A few comments I have seen in reviews and forums recently (rephrased slightly, because I am talking about the sentiment not individual speakers).
Modern-set romances should NEVER be written in 3rd person POV.
Good romance writers tend to write in third person. Very good writers can pull off first person but it’s so restrictive.
Romances have to use both points of view otherwise readers don’t get the whole story.
Romances should never use both points of view. It spoils the tension.
First person is just self-insert.
Third person is distancing.
Hahaha writing is fun!
JARGON SECTION
First person: “I did”. Third person: “he/she did”.
POV: point of view.
Single POV: you spend the book in one person’s head, whether in first or third.
Dual/multiple POV: switching between the MCs’ heads.
I am not going to do a full breakdown of POV use here. If you are looking for that, there’s a whacking great section on it in my forthcoming book Think, Write, Edit, Romance, and I need the royalties. However, there’s an awful lot of people out there with strong opinions on why first/third person is great whereas nobody should use third/first person ever, and I want to talk about that.
Writers do not, or should not, choose POV on a whim. It makes all the difference to how a story is told and spools out, to what the reader knows and what the other characters know, to the vibe. It is in fact a practical stylistic choice.
Imagine the Murderbot books told in third person. The point of the entire series is for us to observe the convolutions of Murderbot’s complicated thoughts and avoidance and trauma and hurt. It is crucial we know Murderbot so unequivocally and intimately as a person, because the driving theme of the whole series is its struggle for personhood. Martha Wells doesn’t want us to question that personhood: she wants us to experience it, to know its truth. It has to be first.
In the excellent romance The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn, which I just read, we have dual third-person POV. Could it be one POV? No, because both characters have a whole lot of messy internal issues that need digging into; to convey that lot in single POV would have meant a lot of therapy-level dialogue with and exposition about the other character. There is just too much to do on both sides for this to be single.
My All of Us Murderers is a Gothic novel with a hero trapped in a remote house with people who hate him and who are behaving in increasingly baffling ways. Single POV allows me to convey the sense of Zeb’s isolation and not knowing who to trust, as well as limiting the reader’s information to only what he sees. (Not to mention that dual POV with his love interest would unavoidably give away a crucial plot element early on.)
Meanwhile, it’s in third person rather than first because Zeb’s mental state is hugely important. He is very consciously trying, with limited success, not to let himself get sucked into the frankly bananas Gothic atmosphere; he’s also coping with severe ADHD. Third person gives me a little more scope to discuss both of those without Zeb himself having to analyse his own mental state all the time.
Zeb was not a particularly logical thinker, at least in the commonly accepted sense. His train of thought didn’t generally chug from station to station in an orderly manner, taking him from A to B to C on the rails that other people would use. What he could do, now and then, was leap half way down the alphabet, reaching conclusions in a single intuitive bound he often couldn’t explain, and as he stood in Dash’s empty room, that was exactly what he did.
Third also lets you let rip in description a bit more, in a way that can feel overdone in first person (depending on the character, voice, and genre, of course).
He heard nothing. He saw nobody. His footsteps echoed flatly, the mist lay thick around the house, and it felt like the end of the world. It was past four, the mist-thickened day starting to dim into night, and the twilight cast shadows that gathered in the corners and shifted around him. It would be very easy to imagine them moving as he walked, as Hawley’s living darkness, or just a mass of thick-legged spiders.
“Oh, stop it,” he muttered under his breath.
First person offers interiority; third person gives the narrative a little more room to comment. Single POV lets the author keep information from the reader; third person lets the author share it. They all do different things. My Any Old Diamonds has single viewpoint third person because I wanted to keep Jerry’s feelings from Alec, and Alec’s knowledge from Jerry, and both of those things from the reader. (If I’d kept any more secrets, I wouldn’t have written the book at all.)
None of this is to say readers shouldn’t have preferences. But is your preference really “I don’t like first person” or is it “I like more narrative commentary”? More tellingly, is it really “I dislike single POV because it doesn’t tell me enough about the other MC” or is it “This particular book doesn’t make me believe in the other MC”?
The POV choice--single or dual, first or third--is a tool to create effects. It is up to the writer to use that tool effectively. Do it well and most people probably won’t even care or remember what you chose, only that it worked.
Obviously some people will still care, which fine. You can’t please everyone and we’re all entitled to opinions. A lot of people struggle with first person sex scenes, for example, and that’s completely legit. Just leave space for the idea that the thing was done that way for a reason, even if you don’t like the result. I dislike wobbly food, but that doesn’t mean I can point at a creme caramel and say that the cook fucked it up by not making ice cream instead.
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Think, Write, Edit, Romance is out from Hay House on 15th December in print, e, and audio. Malka Older just called it “really excellent”, Olivia Atwater says “a marvellously straightforward, comprehensive guide, dripping with years of hard-earned experience”, Stephane Burgis said “By far the best book on writing romance I’ve ever read”, Alexandra Vasti says “consistently lucid, insightful craft advice”, and Benjamin Dreyer said “makes my copyeditorial heart sing”. So there you go.