Laurie Graham Quotes

I'm always telling my students, don't - don't worry so much third person, first person. It doesn't make that much difference.

My preferred style is to write in first person, so I always have to play around with possible narrator voices until I find something that works.

When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person.

I normally write in the first person, and my narrators are as real to me as any of the people I have worked with. They live and breathe in my imagination.

Choosing the narrator for a first-person story like 'Downriver' is a crucial decision because the voice has to be one the reader wants to listen to, and the voice has to be a match for the emotion you want the story to carry.

First person allows deeper insight into the protagonist's character. It allows the reader to identify more fully with the protagonist and to share her world quite intimately. So it suits a story focused on one character's personal journey. However, first person shuts out insights into other characters.

My lip curls in a snide reflex whenever I hear that a new novel is written from the point of view of a child or a monster, a lunatic or an animal. I immediately expect a nasty coyness of tone, cheesy artifice, the world through cardboard 3-D lenses.

The omniscient narrator is a bizarre technique, when you think about it, and no one uses it much anymore. But for the novels I want to write, it's the only approach that makes sense to me.

Point-of-view is a matter that readers rarely pay attention to, yet it's one of the most important story decisions an author makes.

I'm very comfortable writing in the first person; it dives into the character in a way that's difficult if you're writing in the third person.

I always start a book thinking that it can be something other than first-person present, and I always come back to first-person present. It's just the easiest way.

First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.

I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!

Like 'Metro' and 'Motor,' 'Troublemaker' is written in first person. The only narration that happens is Barney speaking to the reader/thinking in her head. First person was a big challenge in the graphic novel because we want both men and women of all ages to enjoy 'Troublemaker.'

I'm such a first-person writer.

'Dhruva' is not a first person narrative of Siddharth Abhimanyu.

It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.

I've always written in first person. It gives the readers more insight.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.

I've always felt that the traditional novel doesn't give you enough information about the narrator, and I think it's important to know the point of view from which these tales are told: the moral makeup of the teller.

A novel can do something that films and TV usually can't - a glimpse inside the characters' heads. I write very tight third person point of view, so the reader is right behind the eyes of each character, seeing what they see and feeling what they feel.

I have an affinity for writing in the first person. I love the intimacy of being dropped inside the character.

There are very few works of fiction that take you inside the heads of all characters. I tell my writing students that one of the most important questions to ask yourself when you begin writing a story is this: Whose story is it? You need to make a commitment to one or perhaps a few characters.

Understanding POV is essential, or ought to be.