H. C. Witwer: I prefer writing in the third person, but have written two hundred fifty short stories in the first, because my readers seem to prefer that. I find writing in the first person much easier than any other.
William Almon Wolff: The third. There is, for me, a certain artificiality about first person writing; a certain seizing upon illicit aids. It's great fun to write in the first person, and, sometimes, of course, it's the right thing to do. But not often, I think. You dig deeper when you're interpreting life through your description of people seen objectively.
Edgar Young: Writing in the first person used to come natural to me, due to the fact that for years as a traveler I told many tales in this fashion to amuse friends and was an adept at it. At present I prefer third person work.
Summary
An analysis of the general trend of these 109 answers shows that the first person is preferred and generally used by 14, the third person by 54, while 41 may be classed as neutral. Of this 41 only 24 are entirely neutral; 8, while using both, prefer the third, and 9, while using both or for various reasons using the third, prefer the first.
Some of the answers speak not only as writers but as readers and doubtless most of the others in their preference as writers voice also their preference as readers. On this rough assumption we might say that of 109 readers 23 prefer stories in the first person to 62 preferring the third. Two, as writers now preferring the third, originally preferred the first and, by free and easy analysis, might be assumed to have, as readers, rather a preference for the first. If so, the score becomes 25 to 60: Again, quite a number among both classes and also neutrals consider first person easier and therefore—perhaps—more natural and therefore—perhaps—more pleasing. A much smaller number give the third person as easier. This highly suppositional reasoning would bring the score for first person considerably nearer that for third. All of which has no value except as a straw indicating the truth of the generally accepted theory that most readers prefer third-person narratives to those told in first person, and as indicating that the proportion may be anywhere from 3 to 1 on down to 10 to 7.
Rather pathetic as information, isn't it? But not half so pathetic as the fact that writers and editors really know so little as to the reading public's preference on this point that even such weak-kneed conclusions as the above are of some small value because they are at least drawn from a few data of fact. Nor one-tenth so pathetic as the fact that, while this commonly accepted theory seems justified by the above straw, there are quite a few other theories commonly accepted by writers, editors and critics that lack the support of even so slender a fact-straw as this.
As stated at the beginning of the chapter, the real value of the investigation is the answers' proof that the question of first person versus third is wholly a matter to be decided according to each writer's individuality and the nature of each particular story he takes up. Not by anybody's general rule.
QUESTION XII