House Style (Pt1)

I felt a little foolish last night. The lecturer asked if anyone had a house style. I spoke up (no one else seemed like they were going to) and said that I pretty much always wrote in the first person present tense. She looked at me as if expecting more and I was rather embarassed that, on the spot, I couldn't expand further. Thinking about it now there is more to the choice. There's also more to say about my style of writing beyond just "I like to write in the first person present tense".

I've always said that my choice of perspective lies in the way that I think about my writing. My influences have always been cinematic rather than literary and I always visualise the scenes I'm writing. I know exactly how they'd look if I was filming them and I usually see a scene through my main characters eyes. I do recognise this as a weakness because it means I'm rarely looking at my character from the outside and this makes it harder to be objective in my feelings towards them.

I don't monologue much. I prefer to let a character's actions and interactions speak for them. This makes sense to me since in real life I (personally) rarely monologue (especially internally) except when I'm really drunk. This leads me into the next reason I like the first person. Unless our characters are telepathic, we don't have access to their thoughts. This forces us to think about our description in a different way. No longer are we simply describing appearance and actions but that description has to convey a character's motivations at the time.

For the most part I like to have a clear image of what my characters look like, how they move and how they dress. I think having an image of a character is important in order to build a relationship with with them, both for the author and for the reader. The picture on the cover of a book can only go so far. As shallow as it may seem a person's appearance is (most of the time) the first way we get to know a person. I do my best to integrate description into the action though so as not to interupt the flow.

The final reason (for now) that I write in the way I do is I feel it gives me a sense of greater immediacy and makes the piece a lot more personal. I feel much more comfortable getting into the head of a character when I "am them". I also tend to write in short sentences interspersed with longer ones that I try to give a degree of rhythm. On the rare occasion I'm able to translate my thoughts directly into intelligible sentences this seems to be how they come out. I feel the shorter sentences also add to the immediacy.

...That and I just plain like the style.

As an aside, after I'd spoken up, our course leader did say that agents and publishers generally don't like reading things in the first person present tense...