First Person Perspective

• Main
• All Subpages
• Create New

When the action is viewed through the eyes of one character, this trope applies. It's most commonly used in literature as a narrative technique and in video games a genre. It is noticeable and notable when it appears outside of those two areas, especially in movie and film where it's relatively rare to see anything directly from a characters perspective, rarer still for it to be maintained throughout. It was a major breakthrough in art when this was subverted and perspectives that no human could reasonably have started to be used in painting, such as a birds eye view.

First Person Perspective, especially when accompanied by first person narration, unintentionally functions as a Spoiler Opening. Subconsciously, the reader assumes with good reason, that no matter what happens during the story, the viewpoint character must survive the events in order to be in a position to tell the tale.

Sibling trope of Second Person Narration.

Sub-Tropes:

• The All-Concealing "I"
• All First-Person Narrators Write Like Novelists
• Captain's Log
• Diary
• First-Person Shooter
  • First Person Ghost
  • Freelook Button
• First-Person Peripheral Narrator
• First-Person Smartass
• Point of View
• Private Eye Monologue

Examples of First Person Perspective include:

Fan Works

• The Sailor Moon fanfic Isekai by Moonlight is strict First Person Perspective; if the protagonist isn't present, the event isn't shown in the story. Even if it's an important canon scene.
• In general Drunkard's Walk alternates evenly between First Person narration by Doug Sangnoir (justified as being excerpts from journals he keeps during his extradimensional exile) and Third-Person Limited Omniscient Narration "looking over the shoulder" of one of the other characters in the current story. Doug is aware someone may read his journals someday, and occasionally addresses the theoretical reader directly; other characters have no awareness of their roles as viewpoint characters. Very rarely will be found a scene written in pure Third-Person Omniscient perspective, such as the prologue to Drunkard's Walk V. This may be Doug indulging in a literary flight of fancy while writing a journal entry.

Film

• In the Doom movie there's a sequence shot in first person meant to reflect its First-Person Shooter roots.

Live-Action TV

• In later seasons Numb3rs used gun barrel perspective as the FBI agents performed operations intercut with more regular footage.