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If you insist on first person, try these ideas
Published: June 22, 2005 Voice Find a distinctive voice for the first-person narrator, one that may be quite different from your own natural voice. Notable examples: Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.
Unreliable narrator Allow your narrator to be unreliable, meaning too deceitful or deluded or naïve to be relating the whole truth of the story. Notable examples: Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," Adam Haslett's "Notes to My Biographer."
Peripheral narrator Make the narrator someone other than the story's main character, someone who serves as an observer of the story rather than the star. Notable examples: Herman Melville's Moby Dick, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
Multiple vision Let two or more characters tell their side of the story from their own first-person viewpoints, providing different angles on the same story. Notable examples: Russell Banks' The Sweet Hereafter, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible.
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