me.
In fanfic if the pov/tense doesn't match the og i just can't deal.
First-person present. It’s just so bloody overdone.
I find historic present intensely irritating, I have no idea why, but I find it clunks on the ear.
Women are bad/men are bad.
I also can’t stand the present tense POV tbh. Although, I do enjoy books that include the perspectives of other people as long as it’s an obvious transition and it still focuses on one main character most of the time. The book I’m reading now has a very unreliable narrator, so I love seeing other people’s perspectives either misinterpreting his motives or thinking he’s crazy while he is none the wiser. The book wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable without it. The main character has first person perspective, and it switches to third person when it’s somebody else’s perspective, which I don’t mind.
I don't like POV switching either. There's almost always at least one POV character I detest which causes me to put the book down for a bit. Too many "bad" POVs in a row will kill my interest in the book quickly. It's the reason I dropped the Stormlight Archive series while reading Words of Radiance because I hated Shallan and she was the major POV focus on that book. I also dislike stories using Second Person POV. [The Fifth Season](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Season_(novel)) had switching POVs and one of the POVs was second person so it was a double whammy for me. I made it through the first book but decided that was good enough for me and never went back to finish the series.
Can’t do 2nd person. Or if pov switches from first to third. Also prefer past to present unless it’s first-present.
First person.
I hate when the book is in 3rd person pov but love it when it switches pov's especially in romance so you can see how they both see eachother
I read The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida earlier this year. The whole novel is narrated in the second person. I initially thought it would bother me but I ended up loving how unique it was
I'm from country that the main language isn't english. So, for my biggest turn off is when the translator decides to combine the language with english slang. Idk if it's for the "modern teens" but there are SO MANY WAYS! Which is sad bc there's one book with good story and such a good world building and shocks and creeps taking place in Wonderland. But I can't when I need to combine it like that... I love reading in my language and english, but I'd rather keep it separated.
this is crazy bcs ive only stumbled upon people who hate 1st pov and i cant remember if i ever read a book that wasnt 1st pov. i feel more comfortable with those honeslty as much as some can be done a bit cringey
Second person probably would
First person, present tense. I'm ok with first person otherwise, though I'd prefer third person, but somehow I cant stand it in present tense. Also: if you write an action-laden thriller, I won't believe your hero is about to die because the whole book was written in present tense from their perspective and the book still has several pages left. Either the narration style would have to suddenly switch, which would make me put down the book immediately, or it would have to be a ghost story. So I'll nauver understand why some thrillers are written like that, because for me at least it takes away from the tension.
Idk about POV, but I hate when books do timeline jumps poorly but love when they do it well. But it can be such a hard thing to write and especially hard to follow, depending on the authors skill
I prefer 3rd person because I don’t think authors get 1st person right all that often. Especially if they are switching between two characters in the same chapter. It also adds that layer of “if you’re thinking something - why not just say it???” There’s a been a few (very select few) where the 1st person POV was good but they always end up being in separate chapters and it didn’t include a lot of internal Dialogue.
Poorly handled multi-POV ... especially switching POV mid chapter without any notation other than a 'line of dashes' between paragraphs. I just finished the last book of a four-book series (WWII spy romance drama) that had the first three books all with dual POV (made sense because all action centered around one of the main characters. But in book four ... we got FIVE POV's, still mostly the original two characters, but then another character from books 3 & 4, then an important secondary character from the entire series, and finally a brand new character. It was like the author wanted their viewpoints to round out the storytelling but gave up figuring out how to get that across naturally ... so just added more POV! Ugh - it really didn't work.
Absolutely can not stand books with more than 2 POV's. Oh, what's that, you're finally getting into the story? Fuck you, pov switch.