Poll: Do you prefer 2nd or 3rd person stories?

I'm writing a first person cause although at times it seems like a second maybe I need to do another rewrite of High School Hell but I want the readers to understand where the main character is coming from with his anger and need for revenge against those who wronged him and left him for dead.

 

After reading some guides on writing romance stories... People wiser than I, have suggested that third person is preferred because it offers more than one point of view.

Extrapolating from that, I think they're suggesting that relaying the protagonist's mind is a given. Third person allows for more points of view than one.

Of course, they also suggest having more than one protagonist. Typically the heroine and hero, at least. I imagine that writing in the third person would make the paradigm 'shift' less noticeable or abrupt.

 

Thanks for your input 2p1k3 I appreciate it

 

I prefer third. I feel that in first and second your stuck in the role and it becomes much harder to bring in outside information without either braking the story or making the story jarring.

-Umbra

 

I've never liked the idea of a rigid pov, fluidity is my friend. From a story telling perspective there are times you want to get in someone's head and other times where the devil is in the details of the event in question and not the motivation of the character where it would be best suited for an objective view. I find 2nd person is a happy medium but incredibly restrictive when it comes to outside information of the main pro, and 3rd achilles heel clearly is the distance from the pro. Regardless I always piss everyone off if/when I switch pov, so doing so must be done at just the right moment. - my two cents

 

Majority of it be third person narrative. Either it being third person limited or third person omniscient. While trying to also put in some first person to third person on the main protagonist. It also depends on how the main story is. I try to go with their flow and use their person view on it. If they use words like I and my, or you and your. I would do my best and use them as well.

 

I prefer to write in the second person perspective since CHYOA is interactive. However, a couple of my stories is on the third person perspective because it makes it easier to read not only the mind of the protagonist but also other characters as well.

 

I prefer third person stories -- easier to switch point of view that way, which gives the writers more flexibility, I think.

 

I prefer writing in 3rd -- saying YOU a lot in 2nd leaves a LOT to be made. For instance, not everyone has brown hair, blue eyes, and a moustache. Some people have blonde hair, some people have orange hair -- it's a clusterfuck of things that could potentially break immersion. Making the names customizable and making it 3rd person at least allow the people reading to have their name in there, and I don't mention hair color or features that otherwise break immersion THAT often.

However writing in 2nd person is totally fine, and it's cool if you do. It's just I really don't.

 

Either can be fine, although if a story is strictly from a 1st person perspective it does kinda limit things because everything is taken from that singular perspective, which can be cool depending on the story you want to write because you are following that individual journey and following his or her view of the world and how he or she comes across certain things affecting that person and also delving into that persons thoughts. with third person narratives, it does open things up to include more than one person's thoughts and perspectives, again depending on the kind of story you are writing.

 

I absolutely hate 2nd person pov. After reading the word you for the fifth or sixth time I'm generally done with a story.

As far as 1st vs 3rd it generally depends on the cast of characters. 1st works better for smaller casts where 3rd works best for larger casts.

 

It depends on the story, in particular, on the number of "main" characters it has. If the story focuses on the action of only one character, which is present in every scene, then i'd prefere second person. On the other hand, if there are multiple character who have the same importance in the storyline, then I strongly prefer third person, to be able to follow the actions of every one of them, even when the narrating character is not present in the scene. Probably its a voyeristic fetish

The sex of the main character doesn't have any influcence on my preference for 2nd/3rd person narrative.

 

I dislike 2nd person. It always comes across as someone telling me what to do, or what I like. I know it's a weird quirk, but it's how I'm wired.
I prefer 3rd person, for most stories. It has the bonus of allowing the reader be somewhat disconnected from the action. Like I'm not touching my sister, I'm watching this character touch his sister, or better yet making him do so.

I may have some control issues... or just a bunch of issues in general.

As for gender doesn't matter. I find it fun to write/read as either.

 

2nd person doesn't work for me, neither in writing nor reading. It just seems like a shopping list of instructions to me. Generally speaking i prefer reading stories from the 3rd person more but it really depends on the kind of story.

 

Considering this site is a "choose your own adventure" type, 2nd person perspective makes a lot of sense in that it gives the reader a sense of immersion and control.

 

You know I hear that but I've never had a problem with immersion from a 1st or 3rd person perspective. The vast majority of literature and film is not in 2nd person and a lot of people seem to have no problem getting very immersed in those worlds.

In fact for me 2nd person actually kills my ability to be immersed.

But I also hate pov porn so maybe it's just my biases. That and reading the word you over and over again makes me want to throw something.

 

Maybe because I grew up paying Dungeons & Dragons I'm used to hearing "You do this..." from the Dungeon Master.

 

As someone who writes primarily in Second-person, this is something that I'm acutely aware of and something that I become more and more aware of as i have read a large range of quality chapter submissions over the last ten months or so. It's probably about every couple of months or so that I'll get a chapter submission that's almost entirely "You do this. You do that. You say this. You fuck that". I don't normally accept those chapters.

I try my best to describe what other people are doing from "your" perspective without relying too much on you, but it's pretty much impossible to describe what you(the reader) are doing without relying on the word and I rarely succeed in cutting back on the amount of 'you' that I use to an acceptable number. I'm nowhere near a master wordsmith.

 

If a pen and paper game master would say "You do..." I'd leave.
It should be "You see..." or "Do you really want to jump from the bridge? You have a bad feeling about it."

Within a CHYOA story, you (!) have to answer questions what to do. This answer should cover the whole next chapter. At this point, there may be some kind of compromise between short chapters and less specific question answers with longer chapters.

 

3rd person. Most of my characters end up in situations I'd never want to be in myself. While I'm turned on by certain scenarios, I might not want to be in them myself.