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                         How to decide the Right Person and Format to Write!

A person has just begun to write; saying that he has just begun his writing career or launched his writing career etc will be in a high sounding tone and make him a more matured and regular writer. But the central idea or theme of this article is to help those writers who find it difficult or rather in a dilemma or struggle with their writing particularly in what form or person he or she should write.

Generally, while beginning to write, everyone begins to blog in the first person, mostly commenting about something or narrating his or her personal experiences in his or her life. As a blogger or as a newbie, one may not have come across many genres or different forms of writing. Hence, there is nothing wrong in writing or blogging in the first person. But once he crosses the boundary line of a newbie and gets more and more exposure with different genres of writing, naturally it is time to worry about the form or the person i.e. first or second or third, in which he or she should write.

Before embarking upon to write on any topic or subject, the writer should always decide clearly in what person or form he or she should write. It all depends upon the genre in which the writer writes.

There are mainly two categories of genres: fiction and non-fiction. While the fiction genre is all about poems, novels, short stories etc, that mostly emanates from one’s creative writing talent; it depends upon the theme or plot of the subject that the writer chooses to write. If the writer writes a poem, just explaining his personal experience that he or she has undergone, it is more appropriate to write the poem in the first person account. If the poem is about nature, say about a natural scene, moon, wind, water, flower and about an abstract subject, it is always good to write in the third person account;

While writing a short story, if the plot is mostly concerned about the personal experiences of a person involving or requiring no conversation, it is better to write in the first person. Robinson Crusoe is a classic novel by Daniel Defoe, based on the experiences of a shipwrecked person, narrated in the first person. But if the theme involves different episodes connecting different persons and places, it is always good to write in the third person. Especially while writing a novel, a writer has more scope to write minute details and descriptions about the places and about the scene or about a character. Classic example is ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities’.

Coming to the Non-Fiction category. It includes articles, essays, reports, travelogues, biography, memoirs and autobiography etc. Essays and reports should always be written in the third person. While writing articles, it all depends upon the nature of the content of the article. If the article is a how to or an instructional article, it is always better to write in the second person, in a conversational style and tone, as if the writer is talking with the reader. While biography is the life history of an eminent person written by an author as a third person as narrated to him by the eminent person, naturally the biography is written only in the third person account. Whereas, the autobiography is the personal account of a person written in the first person. ‘My Experiments with Truth’ written by Gandhi is the classic example of ‘Autobiography’. The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is yet another classic example of autobiography written in the first person.

While letters, queries etc are addressed by one person to another, they are invariably written in the second person in a conversational tone. Similarly, a cook write should invariably write his article or book in the second person account.

Editorial articles, columns, tabloids, fillers and profile etc are invariably written in the third person.

Therefore, before embarking upon to write anything, it is always necessary to choose the category of the writing first of all. Having chosen the category, then the writer has to analyze the content of his subject. Then he has to decide which person or form is appropriate to his writing. Then only he has to proceed. If he chooses the correct person and format for his writing with a good content and then proceeds to write, then his writing will take care of everything; needless to mention that it will be a hit and sure to click in the writing world.