I haven’t dared to try any of these things yet. I just appreciate them when I see them. But I run into it nonetheless: reading my old attempts at novel-writing, I can see where I tried it without knowing that’s what I was trying, and screwed it up. Reading over more recent stuff, I can see the difference between character A and character B, the levels of sympathy and/or objectivity applied to their separate perspectives. I identify most easily with this character, and it is apparent in the story even when I made no conscious decision to choose one over the other. I am endlessly fascinated by this stuff.

Writing a fictional first person perspective for the first time in –eek, 10 years at least– puts all this stuff front and center in my head. Because first person is instant intimacy, whereas with third limited, even a really close third limited, you have the option of pulling back just the tiniest bit, so that your reader can see that this character isn’t thinking clearly, or underst