First Person when the PoV is not the Protagonist?
I believe writing in the first person gets the reader closer to the character. As far as I know, this is generally accepted as true. That's not all there is to character development, certainly, but it gets the reader in a better mind-set for 'closeness' with the character.
The novel I am currently writing has a PoV who is not the protagonist. I am considering writing the PoV in first person, which I think would sound really good for the novel, but I'm wondering if this is going to remove the reader's focus from the protagonist.
I want to keep the reader's focus on the protagonist, largely because the PoV, in her current state, would not make a very good one. She is selfish, sometimes without even knowing it, and would almost certainly inspire thoughts of boredom or even anger in the reader if she was who the novel is about. But she's not. The novel is about the protagonist. I feel like I've made this distinction, and there is no threat of alienating the reader through my PoV.
Unless I write in the first person. Will writing the PoV in the first person draw my reader closer to her, away from the protagonist, and therefore further in general from the novel? It's my personal opinion that I can write in the first person and still keep the focus on the protagonist, but I want to make sure I'm not walking into a trap here.
This is not a duplicate of this question. The question isn't whether I can split the PoV and the protagonist. I know I can do that. This question deals with using the first person for that PoV, given that it is (generally) accepted that first person PoV draws the reader closer to the character, and the story is about the protagonist.
To future viewers: Choosing the answer was a toss-up between Mike C. Ford and WolfeFan; they both have excellent answers. I would also recommend that you look at what's answer. It has some interesting insights which could prove useful.
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I believe you are incorrect. If anything, writing in the first person distances you from the character.
First, consider the characters from fiction that you feel like you know well. Harry Potter? Oliver Twist? Frodo Baggins? All described in third person.
Second, consider the actual effect of first person narrative. A story told in the first person is one in which the protagonist never enters the frame. (Note that it is incredibly rare for a movie or TV show to be shot in first person, except for the odd effect shot, like looking through binoculars or down the barrel of a gun.) That creates distance from the character.
Third, consider that this technique ensures that we only know of the narrator what they choose to tell of themselves. It is an axiom of fiction that everybody lies. A first person narrator is telling their side of the story. They are putting their best foot forward. This creates a guardedness in the reader, the same kind of guardedness they would have with anyone telling them a story in real life. A story becomes hearsay. The reader does not see it for themselves but hears a report of it from a participant. This create a huge amount of distance.
Fourth, people are often (some would say always) a mystery to themselves. We don't just lie to others, we lie to ourselves. And we often do not understand the real reasons that we do things. As EM Forster pointed out, the unique privilege of the novelist is to see into the soul of the character, to know things about the character that the character does not know about themselves. An omniscient narrator can get closer to a character than they are to themselves.
A first person narrator, then, is actually a device for creating distance, not intimacy. Creating narrative distance can be a powerful tool. There are numerous examples of this in literature, including many in which the narrator is not the protagonist.
A good example of this is Bernard Corwall's Arthurian series in which the narrator is one of Arthur's retainers. Not only is it told first person by someone not the hero, it is told as recollected in old age, creating further distance. The effect of this is to preserve the mythic sense of Arthur, and effect that would be lost if Arthur were the narrator. What we get is a memory of Arthur, not an experience of Arthur, and the difference that makes is huge.
Distance, and the manipulation of distance, are some of the most important tools in the writer's toolbox. Creating closeness to the character is not always what you want, therefore. And if it is what you want, third person omniscient will let you get far more intimate with a character than first person, because third person omniscient can see everything the character can see, and whole lot more, including the stuff that the character would lie to themselves and others about.
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