When would I use First-person or Third-person Narrative?

First-person and third-person are the most popular narrative viewpoints a writer would use. This is because it aids the writer in describing in details of several specific characters in a story while hiding the thoughts of other characters. In such cases, the writer only wishes to elaborate some characters to emphasize on certain morals or events that are going through in a character's mind. The character can be a bad character (one with bad motives) a kind and compassionate character. However, the writer's choice of perspective depends on the theme he chooses for his story.

I would use first-person narrative when I want the reader to look through the eyes of this single character. The character's thoughts and ideas and choice of words would be made clear to the readers and this helps in creating a closer relationship between the reader and the character. This would be very important if I intend to make the reader support the character's view or to have some stereotypes of the character. A first-person narrative also evokes the reader's feelings and thoughts (e.g. pity, detest, disappointment, relieve) by elaborating on some mental challenges the character faced. All in all, I feel that a first-person narrative's is to allow the readers to stand in the character's shoes and feel for them.

As for third-person narrative, I would only use it if I want a reader to look from a perspective where the narrator is like an invisible character which is non-existent in the story but able to look through the thoughts and feelings of chosen characters. This will allow the readers to understand the story from multiple perspectives. These different perspectives may have conflicts or relationship, but they are essential in the elaboration of the theme. From different perspective, you can have a wider description of the settings and manipulate the characters' actions and thoughts such that they can be connected together to elaborate on the main focus(e.g. character, plot, setting). Unlike first-person narrative, the readers will be able to choose to support or detest any particular character instead of just focusing on one. However, the relationship between the readers and the individual characters will not be as close as that of a first-person narrative. Therefore, the main aim of a third-person narrative is to enlarge the image of a story by having different characters or perspectives to describe the story.