20.13: First Person

Writing Excuses

Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler

Fiction, Business, Careers

4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re now going to have a few episodes focusing on the lens of proximity—specifically, how close you are to a character. Today, we’re talking about first person. First person seems like it would be one of the most natural forms of storytelling, because it's the one we use when talking about our own actions. But how do we use first person effectively? How close we are to the character and how much we get to know of their motivation and reaction can be controlled through interiority and embodiment. This often ends up defining the POV that we use in our stories. We'll talk about which tools are specific to first person, as well as flag pitfalls to watch out for.

Homework: Go pick up a book that you love. Find a scene that you think is really great that is not in first person. Then, rewrite that scene in first person from the POV of a character in the scene.

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Credits: Your hosts for this episode were DongWon Song, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, and Erin Roberts. Our guest was Chuck Tingle. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The weather. Tomorrow, expect a biting cold front. Hmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be
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1:25.9	This episode of writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends.
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1:37.6	Slash writing excuses.
1:41.3	Season 20, episode 13.
	...

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