This is kind of a funny topic but I just spent the majority of my Thanksgiving week off from teaching converting my very first book from first person to third. I’m going to say right up front, think long and hard before you decided to do this! Think long and hard about writing a book in first person if you think you may ever want to change it to third.
Why did I think I wanted to make the change? Well, first of all, let me explain what was happening when I wrote it in first person. A fantasy with time travel, my first book was a healing journey. After the collapse of my seven-year Ph.D. effort, I wanted to embrace notions that rewriting our story can be cathartic. I set myself up as, in part, identifying with my main character, and then, day by day, lived with her, stepping in and out of magical realms. I empowered her, and also expressed her shame and disappointment when things didn’t turn out as intended.
I worked on that book for ten years though mainly five, after which I started the second book in the series. Now, five years after publication, I had an editor go over it to prepare it for relaunch, also getting it ready for audiobook production. My editor suggested losing the first few pages, saying the character wasn’t all that likable at the start. That got me thinking, should Kay go through all this as she, not “I”? How would that change the tone? I thought “Hey, I can work on that the first day or two of my nine days off and just see what it’s like.
Well, let me tell you, it is not simple. I had to search for not only I we us our my me I’d myself and mine, but also I with and without a space before it, me with a period after, myself with a period after, and so on. Not only that but when you don’t have “I” in scenes of two women, suddenly you have to sprinkle their names all over the place because otherwise who does “she” refer to??? And of course this leads to re-editing large swaths until you wonder, where am I going to draw the line? Well, this morning, I re-entered all the search terms to make sure they had all turned into she, they, their, her, she’d, herself, hers. And will let my editor check it over. Phew. Good grief. At least I have most of four days left of vacation. Happy Thanksgiving!
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Marie Judson 