Surprise vs. Tension

When writing a story, I'm never sure if I want to go for a first-person or third-person narrator. They have different abilities, which affect how you can tell your story. Ultimately, it comes down to either surprising your reader or building tension within them.

First-person narration is great, and I actually tend to prefer it, because you follow one person around. The story becomes the story of the narrator. They don't know everything, and the audience only sees what the character sees. But there is more going on, and when a surprise is revealed to the character, it is equally surprising to the reader.

Third-person narration is generally omniscient. It is like a camera that follows anything important going on, periodically switching to see what other people are doing in a given period of time. And with the narrator knowing everything, the reader feels omniscient, too. While this ruins surprise, it creates tension. If the motives and plans of characters are components within a machine, then the reader gets to see everything setting up and feels concern for the protagonist because they know what fate is about to befall him/her.

As for which one to use for a story, the real answer, as always, is that it depends on what story you are trying to tell. Is it about one person, or is it about the machine as a whole? Are you wanting to create surprise or tension? If you have the answers to those questions, then you will know which narration to use.