Writing Jessie’s Voice in First Person

I like writing in first person because it creates a highly intimate bond between the character and the reader. When the character speaks directly to you in her own deeply personal voice, she is usually easier to identify with, and that is something I care about. When I’m writing Jessie’s story in her voice, in a way I have to step out of my own life and enter into hers as completely as I can. I try to identify with her so well that I can see things through her eyes, understand things through her history and her experience, and feel things with her heart. What I’m describing of course is the experience of empathy. One of my hopes is that the reader, too, will enter into at least some level of empathetic participation with Jessie.

I also wanted to tell small portions of the story from the perspective of Whit and Hugh. I’m not sure I can say exactly why I chose to do that in the third person voice. I did feel like I was writing with just as much empathy, seeing through their eyes, understanding through their history and experience, and feeling with their hearts. I’ve asked myself whether it’s possible I was shy about my ability to step quite so boldly into the male perspective. I hope not, but I won’t deny that could be a tiny part of it. I think by and large, though, it was to distinguish Jessie’s journey as the central pilgrimage in the story, to emphasize that she is the one who will undergo the primary transformation.