User blog comment:Grizzly Bear/Writing In Third Person!/@comment-24821182-20140531175751/@comment-6761334-20140606043634

Okay, my keyboard hated me. Here is the second go.

I fundamentally disagree about the usefulness and appropriateness of first person narratives.

First, it allows for the narrator to be less knowledge about what is going on. Discovering what is happening with the narrator can create a lot of tension and horror.

second, it allows for an unreliable narrator. While I feel this has been overused, there is still the potentional for a chill as the reader realizes the gulf between what has been told and what is real.

third, it allows any reader to take the spot of the narrator. I virtually never identify gender, ethnicity, orientation, body identity etc. when I write in the first person because I don't want anyone to feel as though I am not writing for them. I feel first person is more inclusory.

Fourth, unless this is no sleep there is absolutely no rule demanding a story told in the first person be anything more than a story narrated in the first person. The narrator does not have to survive, have a reason or audience to narrate to (though a clever use of reason and audience can really heighten a story), or need to be interpreted as typing it out at a keyboard. Those are extra interpretations/prefferences that you are putting on first person narratives that are not inherrent.

Also, part of creepypasta is narrating. A first person pasta is a bit mroe like a script for a narrator.