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I doubt it is specific to romance. It seems to be everywhere. I keep finding books that have no reason to be in first person (and in some cases every reason not to be) which are in first person non...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35480 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35480 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
I doubt it is specific to romance. It seems to be everywhere. I keep finding books that have no reason to be in first person (and in some cases every reason not to be) which are in first person nonetheless. In part it may just be a fad. It's a bit like the way people wore blue jeans when I was growing up. They did it to be different. All of them. I wanna be a rebel, as long as everyone else is being the exact same type of rebel too. A deeper reason may be a societal lack of confidence in objective truth. The artist was traditionally supposed to be the truth teller. But today everyone has their own truth. Speak your own truth. Tell your own story. Third person narration is an assertion of objectivity. First person is an expression of personal truth. Or personal truthiness at least. It may well be that young adults are particularly devoted to this entirely personal notion of truth, to truth being what you feel, not what you see. But it seems to be a fairly general phenomena. Art that does not lead the bandwagon inevitably follows it.