Jan 13, 2016 / Beginner

Beyond Me, Myself, and I: Four Ideas for Escaping the First-Person Bubble

Even when writing about yourself, there’s room for other voices in your prose.

Blogging, by definition, requires an individual voice and an individual perspective from which to share your take on the world. It’s that specificity that makes personal reactions to current events — like, say, the passing of David Bowie — that much more interesting than a dry news account, however well sourced.

As writers, we embrace this liberty to be ourselves, (rhetorical) warts and wrinkles included. But we also run the risk of turning a personal perspective into a myopic one. The difference often lies not so much in what we write, but in how we write it. If you ever worry about appearing narcissistic and self-involved on your blog, don’t change the topics you write about — change the mechanics of discussing them. Here are a few ideas.

Control the beginning of your sentences

You might be talking about your charity work, expressing your admiration of another writer, or remembering how small and insignificant you felt upon visiting the Great Wall of China. It doesn’t matter: if every single sentence you write (or even every paragraph) begins with an “I,” your readers will likely conclude that it’s all about you, and grammar will be on their side.

One notable exception is when you use a repeated “I” for rhetorical effect — no editor would ever touch “I came; I saw; I conquered,” and not just because it was Julius Caesar who came up with it.

It’s inevitable, of course, that some sentences would begin with a first-person pronoun. Which is why you should always try to save these for when you really need them. You’ll gain not just a less self-centered narrative, but also a less monotonous one: few things lull readers into boredom more efficiently than a long series of “I did this, then this, and I think that about this, and I believe this about that.”

Experiment with being a Jimmy

If you’re of a certain age — or of a rudimentary level of appreciation for 90s culture — you will have crossed paths with episode 105 of Seinfeld, a.k.a. “The Jimmy.” The character from the title is notable for one thing: he keeps talking about himself in the third person (“Jimmy’s got a compound fracture! Jimmy’s going into shock!”). He’s hilarious, but also the most annoying person in an episode full of awful misanthropes.

So it might come as a surprise if I encourage you to experiment with writing about yourself… in the third person (there’s a term for it: illeism). You don’t have to use your name all the time — or at all — like poor Jimmy; a pronoun works just fine. The idea is to treat yourself like an omniscient narrator would treat a fictional character: the distancing effect is not only intriguing for the reader (who may or may not realize at first who it is you’re writing about), it also allows you to say a lot more about yourself without sounding too self-absorbed.

Quote other people

In a piece that focuses on your own take on things — which describes roughly 87.2 percent of blog posts — you can earn a pocketful of first-person credits by borrowing the voices of others and injecting them into your prose. It’s not just the variety that will make your writing more appealing; it’s also the inherent generosity of making room for someone else, of stepping out of the spotlight, however momentarily.

One easy — and satisfying — way of making your post more polyphonic is by introducing snippets of dialog. Blogger Emily E. Hogstad did just that in a moving post about music and her mother’s death. It’s a very personal piece clearly anchored in Emily’s experience of her mother’s illness and passing, but it never feels hermetic, as it’s full of other speaking, feeling characters:

“Take this one,” I said, sitting on the bed next to her and pointing to her open palm where I had set the pill.

“Which one?”

“That one,” I said, and I pointed again.

“But there’s two,” she said, and the implication of what she’d just said made me nauseous.

“Something’s wrong,” my aunt finally said, and although I was having a hard time admitting it, she was right.

These moments can take many other shapes: you might quote a line or a paragraph from a post by another blogger, or from an article or book you recently read. Consider embedding a video that contains a song, a speech, or a movie scene that relates to the topic at hand. Or mention — and link to — a comment someone left you on another post. Done well, you won’t be receding out of view at all; your personality and perspective will simply manifest themselves obliquely, through your choices and your tastes.

Open-letter all the things

Actually, don’t. A well-executed open letter can be fun and engaging, but it’s also become a bit of an overused trope. The reason for the form’s popularity, however, has nothing to do with its letter-ness (how many bloggers who penned one had recently sent an actual letter?) and everything to do with its direct, second-person appeal. And nothing stops you from using the second person in any post, regardless of its genre or format.

Mix in a paragraph written in the second person between a couple of first-person ones, and you’ll get a change of rhythm and a refreshing dose of urgency and immediacy in your writing. Lily Zacharias deployed this technique in a recent post criticizing the use of the adjective “humbled” on social media — and her already-sharp post really came together when she turned heavily to the second person in the final half.

No matter who the subject of those sentences happens to be — the President? Your mom? Yorick’s skull? — your readers always put themselves, however subtly (or even subconsciously), in the position of the person you’re addressing. Which means their ears will likely be more attentive than if you’d just go on with “me me me.”

Do you ever get frustrated writing in the first person — or reading prose written that way? Do you worry about focusing too much about yourself in your blogs? Share your thoughts in the comments (yes, the first person is more than appropriate here!).

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  3. Being a new blogger this definitely gave me something to think about. I won’t deny the fact that it’s a lot easier for me to write that way simply because the 5 posts I have are pertaining to my life. For future posts I definitely will keep all this in mind! Thanks!

    Liked by 4 people

    1. I am a new blogger too and it is interesting to think of our writing from this perspective. My blog is from my perspective so I am finding it difficult to write from anything other than first person. I think I have 10 posts so far but I am not that much farther ahead than you Adam. =)

      Liked by 3 people

  8. Seriously? When almost every one of the (oft repeated) daily prompts nudges us to write on topics such as, “Think of a time in your life you’d like to live over. What was it? Why?” “Discuss your preference for blue socks over white. Why do you think you have this irrational antipathy to white socks?” “How narcissistic are you? Defend your position on yourself.”

    Liked by 3 people

    1. The point here is not to argue against writing about ourselves on our blogs — that would defeat the purpose of blogging (or at least one of its main purposes). This post aims to show that even when we write about our lives, our views, our takes on events and stories, the mechanics of our writing can act as a counterbalance to this (sometimes narrow) focus on ourselves.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. Good discussion.

        The Daily Prompts often encourage participants to look inside themselves. That’s part of the exercise, right? I’ve done a few and never worry about the amount of “I’s” that I use.

        What I like about these four ideas is that they give me insight about how to clean up and enhance my position on stories/essays that I want to write about my life. Quotes, links, dialogue, etc are great ideas to help me put some oomph behind my own voice.

        Thanks.

        Liked by 2 people

  9. This was a great set of tips. I have recently been playing with writing different scenes in my prose from 1st person vs 3rd. Traditionally, I had always done everything in 3rd, so 1st person became somewhat freeing. It can be terribly limiting, and you are absolutely right… There’s lots of traps you have to avoid falling into (like the overuse of “I”).

    Liked by 5 people

  10. It is a really nice post. Being a researcher, I do a lot of academic writing. Very recently, I started blogging (just one post till date) because of freedom of expression we have while blogging. I totally agree with what you say, I have seen few blogs where they are very close to personal dairy :). In my case, I am trying to stay away from writing science….but, that decision is really blocking me from posting. Still, I want to stick to something away from science, otherwise I might end up blogging about my work ;).

    Liked by 3 people

  13. Really great post! 🙂
    Two points can be added here:
    1)Writing in passive voice (the sentence above is an example of this. “Two points can be added here” instead of “I want to add two points here”).
    2) Inclusion of others. If I write about a topic, I assume that there would be someone out there who also feels the same as me about that topic. In this case, second person and third person can be used.

    Liked by 5 people

    2. Good points! One thing to keep in mind, of course, is that the passive voice comes with its own set of potential issues (like making a text less dynamic and crisp); as always, it’s a question of balance and context.

      Liked by 2 people

  15. Interesting ideas here, I normally don’t use the first person in my blog. I usually use the third person but I discovered that I get more likes when I use the first person. I thought that people enjoy blogs better when they feel that they can relate with the blogger, what do you guys think? #CONFUSED.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. I think you’re absolutely right that people like to read posts where they can relate to the author. And I’d never advocate for anyone to abandon the first person entirely — that would be more or less impossible. The ideas here are more about trying to speak from your own perspective using a variety of means on top of the common use of “I did this, I think that….”. I hope that makes sense?

      Liked by 4 people

  18. I write my blog from first-person pronoun. I don’t I overuse this way, however, I do have a feeling I that tend to write a lot of indirect sentences. For example this:

    “Then as if the cake saga wasn’t enough, almost half of the next morning was spent in clicking infinite pictures — of our legs together, of legs in the water, more legs in less water, selfies from the left and then right and from left again.”

    Not sure but just thinking…

    Would anyone have a look? If this blog has a good mix of writing styles or I too have such tendencies to sticking to a particular style.

    https://thoughtsuncluttered.wordpress.com/2016/01/12/how-happy-are-birthdays/

    Liked by 4 people

  19. Also, I’d like to share a small tip here to all fellow bloggers — to run the blog script under some TTS reader. It really helps to listen to your own writing from another reader’s perspective. It also helps us figuring out if our punctuations are used correctly to express the right tone in the writings. I use a downloaded one which I use to test my own write ups and also to read others’ if I am too lazy to use my eyes. 😛

    I personally use a downloaded software but I believe there would be plenty available online. One needs to be careful though while downloading free SWs as they tend to contain malwares often.

    Liked by 4 people

  20. you say “myopia” as though it’s a bad word. the medium—the blog—which is a web log, is by its very nature fluid, undefined, and mutable. how and what and why one records, recites, reinvents, regurgitates, and so forth, really quite up to writer at hand.

    Liked by 3 people

  27. When including a photo, I sometimes write the narrative as if the main character, animal, or object is doing the speaking. This gets me out of it entirely. naturecalls7.wordpress.com

    Liked by 6 people

  30. I just started blogging, and am finding this very thing especially hard. Look! It seems like I can’t even write a comment without referring back to myself, haha! Thanks for the awesome advice!

    Liked by 5 people