Writing Tips

Starting Every Sentence with "I"

Ah, yes, starting every sentence, or most sentences, with "I". This is a hard-to-break trend with younger or less-experienced writers who prefer to write in first-person. When writing a work in this form, it is very easy to get hung up on the main character whose story you want to tell; it is very easy to get stuck on looking through their eyes and commanding their every move, their every thought, their every word. It becomes so tedious that "I" becomes annoying.

Often, these writers forget to divert the attention elsewhere--outward-- and the work begins to feel mechanical, like the character "I" is a marionette, and we are watching it perform a poor dance on stage with a very drowsy audience and very dull music.

We begin to doze, and we begin to skip in and out while reading this type of work.

What most of these writers don't realize is that we don't always consciously force our own hands to move, or even look at them as they do, and we don't consciously or continuously think of ourselves when involved in some kind of happening; instead, we focus on what's going on so we don't get into a wreck!  Our own brain feels like it is one with the environment until we consciously access the "I" to make an analysis that involves the Self. Thus, our main character "I" should do the same.

Below is a sample taken from chapter forty-two of the first Leviathans  series book, The Violet Curse. I have modified the excerpts so that they over-reference the narrative character; this way, the excerpt will depict an exact replica of the works I have seen using "I" far too much.

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I approached Oakwall as night fell on the final day, and I saw the strange lights, and the fire eating at the great wall. I drew my horse back, slowing the beast.

I slipped from the horse and left the tired beast untethered behind me, and I began to sift through the small dwellings there. Blond hair . . . Blond hair . . . Blond hair. I searched every painted face as well as every unpainted face. I saw none of the men were blond. I noticed their hair colors varied from oak to pine, to pitch, to mud, to salt, to blood. None were blond. None. I headed toward the fires, where I saw scores of Greenmen were fighting with warriors clad in Aelynhold's colors -- the armor those men wore was similar to that of the thieves and murderers of that city's criminal underground. I saw that those men also wore glass chains about their necks as well as dark fur cloaks much like those the wolfmen donned. I saw strewn about them upon the ground many dead Enforcers and Greenmen, and some of their own men were also among the dead.

I noticed the Aelynhold warriors fought as if they were trying to get to something. Or someone. I looked at the wall where the ivy had been scorched -- where flames still licked with incinerating fury -- I believed that was the center of the fight. I looked up.

At first, I saw nothing but the great opening in the levy where the wall had crumbled and the vines had grown through the structure and created a cave. And then the blond man caught my eye from the depths of the structure. I snarled and clutched at my knife, and I made my way toward the wall. I didn't care that the fire burned me. I couldn't feel it, not after what the shard had done to me. I put the knife in my mouth and began to climb, even as the flames licked at me and my skin blistered and boiled. I felt the Violet course through my veins, and I noticed the fire seemed to cringe from me, to die in my presence.

I saw the blond-haired man above approach the ledge as the other armed men fell away from me, retreating from the vicious fire that lashed them yet couldn't seem to kill me. Above, I saw it was Lukas who stared down at me, horror blooming across his twisted face for the first time as he recognized me. My snarl clamped down on the blade. I made my fingers dig into the wooden trunks and stone walls, and both gave under my strength.