Sarah Dessen Quotes

In most books, the I, of first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.

Writing in the first person automatically gives you a point of view.

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 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.

I'm such a first-person writer.

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.

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

When I first concluded to print the book, I made an honest effort to construct it in the third person.

Writing in the first person, you immediately open yourself up to the idea that there's a connection between you and the narrator.

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.

Much of my work has been done in first person.

Every genuinely literary style, from the high authorial voice to Foster Wallace and his footnotes-within-footnotes, requires the reader to see the world from somewhere in particular, or from many places. So every novelist's literary style is nothing less than an ethical strategy - it's always an attempt to get the reader to care about people who are not the same as he or she is.

The way that I see third person is it's actually first person. Writing for me is all voice work. Third person narrative is just as character-driven as first person narrative for me in terms of a voice. I don't write very much in third person.

If you have a single narrator, a person like an "I" - "'I' did this" and "'I' did that" - it automatically solves the most difficult problem in writing.

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

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

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.

When you are developing your style, you avoid weaknesses. I am not good at describing things, so I stay away from it. And if anyone is going to describe anything at all, it's going to be from the point of view of the character, because then I can use his voice, and his attitude will be revealed in the way he describes what he sees.

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

Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.

I almost always use first person voice in my novels. It has its limitations, but it gives a sense of immediacy that's hard to create with an anonymous, all-seeing narrator.

One of the strategies for doing first-person is to make the narrator very knowing, so that the reader is with somebody who has a take on everything they observe.

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!