Why I Revised My Manuscript from 3rd Person, Past to 1st Person, Present & How I Plan to Avoid Doing That Again

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Have you ever wondered whether you’re writing in the right point of view (POV) for the story you’re trying to tell? The right tense?

Revising an entire manuscript from 3^rd person to 1^st is no small task. The task is made a whole lot bigger yet when you add a tense change on top of that. My revision of a 90,000+ word manuscript for both POV and tense took a couple months to complete.

When I first started, I’d miss a bunch of he/him’s and she/her’s that needed to be changed to “I.” I missed a lot of past tense verbs too. But by the end of 90,000+ words, I got pretty darn good at it.

But more important than mastering the technical skill of writing in 1st person present, I learned that I should have thought harder about POV and tense before I’d had critique partners read my manuscript and started querying it. That’s why I decided to write this article.

I’ll start with a quick refresher on 1^st versus 3^rd person POV and present versus past test to make sure we’re all on the same page. Then talk about:

How I picked the “wrong” POV and tense,
What convinced me I was writing in the wrong POV and tense,
The impact of the POV and tense revision on my manuscript,
How I avoided this problem in my next manuscript, and
A question for debate: Is there a “right” POV and tense?

That’s a bunch to cover. Let’s get started!

Point of View and Tense: A Primer

Feel free to skip this section if you’ve got 1^st vs 3^rd person POV and present vs past tense down pat.

Third Person Point of View

Third person is used when the narrator of a story is one of the characters and they describe the events taking place from their own point of view using “he/she,” “him/her,” or their name. A close 3rd-person POV puts the reader into the head of the main character and will make that character’s thoughts and feeling explicit. It will not make other characters’ thoughts and feelings explicit, though the reader can get insight into them from facial expression, body language, actions, and dialogue.

For the reader, 3^rd person positions them as looking over the narrator’s shoulder rather than as the story’s main character because it uses the character’s name or pronouns rather than “I.”

3^rd person is popular in middle-grade novels.

Example of 3rd-person POV

“Go away!” Dalma’s volume was a whisper but her tone was a yell. She had a fervent desire to punch Mason right in his smirky mouth. But she had curves, not muscles, and this was Mason O’Del, who’d built a thriving drug business while still in high school. Whose neck was inked with a tattoo of a viper, its fangs poised to strike his right ear. Who had more ink showing now through the ripped fabric of his black T-shirt, not that Dalma was looking at his chest.

First Person Point of View

First-person point of view is used when the narrator is one of the characters in a story and they describe the events that take place from their own point of view using “I” or “me.” It is natural to get close to the narrator’s thoughts and feelings when writing in 1^st person.

The reader gets a sense of immediacy because there is no filter between the reader and the character’s thoughts and feelings. The use of “I” literally puts the reader in the story as the main character.

1st person voice is popular in young adult novels across a variety of genres, particularly contemporary, mystery, and thriller. It is also used in middle-grade stories but less frequently.

Example of 1st-person POV

“Go away!” My volume is a whisper but my tone is a yell. I have a fervent desire to punch Mason right in his smirky mouth. But I’ve got curves, not muscles, and this is Mason O’Del, who built a thriving drug business while still in high school. Whose neck is inked with a tattoo of a viper, its fangs poised to strike his right ear. Who has more ink showing through the ripped fabric of his black T-shirt, not that I’m looking at his chest.

Here’s just a bit on other point of view options to round out the discussion.

Omniscient Point of View

Omniscient voice is used when the narrator is not a specific character in your story but instead someone viewing the story from a distance. Omniscient voice still uses 3rd person pronouns to describe events. Depending on whether the omniscient narrator is close or distant, they maybe be able to go into the heads of all the characters to describe their thoughts and feelings (also called head-hopping). Or they can stay outside of the characters’ heads and use facial expressions, body language, actions, and dialogue to give the reader insight into the characters’ thoughts and feelings.

Second Person Point of View

The second period voice uses “you” or “your” to speak to the reader as if they were in a conversation with the author. It’s most frequently used in “Choose your own adventure” novels where you have to choose what to do at the end of each chapter. It is not a common point of view to use when writing novels.

How I Picked the “Wrong” POV and Tense

I wrote a 90k+ manuscript in the wrong POV and tense because I had 4 POV characters in this novel. The story’s narrator switches every chapter.

I thought it would be easier for the reader to track who was narrating if the name was on the page regularly. Third person narration naturally gets the narrator’s name on the page a lot, where 1^st person replaces it with “I,” requiring the reader to flip back to the first page of the chapter if they’ve forgotten who was narrating.

If each narrating character has a distinct voice and perspective, the reader should be able to tell who is speaking at any point even without the name regularly on the page, but I wanted to be sure. Also, when I thought about comparison titles I’d read recently, it seemed to me they were written in 3^rd person.

I also write in a very close 3^rd person, getting well into the narrator’s thoughts and feelings, so I didn’t think that there would be that much of a difference between 1^st-person POV and 3^rd-person.

On tense, I have a less good defense for my choice. I didn’t really think about what tense the manuscript should be, just picked one when I started drafting and it stuck. This is not a good way to pick either POV or tense.

Shame on me!

How Did I Know I was Using the Wrong Tense & POV for My Manuscript?

I got an R&R from an agent who suggested speeding up the start of the story and changing to 1^st person to make the story feel more immediate. Interest from an agent and a suggestion that something could improve your story is certainly a big incentive to dig in and do more work.

But this was going to be a big rewrite, so I didn’t just take the agent’s word for it. I did what I should have done in the beginning. I checked comparison titles for my manuscript, books in the same category (young adult) and same genre (thriller).

This was my process:

Go to my bookshelf and pull as many recently-published multiple-POV young adult thrillers as I could find.
Go to my favorite online bookseller and search for more recently-published YA thrillers written from multiple POVs.
Create a table listing the titles I came up with along with columns for POV, tense, and other info I wanted to compare across the books such as page length.
Fill in the table by skimming the first pages and book description.
I also noted anything unique about the book which might affect whether or not it was really a good comp, such as the use of narrative devices such as podcasts or news articles in the text.

My chart looked like this:

Book	POV	Tense	Page Count	Issues as a comp
YA Thriller 1	1st	present	336	multiple POVs
YA Thriller 2	1st	present	384	multiple POVs
YA Thriller 3	1st	present	372	multiple POVs
YA Thriller 4	1st/3rd	present		2 POVs (1st & 3rd), podcast, then & now
YA Thriller 5	3rd	past		multiple POVs
YA Thriller 6	1st	present		multiple POVs
YA Thriller 7	1st	present	432	multiple POVs, news clippings, video transcripts, novel excerpts
YA Thriller 8	1st	present		3 POV
YA Thriller 9	1st	present		1 POV
YA Thriller 10	1st	present		1 POV
YA Thriller 11	1st	present	320	1 POV, podcast
YA Thriller 12	1st	present		1POV, then & now timelines
YA Thriller 13	3rd	present		1 POV
YA Thriller 14	1st	past		1 POV
YA Thriller 15	1st	present	416	1 POV
YA Thriller 16	1st	present		1 POV
YA Thriller 17	1st	present		1 POV
YA Thriller 18	1st	present		1 POV
YA Thriller 19	1st	present	432	1 POV

A couple things to note. I also pulled in some single POV books. Once I got going, I found the research interesting and wanted to make sure my information was comprehensive. But I listed the closest comps at the top of the table, as well as the ones I’d enjoyed reading the most. The results of my research were pretty consistent, but if there were differences, I knew which books were the most important to weigh in my decision.

The results?

75% of the comps I was most interested in and 92% of all the comp books used 1^st person POV.

13% of the comps I was most interested in and 8% of all the comps used 3^rd person.

(The POV percentages don’t add up to 100% for the comps I was most interested in because one book had a mix of POVs, 1 narrator was 1^st person, the second was 3^rd.)

These results told me it was definitely worth the work of making the POV change because readers of YA thrillers liked and expected 1^st person. My assumption that tracking 4 characters would be difficult was wrong, at least if I wrote the characters well.

This research also told me that 88% of the closest comp books and 92% of all the comp books used the present tense. This is why I decided to make both changes at the same time.

The Impact of the POV & Tense Changes on My Manuscript

People say that 1^st person POV feels more immediate to the reader. The use of “I” puts the reader in the middle of the action rather than positioning them looking over the narrator’s shoulder as they watch her or him take action. I wasn’t sure that this was a big issue since, as I mentioned, I write a very close 3^rd person, but it turns out it did make a difference.

If you skipped the POV & tense primer earlier, you might want to go back and look at the excerpts now. I do feel the 1^st person one feels more immediate. Even though I changed nothing other than POV and tense, the passage still feels a bit stronger to me.

As I revised the manuscript in 1st person, I found I was able to go deeper into the characters’ thoughts and emotions in some parts of the story. It just felt natural, so I guess the story felt more immediate even to me. This immediacy with the characters and their actions made the rewrite a success in my book.

There was another benefit to the POV and tense revision. I cut 5,000 words, taking the manuscript from 96,000 to 91,000. This was partly because I needed less clarification of which “she” or “he” I was talking about since one character was referred to as I, making the distinction clear. Changing the tense to present also meant I needed fewer past perfect verbs. Verbs like “had cheated” became just “cheated.” These were all small changes in word count, but they added up.

So, what did the agent think? I got a rejection.

*sigh*

She was “quite impressed” by how much stronger the start of the book was. But the next bit of the book didn’t pull her in fast enough. I still have more work to do.

How I Avoided Choosing the Wrong POV and Tense in My Next Manuscript

My next manuscripts were 2 middle-grade (secret genre) books that I’d been hired to write based on a publisher’s concept. (For more on that, see my post on Work-for-Hire Writing.) I started writing in 3^rd person, past tense just because I had an idea for the start of the book that I wanted to get down without spending a couple hours searching for comp titles and making my table.

Why did I pick 3^rd person past for my messy start? Middle-gradeers are younger, less strong readers, right? I thought 3rd person would be easier for them. I also thought that most middle-grade novels in (secret) genre were written in 3^rd person.

Once I had a start on the story, I went back and checked my assumptions. I was both right and wrong. Here’s the table:

Comp Books	Target Grades	POV	Tense	Lexile
secret genre 1	2-5	1st	past	460L
secret genre 2	3-7	1st	present	950 L
secret genre 3	1-4	3rd	past	240
secret genre 4	3-7	1st	past
secret genre 5	4-6	3rd	past	770L
secret genre 6	3-7	3rd	past	610
secret genre 7	3-7	1st	past	760
secret genre 8	3-7	1st	past	590
secret genre 9	3-7	3rd	past	800
secret genre 10	3-7	1st	present	560
secret genre 11	2-5	3rd	past	690

55% of the books were 1^st person and 45% were 3^rd. That gave me a legitimate choice. I could write in either. I chose to write in 1^st person hoping that the immediacy of the story would help the book connect with more readers.

I was surprised that a couple of the comp titles were also present tense. Even though that was only 18% of the comp books I checked, I decided I wanted to go with present tense since it was an option. After that big revision, I preferred it.

But I was hired to write these books based on a publisher’s concept. I didn’t want the editor to decide that I’d made the wrong choice after I submitted the manuscript. So I sent her my table and she gave the POV and tense choice an okay (and was pleasantly surprised to see the thought I’d put into it.)

A Question for Debate: Is There a “Right” POV and Tense?

Last month, I attended an agent-editor day hosted by New England SCBWI. In a Zoom breakout with an editor and six other writers, someone asked me why I’d picked 1^st person for this novel in and I was very clear that it was based on agent feedback.

This person must have heard some similar feedback because she felt very strongly that her manuscript should be 3^rd person even though the story was a YA genre in which most published novels are 1^st person.

Was she wrong?

I don’t think so. The writer knows their story best. Only you can make the million choices that go into writing a novel—not just POV and tense, but where to start your story, whether to include that prologue or a dream scene, what characters to choose. The thing that’s important to know is that your choice might make the manuscript more difficult to sell if it has less appeal to today’s readers.

When I picked the less popular tense for my (secret genre) middle-grade books, it was based on the fact that I thought the present tense would appeal to that audience even though it wasn’t the most popular choice. One of the most popular books on the list was written in 1^st person and the other was written by a very successful author, even though this particular book wasn’t as popular as some of his others.