Cherry Picker’s Guide to Writing: Point of View
…pick a point of view you’re happy with because you’re stuck with it for the rest of your manuscript.
Choosing a point of view for your work can be one of the easier choices you can make when deciding how to write. Its always best to just go with what ever feels right for you and what ever flows the best in terms of your narrative. This episode won’t be as subjective as you might think as there are certain pros and cons to specific points of view in a narrative. Certain types of stories will flow better with a third person narrative over a first person while you can say the same in reverse. Regardless though this is one of the many episodes that I will implore everyone who reads this to seek out other essays on the subject because as someone who writes almost strictly in third person limited, I’ll be looking at all other narratives in a professional stand point.
Let’s start off with first person point of view and work our way up. First person narrative takes on the point of view of one of the characters within the story. The narrative itself uses terms such as “I, Me, Myself,” et cetera to give off the illusion of telling the story to the reader. Many times, narrated as the events unfold around them and in other cases after the events have already unfolded in the style of a memoir of sorts. Additionally, the narrator character may not even be the protagonist.
F. Scot Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a case of the narrator not being the protagonist. While we experience the story through the position of Nick Carraway, the protagonist and central focus is very much on that of Jay Gatsby and his story. With this removal of restraint from the driving force of the novel the reader is free to experience the story with a deeper intimacy that might be lost with something like third person. The narrative choice allows for a reactive story telling and a means of feeling sympathy empathy towards Nick Carraway as he goes through the narrative and subsequent experiences. All the way to the end where he is one of only a handful of people who mourn the loss of Jay Gatsby after his death at the end of the book. Having a name and an imagined face to attach these feelings to allows these solemn moments to pluck at the heart strings that much harder as the novel plays our human nature as a strength because on some level we want to comfort Nick for his loss or at the very least we can sympathize with him for his experiences.
That matter of sympathy and empathy are two of the biggest strengths a writer can find in a first-person narrative because it can give the reader something to immediately latch onto. While I haven’t read all of Chuck Palahniuk’s work, he does use first person narrative in most of his work and I honestly couldn’t imagine it any other way. The truest intimacy found in any of Chuck Palahniuk’s work is always the narrator being that everyman protagonist. Being something so flawed and human that evolves into something still flawed and thus still very human that we can’t help but naturally attach ourselves to them. If his work were to try something like a third person narrative then we as the reader would miss out on those self-aware revelations and slights that so many of us can be prone to. Once again using human nature as a strength and using our own natural sympathy and empathy to keep us reading.
An additional strength of the first-person narrative is the matter of keeping information from your readers. Invisible Monsters (Remix) by Chuck Palahniuk uses this to great effect by keeping the true identities of all the characters bound to the narrator. In the case of Fight Club by the same author, how many of us will say our names when we tell a story were involved in when saying “I” is far more natural? Think about the way you would tell a story and omit anything that wouldn’t feel natural. Keep your name out of the story if you’re the one telling it, you don’t normally mention the names of people unless you’re telling this to a total stranger who’s never met them before and obviously avoid divulging massive amounts of information about people, places, or things as it just totally derails the story. In the case of first person narrative, its best to bring these things up when they matter like you would when telling someone the very same story at a party or a like situation.
While the novels I mentioned above are all cases of first person narrative, they are only one side of the first-person narrative, that being the present tense. All these books tell the story as it happens and as it unfolds leaving that slight mystery as to what will happen next. The secondary part which might cause more problems for readers and writers is the matter of post first person narrative. This style seen in Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and The Martian by Andy Weir is easily the double-edged sword of the first-person narrative. On one hand you have the story laid out before you with a predetermined end where the narrator and author use quips and references as a means of foreshadowing for upcoming events. Adding to the story a sense of mystery and planting a seed of curiosity in the back of the readers mind as they want to figure out just what the narrator meant.
On the other hand, however, it can destroy what I like to call the Illusion of Danger within a novel. The Illusion of Danger being that when you or your reader are about half way through a novel and the protagonist you’ve been following for however long is in a dangerous situation. In all actuality, they may not actually be in any real danger since there is still half the book to go. While this works with books without a centralized protagonist such as the Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin you can’t say the same for something like the Harry Potter series. Or in the case of a first-person narrative, The Martian by Andy Weir.
The Martian by Andy Weir is a great hard sci fi novel about an astronaut stranded on Mars after an incident that forced his team to leave him behind. The whole of the story is clever in its story telling by presenting the narrative as a series of diary entries from our protagonist Mark Watney. Because it relies on post first person narration, talking about the events after they’ve already happened, any real illusion of danger that we feel just vanishes. While those readers with a dark sense of humor will laugh at the protagonist ending a diary entry with “and then I blew up” or my personal favorite, starting a diary entry off with “I’m going to die!” is kind of funny and the whole of the book isn’t afraid to be funny but that’s not the point. The point is that since all of this is happening after the events where Mark Watney claimed he blew up or he was going to die, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and think to myself “Mark, shut up, you’re just fine,” because the character is telling me about it and thus they’re obviously not dead yet.
While you can make the argument that it was still the curiosity that can keep you going with something like this, as it did the first time around, baiting the reader with something like that will only take them so far for so long. After a while, it will start to devolve down into a formula. In the case of The Martian it became, problem, solution, problem with the solution, solution to the problem with the solution. Effectively killing any real sense of danger, the book had and much of my enjoyment along with it. The Illusion of Danger is something we will talk more on later, but something a writer should keep in mind when writing their story. Especially if it’s a survival story like The Martian.
Moving on to the next type of point of view, Second Person narrative doesn’t appear in too many novels. This may be due to the word choice that comes with the narrative as well as how it forces the writer to use “You” and effectively put the reader into the story. Its an interesting narrative choice if not one that is much harder to write for since the writer is bound to the reader character and where they are and thus can’t really influence the story too much without them being present. I’ve used second person narrative a few times already within a few short stories of my own involving smut. Much to the praise of everyone that’s read it as well since it allows for a certain intimacy to unfold within the story and really puts the reader into the shoes of the other half of the two lovers.
An additional style choice I always like to use is what I call implied dialogue wherein there isn’t any quotation marks around what the reader character said, but rather you as the writer would just put something like: “You made a remark under your breath.” What that remark was or how the reader says it in their own mind is left up to them. Personally, I think it blurs the lines of immersion for a novel, further allowing a reader to fall into the story. But due to how infrequently its used and the restrictions it may pose, it may be stuck within the realm of being an experimental means of writing that someone might bring into the realm of the mainstream, but there are very rare cases that can aid this.
Finally, there is third person narrative and its respective subsets divided into two categories, limited and omniscient. As I mentioned above, I’m primarily a third person limited point of view writer. The reason for this is that I can switch between characters on the fly. Break away from one story where the pacing is starting to slow and pick up the pace with another character somewhere else. Along with this, third person limited allows me to get into the minds of the characters who are speaking and who they interact with the world around them. With this I’m able to restrict what they do and don’t know and what they can infer from just a few expressions on the face of another character they’re talking with. Third person limited stands as this hybrid style between first person and third person omniscient that just works for me as a writer. Why it does, I don’t know, but it might have something to do with the fact that I read a lot of third person limited and it just became second nature for me to write like the stories I’ve read.
Really though the definition of each third person narrative might be hard to figure out and decide just which one is which. I’ve found that third person limited is best defined as the ability to look over the shoulder of the character they’re currently watching, read their thoughts and have them interact with the world around them. The reader stays at the point where they linger in the back of the character’s mind and follows a central protagonist through their story. The added benefit to this is that it makes things easier for keeping certain bits of information away from the reader by having the character just not think or know about it. Additionally, it also allows for the writer to break away from the primary thoughts of the character to give a description to something that the character may not actually know what or who they might be dealing with.
A prime example of third person limited comes from The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. While the point of view breaks away from character to character as the story goes on, we as the reader will almost always have our sights set on a character who is speaking or present and read their thoughts as they crop up. Through the series we are almost always privy to Roland Deschain and his thought processes as he experiences the world. What this does is creates an excellent juxtaposition between our world and his own when we get to see those thoughts in action. One of my favorite moments comes from the second book, Drawing of the Three wherein Roland drinks soda for the first time and since he doesn’t have anything like it from his world, he’s utterly blown away and left awestruck with a childlike wonder. While that example is rather specific, you can use that internal thought process of the characters to deepen the story or use it to build on characters with specific experiences.
Third person omniscient on the other hand can be best defined as a fixed camera watching events unfold. A good analogy to use is that third person omniscient is that it’s like watching a stage play unfold with a character that comes along to fill the audience in as to what is going on. But rather than using a character, the writer themselves can address the reader almost directly using a sort of “little did they know” kinds of quips that allow for means of foreshadowing for the reader but leaving the characters completely I the dark. This then works wonderfully in the case of dramatic irony wherein you know something is going to happen, you just don’t know when its going to happen. Creating this ticking time bomb of drama that may explode in the next chapter or three chapters from now. What this style lacks in its ability is the means to really invest within a character as there is a fair distance the writer takes when writing in third person omniscient.
That’s not to say that it makes it impossible for the reader to invest themselves within the character itself, but rather they’re embolden more so by their actions then by their feelings or thoughts. What this can do is allow the characters to have a more visceral contact with the reader that the reader themselves might be able to connect with. Conversely, it can set up certain events with more subtlety and become even more impactful than first, second, or third person limited. Using an example from Harry Potter (because who hasn’t seen the movies at least) Ron makes a remark about Hermione and how she doesn’t have any friends due to the way she acts like an intellectual elitist. Unbeknownst to Ron, Hermione hears this and goes barging past him leaving the audience and the reader to share in the same reaction that Ron is feeling in that moment. That pang of guilt over saying just the wrong thing and just the right time.
Wrapping this episode up, there is one last thing to talk about when choosing a point of view and that’s when you start writing it, you’re stuck with it for the rest of the novel. Changing a point of view between two or more characters while keeping it first person is more than acceptable, but going from first person to third person is honestly one of the most jarring things you can do to your reader. It’s confusing and frustrating and when you confuse and frustrate your reader, you lose them. So, a word of advice from a writer and a reader, pick a point of view you’re happy with because you’re stuck with it for the rest of your manuscript.
Questions, comments, concerns, and especially critiques are always appreciated and thank you so much for reading. If you have an idea for the next episode or have something else you want me to cover, please message me by whatever means you’d like. Till next time!
jbbartram-illu
blakekathryn
baratheonpilled
stormborns
janainaart
annaxmalina
yousharknotpass
