The Power Of Point Of View, page 1
THE POWER OF
POINT
OF
VIEW
Make Your Story
Come to Life
Alicia Rasley
dedication
This is dedicated to my parents, Jeanne and Robert Todd, who guided all of their eight children to be avid readers.
acknowledgments
Too many fellow writers have helped me to name them all individually. But special thanks go out to the members of Indiana RWA, WITTS, Romex, and the Demo Dames, who patiently suggested examples for my most arcane points. I truly don't know how any writer gets by without a little help from friends! Also many thanks to my editor, Lauren Mosko, for her unending patience and savvy in revamping the book. And I also owe my husband, Jeff, and my sons, JJ and Andrew, for the many passages they suggested and all the hours they listened patiently to my obsessive lectures on point of view.
table of contents
INTRODUCTION
part one: the basics
CHAPTER 1 What is POV?
CHAPTER 2 POV Choices and What They Communicate About Your Story
CHAPTER 3 POV and the Elements of Story
part two: building your story
CHAPTER 4 First Person
CHAPTER 5 Second Person
CHAPTER 6 Impersonal Third Person
CHAPTER 7 Personal Third Person: Single
CHAPTER 8 Personal Third Person: Multiple
part three: the master class
CHAPTER 9 Individualizing POV
CHAPTER 10 Levels of POV
CHAPTER 11 Creating Alternative and Unusual Voices
INTRODUCTION
Readers are different these days.
But not in the way so many social critics assert. Today's readers aren't worse readers than their predecessors or more shallow or less discriminating — far from it. Anyone who reads fiction for pleasure instead of watching television, playing video games, or surfing the Web is probably a very experienced, very educated reader — not necessarily someone with a PhD in literature, but someone educated in how stories work. In fact, they often know more, consciously or subconsciously, about story structure than we writers do.
Think about it: A reader who has read three hundred mystery stories is hard to fool. She notes that casual mention of Deborah's grandmother's brooch, immediately labels it a “clue,” and puts Deborah in the suspect column. A thriller reader has had his fill of stalkers — another isn't going to chill him much. A reader of romances has seen a hundred couples paired off happily, and when she's three chapters into a new novel, she might already know how this couple is going to overcome the barriers to love.
This doesn't mean the books are bad — only that readers of popular fiction are often hard to impress in this new millennium. Readers like to read and they like to buy books, so they are definitely the writer's friend. But the more they read, the more it takes to impress them because they are so familiar with the traditional storytelling forms.
UNIVERSAL THEMES, FAMILIAR FORMS
Familiarity of form is not, as some critics might aver, a sign of lack of creative imagination. That's like saying a pitcher throwing three fast balls in a row to strike out a batter also lacks imagination. In fact, these storytelling traditions are one of the reasons genres have survived for so long — because they lead writers to explore themes of universal interest (for example, justice, love, or survival). Genre readers like to see old stories done in new ways. This doesn't mean they're afraid of experiments, only that they get more pleasure when a writer's experimentation is performed within the boundaries of the genre's expectations. These readers are sophisticated enough in “story grammar” to tie us poor writers into knots trying to keep them intrigued, when they have pretty much seen it all before.
I remember the astonishment of a friend after reading his first mystery. He was blown away by the ending — you know, when the sleuth figures out who the murderer is? My friend went on and on about how smart this sleuth was, how he never guessed the bad guy was so-and-so, and how, wow, it was a great book. To get that sort of reaction from an experienced fiction reader, you have to do a lot more than out a murderer. But this is good news, because trying to impress those experienced readers makes us become more innovative in our writing techniques.
One way to make fresh the familiar story structure is through point of view (POV) — the narrative perspective through which the reader experiences the story. From the earliest times, storytellers realized that a story changes depending on the narrator: Victorious Achilles's version of what happened during the Trojan War will differ in experience, detail, interpretation, and attitude from the defeated Hector's. (Homer, trickster that he was, started the trend toward multiple viewpoints by giving us both versions in The Iliad and The Odyssey.) Unique characters can offer unique experiences even of common, familiar events — and this truth lies at the center of the POV-construction process.
The Amazing Doubling Trick
To better understand the power of POV, add to this uniqueness of perspective the educated readers' amazing cognitive “doubling” trick: They can descend entirely into the experience of a compelling character, while maintaining the distance of the outside observer. In this way, they simultaneously participate vicariously in a fictional event and analyze their participation rationally. This is how law-abiding readers can understand very well why Hannibal the Cannibal bites off a guard's nose and still remain amazed at themselves for being so taken in by this serial murderer, all the while rooting for Clarice to get him in the end.
This cognitive doubling trick isn't understood by the puritanical social critics who assume that those who read Stephen King have a death wish, those who read Thomas Harris are latent murderers, and those who read Nora Roberts must be unhappy in love. The truth is, experienced readers are much more capable than non-readers of distinguishing between fiction and reality, because they do it constantly as they read. Unfortunately for us fiction writers, this makes sustaining our readers' interest and belief doubly hard.
In this book, I'll be exploring how varying POV can help writers provide readers with a complex, sophisticated, interactive experience and make every book, even one with old themes, seem new. First, writers must create vivid characters with strong motivations who are placed into difficult or interesting situations; next, they must designate and develop POV to make the story come to life within the readers' heads.
Thinking About POV Like a Writer
I first got intrigued with POV while writing my master's thesis on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe wrote almost exclusively in first-person POV, experimenting with the “unreliable narrator” technique that makes this type of narration so much fun. (That is, you don't quite trust the narrator of Poe's “Berenice” when he says he can't imagine how his fiancée came to be buried alive in that tomb.)
There are one hundred and fifty years worth of literary criticism on this seminal writer, but I found few critics had the same understanding of his POV approach as I did. It isn't that I am smarter than they are, but I am a writer, and I found myself analyzing his POV approach as I'd analyze my own: How did he convey what other characters were thinking and feeling when confined to the narrator's solipsistic POV? How did he make a narrator's voice sound both rational and insane? Why did he pull away from sharp perception and go into abstraction right at the moment when the narrator gets his hands on the poison? When did the narrator start lying to the reader?
In fact, I found only a few critics who truly explore Poe's POV approach, and these were all writers themselves: Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, and D.H. Lawrence. (You can tell what a significant influence Poe was to attract such critics.) This confirmed my supposition that only writers fully understand the mechanics of POV (consciously or not) and that only writers care how it's done. Writing that thesis also taught me that mastering POV can add layers of meaning to one's stories: It was Poe's control of POV that led generations of readers to know in their bones that Poe's narrators were lying when they proclaimed that they really didn't mean to bury their wives alive, which, in turn, led generations to assume Poe himself must have buried a wife or two. (One hazard of writing in first person is that your readers tend to think that I- the-narrator is actually I-the-author.) Poe would have enjoyed knowing that his readers dug beneath the surface of his stories and sought the hidden mysteries underneath, even if it came at the cost of his own reputation. He would have applauded Robert Frost's observation, “I want people to understand me. I just want 'em to understand me wrong.” Intense reader involvement through the mastering of POV is precisely what we modern writers should be seeking as we craft our own stories.
POV is a writer's closest connection to her readers. It creates meaning beyond that offered by the simple combination of character and plot; it adds subtext and secrets and suspense. POV is a writing element every bit as important as pacing or setting and, for that matter, is an essential part of developing plot and character. In fact, writers actually work with many facets of POV, consciously or not; with every scene, they explore the ways POV affects the reader's experience of the work.
This book is meant both to explain the basics and to explore the complexities of the elusive but essential elements of POV. You'll probably notice I love this subject. The more I study it, the more it fascinates me. I hope you find it even half as interesting as I do.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
This book is comprehensive: You'll find both the basic information — the types of POV, i
Because POV is, above all, an interactive subject, I'll use published examples to explore each topic. I'll finish with some exercises that you can apply immediately to your own book. It's best just to freewrite answers to these questions, without trying to edit or censor yourself. For instance, sometimes I'll ask you to write in the first-person voice of your character, and you'll be amazed — once you let yourself “become” that person — how your subconscious creates that voice and persona to reveal attitudes and events you never imagined before.
I do want to stress that you should try to apply what you've learned to the book you're currently working on. While I'll use well-known examples in discussing these concepts, you'll learn a lot more from trying out the techniques and exercises on your own story and on the characters you know even more intimately.
It will help if you can stay open to the need for revision. Revision is as much a part of writing as the initial drafting. In fact, revision is what turns “writer therapy” into “reader enjoyment” by aiding in the transferal of the story from the writer to the reader. (That's why revision is so scary, because when you start considering what the reader needs to know rather than just what you want to say, you're giving up ownership of your story, in a way.) Don't be surprised if an exercise has you analyzing your own POV choice in an already written scene and concluding ruefully that it wasn't the best choice after all.
You'll notice that I can't avoid talking about plot and character as I discuss POV. That's because POV filters the experience of the plot events through the personalities and perceptions of the characters. Who is narrating the event (that is, the POV character) determines in great part how the reader experiences it.
The Book's Structure
I've arranged this book in three parts so you can easily find the information you need.
Part One: The Basics contains an overview of the elements of POV.
Part Two: Building Your Story defines each of the major POV choices and helps you determine which is best suited to shape your story.
Part Three: The Master Class goes beyond mere definition to an exploration of how to use POV to deepen characterization, increase suspense, and enhance your readers' experiences. My overall purpose is to equip you with the tools to experiment with POV, to teach you how to control your readers' experiences of your book, and to help you build stronger, more dynamic and compelling fiction — using POV as the core of your story-building process.
EXERCISE
GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH POV
Pick up whatever book you're currently reading and reread the first scene, analyzing your own response to it. Whose experience are you feeling most intensely? If you're not feeling any character's experience, look back and see if you can decipher why. What has the author done, or failed to do, to keep you at a distance?
Now go back to the first scene you wrote in your own story. Try to analyze it as if you were a reader. (I know that's hard!) When do you know which character is central to this first scene? What sense do you get of that person? Can you identify the words or phrases that first clue you in?
In the first-person voice of your central character, answer this question: “How did you get yourself into this situation?”
Here is an example from Shakespeare — riffing off Hamlet's first soliloquy:
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! ‘tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.
Hamlet: How did I get into this situation? Well, that is the question, isn't it? It is quizzical, how we go through life, growing into our mature selves, gathering knowledge, planning our future, honoring our loving father and our gentle mother, and then, out of nowhere, death comes and deprives us of it all — the purpose, the certainty, the knowledge. That is what happened to me when my father died two months ago. Since then, life has been weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable. There is no future. I have no kingdom; it was taken from me with my father. My mother, too, was taken from me. The same usurper took her. Once I admired her, but now I see her giggling with him, letting him put his hands all over her. Disgusting. What would my father think? What do I think? I don't know. I just know that I feel such disgust that I can't go on like this much longer, but I don't have any idea what else to do but accept.
Finally, read over what you've just written, and consider what sort of attitude, value, and POV come through in that passage. In the Hamlet example, we hear from a man whose attitude is depression, but moving now into desperation. It's clear that he values his father above all and that since his father's death, nothing is right — everything is “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.” We also get a sense that he idealized his parents' marriage. This sets up for the conflict of the mother's remarriage and the realization that her new husband has usurped the throne. As far as POV goes, we see a man given to analysis at length, who worries at his emotions and situation rather than taking action. It will come as no surprise when this character later responds to the “call to adventure” (his father's ghost demanding vengeance) with indecision and a need for proof.
part one
the
BASICS
WHAT IS POV? 1
You might remember from school that there's first person (I), second person (you), and third person (he/she). But “person,” in the grammatical sense, is only the beginning of POV. That I/you/he/she is a person in the literal sense, too — a person with values, thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and a unique way of perceiving the world and telling a story. An author can individualize his story and liven up his prose by considering who this POV character is and how that affects the narration of the plot.
So what is viewpoint or point of view? It is the perspective from which the reader experiences the action of story. Perspective means perception, thought, and emotion, and POV determines whose perceptions (sight, hearing, and the rest of the senses), whose thoughts, whose emotions you get as you read a passage. That's the simple definition. As you might expect, it gets more complicated the more you explore the subject.
POV is the vehicle your reader uses to travel through the story. At most junctures, the vehicle is “driven” by one of the characters; we see and hear and feel a particular event from the perspective of one person. We might not consciously think that we are in Johnny's head and body during the battle scene, but we know that Johnny's ears are ringing from the artillery fire, his vision is blurring, and he's seriously considering dropping his weapon and heading for the woods. We get the vicarious experience of exhaustion, despair, and pain without actually having to fight the battle. But at any point, if the author chooses, the viewpoint could shift to another character — maybe the veteran reporter who is doing the stand-up summary for evening news back home. Then our vicarious experience becomes the relief and guilt of a man standing under a shelter with a microphone while other men are dodging bullets.
