First Person, Third Person and The Movie Deal

I recently conducted a small experiment: I went to see movie and then I read the book. And this got me thinking about the differences, because, believe it or not, and I guess you will believe it since I'm clearly a reader, this was the first time I'd seen the film of a book before reading the book! (Actually I think I may have seen 2001 before reading the book but that doesn't count as the film came first anyway, if I remember correctly)

So what was the film/book?

Pretty obvious, I suppose.

But why all that blather about first and third person in the title? Let me explain:

I came out of the cinema from watching The Hunger Games a tinsy bit unhappy.I'd enjoyed the film, of course, been thrilled and revolted in all the right places and so on. But I couldn't shake a niggling feeling that I really didn't like Katniss, that, in spite of few obvious examples of self-sacrifice, she was fundamentally a selfish and not very nice person.

And that bothered me because I couldn't believe that I was meant to be feeling like that. So what had gone wrong?

In spite of squeals of irritation from the kids, I had lingered in the cinema after the last scene long enough to see that Suzanne Collins had participated in the screen play. So the lack of author involvement couldn't be the answer. It had to be something else. And I sat down with the book to see if I could find out why. (Well, and just to enjoy it, of course.)



Now, at this point in the narrative, I need to bring in the fact that my online crit group have recently been discussing the differences between first person and close third person narratives (that's the one where the writer still uses he/she, but everything is written from the inside of the he/she's head).

Anyone who's read The Hunger Games will know that it is written in first person, that Katniss herself narrates the story. Of course, this means that we know from the outset that she will survive, after all,how else could she be telling the story? But Suzanne Collins does an excellent job of keeping us on the edge of our seats nonetheless. And this is no mean feat because one of the risks of using first person in an action story, and The Hunger Games is nothing if it's not an action story, is that the narrator's thoughts can so easily slow things down.

Of course, what it can also do is give the reader an unrivalled insight into the protagonist's inner thoughts and, in Katniss' case, turmoil. And that's why first person works so well for this book. You see the narrator's thoughts don't slow the action down in the book. Rather the action gets in the way of the thoughts. And what we are left with is a brilliant rendering of the sort of confusion and angst caused when you are just to busy fighting for your life to sort out what you really think, who you really love and even who you really are.

And I don't think you can depict all that in an action film.

So did I still dislike Katniss when I'd read the book. No. I wouldn't say she's the nicest sixteen year old girl around, but she is sympathetic. You understand why she does what she does and you also understand that she may not much like herself for doing it too. And for that reason alone the book is a hundred times better than the film.

And that's definitely the first conclusion of my experiment.

But there's a second too. If you're writing an action novel and you want to secure a movie deal that will conjure a true rendition of your precious protagonist, maybe you'd be best off writing it in third person!