However, in certain cases, the intimacy that first-person central offers can be detrimental to your tale. If your protagonist is a sociopath, a murder, or a child molester, readers may not feel comfortable being so close. Lolita is an example, where the narrator is a murdering pedophile and Nabokov manages to make it work. But as a general rule, if the main character is crazy, disturbed, or unreliable, you should avoid first-person central. In Moby Dick, whale-crazed Captain Ahab is off his rocker, yet the novel is definitely his story. If Melville chose the captain for the narrator, all the information we would have received would have come through a frenetic, disordered mind. A crazy person is unlikely to describe events or characters with much insight. How does Melville deal with this problem? He uses the first-person peripheral.

In this pov, a peripheral character tells the story of the protagonist. In Moby Dick, we see the captain in all his frightening insanity through the viewpoint of Ishmael. The Great Gatsby is another example of this technique. Gatsby is the protagonist. It is his actions that drive the story, but we see events unfold through the next-door neighbor’s eyes. Using Nick as the narrator allows the readers to see Gatsby much more clearly than we would if the story was from his point of view. It also allows Gatsby’s history to be much more mysterious. Nick (and the reader) is forced to put clues together to figure out the truth of Gatsby, whereas if we were inside Gatsby’s head, we would know from the start that his real name was James Gatz and he was lying about his background. When the main character is crazy, unreliable, or not particularly articulate, the first-person peripheral allows the writer to create an observant narrator who can skillfully and intelligently tell the story.

Another type of first-person, less commonly used, is first-person peripheral plural. In this case, the main character’s story is told by a group of peripheral characters. Falkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily” is a celebrated example of this technique. One that may be more familiar to you is The Virgin Suicides. The story of the Lisbon girls is told collectively by a group of boys; “That summer we saw the girls…” This pov is difficult to make plausible and can be hard to maintain for a whole novel, but if done well can make for an interesting story.

The fourth pov is the first-person serial (either central or peripheral). This is when the story moves from one first-person narrator to another. Often the viewpoints will contradict each other, forcing the reader to wonder, “what really happened?” Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, both use this technique. If you need to know a character’s inner workings to understand the story, but don’t want to be limited to only one person’s head, this is a good technique.

Useful Resources:

The Truth About the Oxford Comma
Know The Worth of Your Writing!
Simple Revising Techniques
What Makes a Good Children's Story?

writing tips

The Four Firsts-Point of View