I finished No Matter The Distance a few days ago!

[Clouded_Veil]

Toughest fanfiction yet! Also a bonus question to you writers. What’s easier, first person or normal story narrative? I’ve been wanting to write Shion from I’m finding it hard to write her in first person. Is this normal?

[tomxie]

congratulate! Shion, uh, she seems really hard to describe in the first person because you sometimes don’t know what she’s thinking and what she’s going to do, and sometimes she does things that are very unreasonable. . .

[Karen_Hart]

For me, I’d have to say third person narrative is easier, because there’s a bit of detachment that leaves room for character interpretation. For first person, I’d have to feel absolutely certain I understood all aspects of a character’s background, personality and their worldview.

[Clouded_Veil]

@whyfish

Congrats on finishing your fic! That’s awesome!

I’d say I’m most comfortable writing in third person but with a specific POV character designated for a given scene–sort of like having the “camera” follow the player character in a game (versus first person where the camera seems to be “inside” the character, or a more neutral third person perspective where the camera angle is static/fixed). I’ve done some first-person stuff (like this one, where I was trying to embrace my uncomfort zone by writing Voyager in his own words) but it depends what I’m going for. With third person, even if you’re narrating your POV character’s inner thoughts and subjective observations, it still feels like there’s some space between the writer/reader and the character, whereas first person can feel more intimate or confrontational, I guess?

Shion’s probably one of the most difficult characters for me to write, too (along with Albedo, ironically). Her motives and feelings are pretty complicated, and since she’s not one of my favorites, I feel like I haven’t spent enough time analyzing where she’s coming from to do justice to her character. She reminds me of some people I know IRL, but I can empathize with her to the extent that I’ve also struggled with mental health and family relationships. It might help when writing a new or less-familiar character to think of the things you have in common with that character (like I relate to Voyager bc I’m also unhealthily obsessed with Ziggy lol), and start from there.

Gotta admit, Ziggy’s pretty cool. I even made a separate save file in 3 just to play as him lmao.