Why I Write First-Person Present POV
I've become acutely aware that first-person present POV is THE POV of choice these days. I'm the kind of person who is allergic to bandwagons, and part of me wants to jump off this train before it goes any further. The problem with that is, I've hardwired my brain to write exclusively in first-person present.
I've always been a first-person writer. My very earliest stories were first person. I've tried third-person, but I always feel like I'm too distant from the characters. Those stories feel like essays about people, not actual people doing actual things. I can't get inside a character's head when I'm writing about them from the outside, and I need to get inside their thoughts to make them feel properly alive.
The clearest example I have is the first draft of The Raven and the Wolf, where I started writing it in a third-person past perspective:
The boys laughed as Lian and Emeline ran out of the barn and into the animal’s field.
Three horses and two cows belonging to Lian's family grazed in the field, as well as several animals from the neighboring farm where the twins lived. The families would share their grazing land while managing their own fields and orchards. The twins, only five years older than Lian, would work on both farms throughout the week.
Lian loved the sheep. His family didn’t have any sheep, so it was always a pleasure to be able to pet the woolly fur of the neighbor’s animals. They were just beginning to put on their winter coats. Lian had been told stories of massive herds of sheep that farmers would herd into the mountains during summer, but their small community was not that prosperous.
Lian, with Emeline, spent the time until dinner chasing around the seven-month old lambs and five-month old colt while a small mottled dog kept the small animals from running too far afield.
This scene is distant and telling. It's just a narrator explaining the setting and what's happening, but it doesn't have any voice.
Compare it to the scene that actually made it into the novel:
The boys laugh as Emi and I run out of the barn and into the animal’s field.
Three horses and two cows my family has are eating in the grass, as well as lots of animals from the neighbor where the twins live. We share our grass with the other neighbors while taking care of our own plants and fruit trees. The twins, a whole five years older than me, work at both places.
I love the sheep. My family doesn’t have any sheep, so it’s always nice to pet the soft fur of the neighbor’s animals. Right now, they are getting really fluffy for winter. I was told stories of huge groups of sheep that farmers take into the mountains during summer, but we’re too small and too far from the mountains to do that.
Emi and I spend the time until dinner chasing around the baby sheep and baby horse while a small spotted dog keeps the animals from running too far away.
In the first-person version, I could inhabit the character. Describe the scene from Lian's POV. Use the words a three-year old might think to explain the world. It has personality and voice, which is something I struggle with when I'm telling the scene from an outside POV.
The present-tense part of it only came around this year. I wrote my first book in first-person past tense. But in late 2024 to early 2026, I spent almost every day for over a year doing roleplay with AI. And AI write in present tense. You'll say, "I go to the baker's and buy some bread". And it will reply with an essay about how "You step into the street. The sun is just coming over the horizon and the market is bustling. You go to the baker's stall where there are loaves of fresh bread on display."
And that basically trained me to think of storytelling in exclusively present tense. When I started rewriting The Raven and the Wolf from third-person to first-person, I tried keeping it in past tense, but I would continually slip up and start writing present tense anyway. After two chapters, I finally gave into the inevitable and systematically replaced every "I said" with "I say".
I've now spent six months writing several stories in first-person present tense, and I don't see myself making full-length novels in any other POV anymore. I'm experimenting with other types of writing, and I have gotten to the place where my third-person can have a close POV and not read like a technical manual, but I don't know if I'll ever be comfortable enough with it to write a 50,000+ word novel in it.
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