Maybe. I love first, but it does absolutely limit you to one character's knowledge and stuff. I've written 2 first-person drabbles(as my girl Kay,her voice is just that strong for me) but that's it.

I agree that first person can be limiting. Some characters beg for it more than others.

Batman, I'm discovering, is very much a self-involved, first person kind of guy. And in the comics, he's written in first person.

My default is limited third, but I've been trying to stretch more.

And lack of first person may be the worry about coming off as a Mary Sue, but in my experience, I think I have a more difficult time writing engaging prose in first person. It's all "I went there and I did that and I sat down--"

Maybe that's just me.

You realize I might take that as a challenge, now?

What? Huh?

Hey, if you wanna. I just meant that I, personally, think I write like crap in 1st person. Other people do it well, and I read it with wistful envy.

Kind of teasing about the challenge part, but now I wonder...why do we(and now I've been archived it's we) do that? Partly cause that's what you see, and partly cause bad first's the worst, as you said.

My learning process in fanfic went like this:

- Oh, headhopping bad.

- Staying in third person limited means the narrative voice should sound kind of like the POV character.

- Wait, maybe there's a world beyond that.

I suspect it might be the same for many people who learned how to write through fanfic.

Is 3rd person limited for the author, or the audience? It sounds like it'd be harder to write.

Is 3rd person limited for the author, or the audience?

I don't understand the question. Can you rephrase?

(Usual caveat of Y writing experience MV:)

I find third-limited and first really easy to write; all you need to do is get in the character's head and write what they see. I know that many people have a hard time conveying the unreliability of a third-person narrator, or the things they wouldn't see that the reader needs to, but I've never had difficulty with this, beyond the occasional logistical one.

I tend to treat second-person as a kind of alienated first-person.

First-person in fanfic is harder because the voice needs to be even closer to canon, and I'm bad at mimicking. Distant-third is hard because I don't have the gift of creating emotional involvement by action alone, and I have a really hard time learning it. Ditto experiments in figuring out what to leave in and what to leave out in omniscient.

Can you rephrase?

The prevalence of limited third in fanfic -- is it for the audience's pleasure, or the author's pleasure/convenience?

I've got nothing against reliable narrators, in fact, I love them, and that's mostly what I've written in my short portfolio. Also limited third, with switching POVs.

I guess the question is basically about distant third -- it would seem that one could get away with less of an intimate grasp on character voice -- sure, all the dialogue needs to be true, but you don't have to keep up the internals for such a long time.

From where I'm standing it sounds sufficiently harder that I'm surprised that so much of fanfic is in it.

I'm a decent mimic...I should try that sometime. But I'm a baby ficcer...I didn't want to be a *complete* freak.