Authorial Presence: The Art of Including Yourself

Figuring out how to fit yourself into your writing is a bigger issue than just learning to write about yourself. If you write a personal essay, such as a literacy narrative, it’s relatively easy to figure out how much of yourself to put into the essay—it is, after all, all about you. But if you are writing a research paper or a profile or case study, it might not be as obvious how and when you should work your opinions, point-of-view, or personal experiences into the paper.

Point of View Versus Authorial Presence

Most students are familiar with “point of view” as a concept, but they aren’t quite sure what authorial presence is. Point of view simply has to do with the pronouns you use (I, me, you, ours, he, etc.), while authorial presence has to do with how much of you is actually represented in the paper.

Authorial presence, or writing yourself into a paper, is more than simply using the first-person point of view. If your instructor tells you that you must write a particular paper using third-person point of view, that doesn’t mean you can’t have authorial presence. Your thoughts, opinions, and values will still come through by the things you choose to include or exclude, by your words and phrasing, and by your tone. Similarly, just because you drop an I or me into your paper, technically making it first-person point of view, doesn’t necessarily mean you have much authorial presence. I read a profile recently where the author only mentioned herself once, saying, “While speaking with David on the phone, I asked him about his mother.” That was the only use of I in the entire paper, yet as we followed David around, the author felt very present. Through the vivid descriptions and quotes and the things she focused on, there was quite a bit of authorial presence. Compare that, say, to a newspaper article about a car wreck on the boulevard. The author will give you the facts and details, but he won’t ever mention himself or tell you the accident made him sad. Journalism in this sense tends to have little to no authorial presence, because readers simply don’t care about the author's views on the car wreck.

Hunter S. Thompson in the late 60s and early 70s decided he was tired of this third-person, detached form of journalism that lacked any authorial presence. He decided it would be more intriguing to the reader if the reporter became a part of the story, so he began embedding himself into his investigations. If he wanted to know more about biker gangs, he would join one, ride with them, get into fights, beat people up, and then write all about it. If he wanted to know more about illegal drug use in casinos, he would go to Vegas, get coked up, and write about it. This style of writing became known as Gonzo reporting, and it’s at the complete opposite end of the authorial-presence spectrum from traditional, unbiased, third-person reporting.

When you write your college papers, you’ll have to decide where on that spectrum you want to land. You likely won’t write many papers using a third-person perspective with no authorial presence. And you may never go truly Gonzo and make the paper all about yourself (unless, that is, you are tasked with writing a personal narrative). Instead, you’ll end up somewhere in the middle. It’ll be up to you to decide whether to use first, second, or third-person point of view in your paper. It will be up to you to decide how much of you, as the author, should be recognizable in the writing. Personally, I tend to lean more toward the Gonzo side of authorial presence, but at times, like when I write a budget proposal, I become more reporter-like and leave myself out of it.

Subjective vs. Objective Writing

All writing is subjective. You will, on occasion, have a professor who demands you write something that is purely objective. I'm sorry to inform you that no such type of writing exists—and even if it did, nobody would want to read it. Everything we write is filtered through our brains. I could ask fifty people to witness the same event and write about it as objectively as possible. For the most part, they will hit on the same key points, but how they order the events, the words they use, the length of the piece, what they choose to leave out, how they visually present their information, are all a matter of choice. They are subjective.

Take, for example, this table. It might seem as objective as you can get. It's simply a bunch of categories and numbers.

The reality, though, is that this table is fraught with choices. Deciding where to put the information, what to name it, how to emphasize averages or totals, colors, size—everything about it comes down to choice. So even though it's a simple representation of numbers without my direct analysis, it is still to a small degree subjective.

Compare this, then, with the analysis that follows the chart:

It's no wonder subjects 1 and 3 did way better than subject 2. Just look at them! Despite thinking that subject 2 would be the laughing stock of the study, he actually did way better than we expected, though that might just be due to dumb luck (and way too much caffeine—the dude wouldn't lay off the coffee!).

As far as the whole idea of subjectivity goes, this is way on the other end of the spectrum.

And that's what subjectivity is: a spectrum. On one end, you have completely objective, truth unaltered. If such a thing exists, it is only in theory, since once you try to express truth in words or art or numbers, you filter it through your brain and through your meager mechanisms of communication, adding the subjective element.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you get absolute subjectivity—what some term solipsism or expressionism, meaning the author makes no attempt to pretend that he or she is doing anything other than being subjective, where our good friend Hunter S. Thompson, the self-proclaimed Gonzo reporter, likes to play. The following passage comes from his article, "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved." I chose it at random, but I could choose any of his paragraphs with the same result--highly subjective Gonzo writing:

I went to the Hertz desk to pick up my car, but the moon-faced young swinger in charge said they didn’t have any. “You can’t rent one anywhere,” he assured me. “Our Derby reservations have been booked for six weeks.” I explained that my agent had confirmed a white Chrysler convertible for me that very afternoon but he shook his head. “Maybe we’ll have a cancellation. Where are you staying?"

There's nothing particularly salacious about his passage, but then, it doesn't have to be. The simple act of injecting himself into the story—even going so far as making the story about him—is at the heart of highly-subjective writing.

I suspect that when your professor tells you to be objective, what he or she is really asking is that you stay away from this type of writing. On the scale of subjectivity, even though you can never truly achieve objectivity, your professor is asking you to stay as close to that traditional-reporting end as possible.

One way professors hope to accomplish this is by restricting what type of point of view you can use (“No use of I or me”!). This forces you to write in the third-person point of view, which tends to help you be more objective and rely less on authorial presence. Or so the instructor assumes.

What your professor may not realize, however, is that writing in the third-person is not the same as writing objectively. Take, for example, this line:

Senator Cullin, the Democrat from South Carolina, has once again held a press conference and lowered the collective IQ of the entire state.

The sentence is in third person. But it is anything but objective. Likewise, just because you write something in the first person doesn't mean it is highly subjective. Consider this sentence:

I put four apples on the counter and then ate one. I was left with three apples.

Sure, it’s in first person, but I am no closer to actually knowing anything about the author than I was before.

If you find yourself up against a professor who forbids you from writing in the first person, and if you feel strongly that your paper would benefit from your vantage point, you might ask your professor what the motivation is. If they are looking for objectivity, make a plea for why you can achieve a semblance of objectivity through first person just as easily as through third person. But if they won't budge, it's best to demure to their demands. He or she is the one, after all, assigning the grade.

Another motivation for asking you to write in the third person comes from the idea of "looking beyond yourself." It isn't always about subjectivity-vs-objectivity, but might have more to do with incorporating sources. There is a prevalent belief among educators that students who write in the third person will rely less on their own opinion and seek out the opinions of others. I suppose there's merit to this. It's hard to resort to telling a personal experience as a form of evidence if you can't directly refer to yourself. But I don't think the solution is to ban the use of the first person. Professors, instead, should work with you to help you better utilize the first person and not resort to so-called solipsism (writing about yourself) or gonzo-reporting (writing like you're the main character of a story that really isn't even about you).

Personal vs. Private Writing

If you are asked to write a personal essay or personal narrative, it's important to understand that personal does not mean the same thing as private or confessional. Personal simply means that it is about you and told from your perspective. My students often squirm when I ask them to write a personal essay because they think they are being asked to divulge embarrassing information about themselves. I would never ask that.

Writing can be very therapeutic, and if you want to use this opportunity to write about something private in the hopes of gaining closure or a greater sense of well-being, then go for it. But if you are sharing sensitive or confessional information simply because you think that's what is expected, then stop! Your instructor is not hoping for an exposé on the inner-workings of your soul.

Your professor is not a priest or a psychologist or a counselor. Or maybe they are—but chances are, they're not. And if they are like me, you might find them to be somewhat callous and insensitive. I have read many narratives from students about private and sensitive topics like rape, suicide, divorce, and abortion. And then I write things in the margins like, "I don't understand what this paragraph has to do with your thesis statement," or, "I can sense that this story is supposed to be sad, but there are no concrete details and I'm having a hard time picturing it."

These aren't the things my students want to hear.

If you're lucky enough to have a professor who is willing to share your personal pain and commiserate with you, then go for it. But for the most part, assume that writing something overly-personal will only make for an awkward interaction and may even prevent your instructor from providing constructive feedback to help you revise your draft or improve your writing. How do you tell someone who has just written about his sister committing suicide that his paragraphs are ill-formed and his conclusion lacking?

My advice is this: if you wouldn't feel comfortable raising your hand in class and telling the story to your classmates, then you probably should avoid putting it in your paper. Chances are, you will have to share your writing not only with your professor but with several members of the class in workshops and peer-editing sessions. I have had several students over the years ask me if they could skip this phase. "My stories are really private," they say. "I don't want anyone reading them."

If that's the case, you might want to switch topics. Personal writing is not private writing. Be prepared to share EVERY essay you write in college, and know that it will likely get picked apart. And don't ever feel compelled to divulge private or confessional information.