Point of View
One of the things I always struggle with as a writer is shifting point of view.
It was something I was never really conscious of, but in every writing group I've participated in, someone has pointed out how I have a shifting a point of view in a scene.
For the longest time, I didn't really understand what shifting point of view was. It took me a long time to figure it out, and I hope that with this column, I can help you avoid the pain of the mistakes that I made.
Now, what happens with a shifting point of view is where the character suddenly knows something that they couldn't have known otherwise or you find yourself in the mind of a different character than you were previously. You're reading along, and suddenly, things feel different.
What prompted me to blog about this was that this week I discovered an excellent Odyssey Workshop podcast by Robert J. Sawyer that finally explained point of view shifts and how to correct them.
To understand the point of view shifts, you have to understand point of view. First person point of view is the story told from the view of the narrator as a character in the story using "I." An example is this:
I went to the store looking for a bag of frozen green beans. I strode up and down the aisle looking for them, to no avail. I asked a stock boy where the green beans were, and with a look of irritation, he pointed to the freezer on the next aisle.
In this example, we are told the story by the narrator, who is on a quest for green beans. We meet the stock boy, but we know nothing about his thoughts. While we are reading the story, we as the reader see the story through the character/narrator's eyes.
The second person point of view is the use of "you." This is rarely seen outside of a "choose your own adventure," but a few authors can pull it off (such as Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City"). An example would be:
You go to the store looking for a bag of frozen green beans.You stride up and down the aisle looking for them, to no avail. You ask a stock boy where the green beans are, and with a look of irritation, he points to the freezer on the next aisle.
In this example, the narrator is telling you what you are experiencing, and you the reader are seeing the world through that character's eyes, just as in the first person. Again, we see the stock boy, but we know nothing about his thoughts.
The third person point of view is the point of view of a narrator who is NOT a character in the story. In the third person, the narrator tells about what "he did" or "she did." This is actually the most popular method of telling a story.
There are a few variations, though. In the first variation, the "omniscient" point of view, the narrator tells the readers of the thoughts and histories of the characters as though they were an all-seeing, all-knowing god. As an example:
Although they didn't know it, they were both having a terrible day. Joe wanted frozen green beans and couldn't find them. He looked up and down the frozen food aisle, unaware that there was a second aisle behind him. Fred hated his stocking job, but the only thing he hated more than that was being bothered by customers. So when Joe asked Fred for help, Fred grew most angry. Clearly irritated, he pointed to the next aisle over.
In this example, we are told the story through the voice of a disembodied narrator who is privy to the innermost thoughts of the characters. The narrator is observing Joe and Fred and knows that Joe was unaware of the second aisle and that Fred hates stocking and customers.
There are a few problems with the omniscient view, though. One problem is that the narrator is clearly a distant observer to the story; he's watching them through a magnifying glass. Secondly, you have to read carefully to keep track of the action; it's easy to lose track of who's thinking what. Finally, and probably most importantly, it's difficult for the reader to identify with a character: who do they identify with most? The narrator? Joe? Fred?
The most popular point of view is known as the limited third person. In this case, there is an unseen narrator telling the story, but we are limited to knowledge of a single character in a single scene. It is a third person telling of a story, but we are limited to the same constraints as a first person story. I like to think of the third person limited as a parrot perched on the shoulder of the main character. We ride along with them and experience everything that the main character experiences, although the narrator has a distinct voice and observation point of the character that allows for some outside observations to be made.
Consider this example:
Joe went to the store looking for green beans. He strode up and down the aisle looking for them, but could not find them. Although he had never been to this store before, he thought they would be on this aisle with the frozen pastries. Joe stopped to ask a stock boy where the green beans were, and with a look of irritation, the stock boy pointed to the freezer on the next aisle.
In this example, the story is told in the third person - Joe is not the narrator. But in this example, we are told everything as if we were hitching a ride with Joe. We know Joe's thoughts - that he had not been to the store before - and we don't know the stock boy's thoughts. We keep with that single point of view. What this does is allow us, as readers, to identify with Joe.
Where the shifts in point of view come in is when we violate the bounds of the limited third person point of view. Shifts in point of view are uncommon in first person, because the story is told from the "I" point of view; either "I" know something or "I" don't. But with limited third person, sometimes the omniscience subconsciously enters the scene.
Consider this example:
Joe went to the store looking for green beans. He strode up and down the aisle looking for them, but could not find them. Although he had never been to this store before, he thought they would be on this aisle with the frozen pastries. Joe stopped to ask the stock boy where the green beans were. Fred, angry that another customer interrupted him again, pointed to the freezer on the next aisle.
In this example, there are a few shifts. First, we start the scene in the head of Joe - the third sentence puts us in Joe's head and thoughts. It establishes that Joe has never been to the store before. Yet in the final sentence, we are thrown off by the character of Fred, the stock boy, because Joe would have no way of knowing the stock boy's name. Further, we see that the stock boy is angry that the customer has interrupted him again, which puts us in the character of Fred. The reader is identifying with the character of Joe, and yet in that final sentence, is thrust into the head of the other character.
Robert J. Sawyer explains the point of view so well in the Odyssey Podcast #4. The part that made it clear to me was when he explained the difference in point of view in literature versus movies. His best example is that in a book, the reader becomes a character and views the world through that character's eyes, whereas in the movie, you can only observe the character's on the screen. (This was the biggest criticism that fans of the book "The Lovely Bones" made about the recent film adaptation.)
Exercise: The best way to try these various points of view is to write a scene with two people. Tell the scene from the first person point of view of one of the characters. Then, tell the scene from the same character, but using the third person limited point of view. Finally, tell the same scene in third person limited point of view, but use the viewpoint of the other character in the scene.
(I continued the point of view discussion in Part 2 of this blog entry.)
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