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I love love love Mary Stewart’s first person novels. The thing she is great at is hiding information, so that your idea of reality is subtly different from the protagonist. Airs Above the Ground has a perfect example, when she sees someone that looks like her husband in a foreign street. Can’t say any more…spoilers!

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Still not quite sure about him; could be an evil genius.

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The big problem with head-hopping is that it creates distance (and in third limited, confusion) but if you’re going with omniscient third, that’s what you’re getting anyway. Remote viewing by an omniscient narrator who is not part of the story but observes from above.

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“Pride and Prejudice, like most of Jane Austen’s works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech. This has been defined as ‘the free representation of a character’s speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character’s thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke.’”

Kind of a windy way to say “head hopping”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_prejudice

I find that, like present tense, I don’t generally like to read first person – it has to be really well done to keep my attention. I prefer the remove of third.

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I did it by reading the best quotes aloud as I went; spaghetti spined weasel had him asking if I was mad at him, the dom perignon of donuts had him picking the book up when I put it down. he bought Agnes for my birthday and read it before he wrapped it up!

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I also kind of feel that omniscient makes for better humour than third person, because again you get the narrator’s voice. Like the Austen and Dickens already mentioned, and I think Georgette Heyer too.

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Another turn-off is when first person reads more like an event log than a story, the protag’s every movement chronicled. That can feel more like weeding than reading.

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Yes, which is what I thought,but I used the word context instead without a caveat. My bad. (In the context of the entire novel.) So, yes, I agree you have to look at the whole instead of bits.

I’m going to have to ponder the rest of what you said about first person. I’ve got a theory that I can’t quite put into words yet about what makes it work despite the trade-off of limiting your world with only one view.

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I get what you’re saying about first-person sometimes feeling too egocentric — a lot of contemporary young-adult fiction written in first-person feels that way to me, as does stuff like Saira Rao’s “Chambermaid.” I think you have to have a likable character for first-person to work easily, and because teenagers are inherently self-centered, and a person complaining about a job others would love to have is too self-pitying, the overall effect just fails.

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Ever since then, I’ve pretty much stuck to third limited. First person is fun for some things for me, but I seem to enjoy writing in third limited more. I like that I can touch more on the different characters’ perspectives, without the switch (if I switch) being too jarring for the reader. First person doesn’t lend itself to multiple perspectives, really, and I tend to like the overall story a tiny bit more than the characters.

While reading, I actually identify more easily with some characters when they’re written in third imited instead of first person. This didn’t happen with Liz, but I think it does happen occasionally because some authors (not Jenny) write first person so that the story feels too egocentric for me to be comfortable with. Does that make sense?

Side question for other writers out there – Do you ever have trouble with a character taking on too much of your own personality? I’m doing okay with it right now, but there are moments where I’m fighting with my protagonist because she’s trying to become a Mary Sue type of character. I’ve even put a post it on my computer screen that reads, “This book is not your way to work out your current relationship concerns.” I have a clear idea of who she is, but sometimes she blurs a little. Thoughts or suggestions?

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The first line you gave flirts with omniscience, but it’s what Agnes is doing. She’s not observing herself doing that, it’s Agnes cooking raspberries and she knows about it. Bob makes the same argument and says that you need omniscient for an opening line, but I think it’s just a more distant third person. Nobody’s watching Agnes, observing Agnes, describing Agnes’s flushed cheeks. It’s just Agnes cooking, a fact. It’s a more distant third limited than the next lines, but it’s still third limited.

Yep, her thoughts without tags are deep third.

But I’d argue there is no implied first person in deep third and no direct first person POV in any of the examples. It’s all just deep third. You’re inside the character’s head in both POVs, but one comes at you as “I” and the other as “she” so they feel different; all the thoughts are going to come at you as “I,” but that doesn’t shift POV. It’s still third limited.

Pronoun alone doesn’t determine POV; you have to look at the entire piece. “I” is always a first person pronoun but it isn’t always first person POV. If that makes sense.

For me, third limited is harder to write but safer, first person is easier to write but more difficult to execute. That is, the first person writing is going like gangbusters, but it’s harder to get the emotion and the layering in there. Easier and harder.

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