I can't seem to decide what perspective to write my novel

Depends what the story you're writing calls for. Are you writing something more personal, or something grander in scope?

>>8618501

yes the novel has a main character that is hiding something from the reader.

I'll be using the supporting characters to reinforce the suspicion.

I was thinking of writing in the perspective of one of the supporting characters but that limits my setting to the places only he/she goes.

>>8618466
You can write in both if you want, and even if you stick to first person you can change people.

>>8618466
>3rd person requires you to write a fuck-ton of dialogue
no...

>>8618549

I'm sorry I meant that I would have to write more dialogue in my novel if I chose to make it third-person.

I've been putting off actually writing it and instead just spamming writingprompts on leddit

>>8618511
>>8618658
Can I ask, with only the barest chance that I'll attack you after you answer, why you think writing in the third person would require more dialogue than writing in the first?

>>8618678

Please attack me if you think it's necessary, I don't mind.

Whenever I write in first person I like to expand on the thoughts of the one person, spending paragraphs on a single afterthought at times.

When it comes to third-person I enjoy writing fast-paced action type scenarios where dozens of ideas get thrown back and forth with as little backtracking as possible.

Third person is technically the narrator's perspective. It helps giving the narrator his own 'character' in this case. It's easier to write in the third person when it's from the narrator's first person perspective. Am I making any sense?

>>8618692

It makes sense. The narrator is like an omniscient presence that has a personality of his own. I like books that do that and don't exactly reveal as to the type of relationship the narrator has to the actual characters.

I don't think I'm skilled enough to do anything like that without making it seem too forced. Maybe once I've got more novels under my belt.

>>8618658

Reddit writingprompts are crap. Real writing requires the creation of characters, which is by far and away the most difficult part of writing.

I'm going to speculate a bit here. I think that for most writers, they find first person easiest because we live in first person. It allows you to create characters from your perception of people in real life. It doesn't require you to actually create a real psyche for your characters, because you can base your first-person narrator's experience of the other characters from your own experience of people in real life.

In third person, you actually have to put yourself in the mind of a person who is entirely different from yourself. Of course, this is required in first person writing as well, but only if the first person writing is to be any good.

>>8618698
I think you gotta have the balls to write shitty stuff sometimes. You can't learn unless you try.

>>8618699

I completely agree with your first point. Real writing does require the creation of characters to be fleshed out and in the end fully dimensional.

That being said, I don't dismiss the value that writingprompts gives me when it comes to practising how to write more varied sentences and the different ways in which a point can be conveyed.

I can attest to your speculation. I found that the first large writing projects that I did I wrote more comfortably in first-person because I imitated most of what I had already experienced. In a way I was creating a character based on my experiences but with absolutely no correlation to me at all.

I feel that third-person requires more empathy to be pulled from the author mainly because there are so many viewpoints that can affect the story.

third person limited or bust

>>8618466
Except certain gimmicks, third person can accomplish everything that first person can. Those gimmicks are:
1. character has altered perception, for example delusional or believes some fact about the world which is demonstrably untrue (i.e he thinks half the people are aliens, and sees them that way, he has an imaginary friend, et cetera)
2. character has a judge of character that sounds shitty from author's perspective (i.e edgy atheist describes people in terms that author would never use, and poses that as a reality, "Jhon was a crooked man with sad hair and rapey face")
3. character's identity is hidden from the reader, i.e. he is harassed by cops and goverment and wonders at the unjust world, end of novel describes him as black
4. character not only speaks, but thinks in weird dialect, i.e. be cry, but this is doable in third-person, just awkward

>>8618688
Oh okay, so it's just personal preference? Because you can totally write for paragraphs on a single thought in third person. If that's not your digs though I understand.

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>>8618748

>3. character's identity is hidden from the reader, i.e. he is harassed by cops and goverment and wonders at the unjust world, end of novel describes him as black

10/10

>>8618511
What do you mean by hiding something from the reader? Why is he hiding it from them? Is he telling the story to the reader? Or are you just in his mind?

>>8618466
In Infinite Jest, Wallace does both and also invents many other povs. Scholars have identified six new povs so far, but by the end of the century, who knows. Given what we know about Infinite Jest so far, it wouldn't be unexpected if we discovered that he pioneered hundreds more.

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>>8619125