Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.

12.1: Variations on First Person

Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard

We’re beginning a new season, and during 2017 we will be focusing our topics on structure. We are also going to shake things by expanding our cast a bit. You’ll be hearing some new voices soon! They belong to:

  • Wesley Chu
  • Piper J. Drake
  • Mary Anne Mohanraj

We’ll post more on that in a few days, but we’ve already begun updating our “About” page.


This week your hosts are Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler. We spend a few minutes on the administrative stuff  above before jumping into January’s structural topic, the first person voice, with a discussion of the variations in how that POV is presented. We cover some of the different first person POV styles, what sorts of stories they’re often best-suited for, and how we go about writing them well.

Spoiler Alert: Episode 12.3 will feature Sandra Tayler, and is a Project In Depth on her story, “Risk Assessment,” which was illustrated by Natalie Barahona and Howard Tayler. It appears in Force Multiplication: Schlock Mercenary Book 12, available direct from Hypernode Media, or through Amazon.

Homework: Take something you’ve written, and put it in the three different forms of 1st person — reflective, epistolary, and immediate.

Thing of the week: The Star-Touched Queen, by Roshani Chokshi, narrated by Priya Ayyar.

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