I don’t like being told how to feel, and I don’t want to tell a reader how to feel. When I’m reading a piece of fiction and I feel like the author was trying to force a specific feeling on me, I get mad. I generally stop reading. I realize this is somewhat immature, because aren’t most stories built with the idea that they’re going to make me feel something?
When I write, I write in third person. First-person works best, I think, when the reader is meant to relate to the word through one character. I recently read The Hunger Games trilogy, which is in first person. As the readers, we’re obviously supposed to feel the world through Katniss’ experience of it — we’re supposed to relate to the cruelty and kindness of other characters as she feels those things. It’s not wrong. Obviously, it works pretty well for Collins.
But in the same way that I don’t want to tell the reader how a character looks — because it rarely has any bearing on the story what a character looks like — I don’t want to tell a reader how to feel about any character or institution in the story. Where I find a character to be a flat villain, another reader might see that character as a tragedy. I don’t want to force the reader to feel the same way about a character that I do. Maybe it means I’m doing it wrong.
For my writing, third person is the most effective way to share a story without getting too wrapped up in a single character’s thoughts and feelings.
(And much like with Highlander II, I shove my fingers in my ears and refuse to acknowledge that second person exists. Absolutely refuse.)