Point of View

Weren’t we always told in kindergarten that it’s not polite to point? While not pointing with our stubby little fingers, what we are about to do is learn how to pin-point whose eyes we’re looking out of as we write a scene.

This sounds relatively easy, so why is it so hard? Technique, my friends. It all has to do with the craft of writing.

SEFFW starts out explaining that some sources claim there are as many as twenty-six different flavors of point of view. This is what I would call “technique”. Know when to use ‘em. Know when hold ‘em, Know when to walk away. (Okay, it’s not exactly the words to Kenny Roger’s “The Gambler”, but somehow it seemed to fit.) I may touch only slightly on the techniques SEFFW mentions, but I’d rather dwell on these three basic approaches.
1. First person: Using the “I” voice in the narrative.
2. Omniscient: Not written inside anyone’s head.
3. Third person: Basically, this is simply substituting “he” or “she” for “I”.

The reason we will only dwell on these three, is because any variation is best left to the professionals. Here, we only talk about the FUNdamentals. And twenty-six variations of POV doesn’t sound FUN at all to me! It sounds like college-level work. Now, pass me a graham cracker while I get back to the basics.

FIRST PERSON
An advantage to first person is that it provides your readers intimacy with the viewpoint character. What happens when you first meet somebody? All you know about them is their outward appearance, right? But, when they start talking, they draw you in. You learn things about that person.

The disadvantage to this is that the only things you learn about that person is what they want you to know. All of you think you know me pretty well. But not all of you know everything about me. For instance, some of you know I enjoy singing, mostly because it’s a common interest we share. Others know I like to fish, something I rarely shared with anybody until I scored a piece in Chicken Soup For The Fisherman’s Soul. Would it surprise most of you that I’m a ventriloquist? Probably. I don’t recall many conversations where puppetry was the topic. This is how first person works. Your character only tells about themselves what the reader needs to know.

I hope your character is interesting. If I’m going to listen to them talk for three hundred pages, they’d better have something to say. And although they can be eccentric and weird, if I don’t have something I can identify with, I won’t stick around.

When writing with one view-point character, we only get to know the one character intimately. That may work for your story. Or, you may choose to give a point of view to several characters. Be careful when doing this. I, as the reader, need to have someone to identify with. If I’m supposed to get to know five characters, I’ll probably latch on to only one of them, and that may not be the one you would have chosen to tell the story. Many excellent books are written that way-- by professionals. For now, it best to focus on one main character, even if we hear from the others. It should be that one character’s story. This will help focus the story-line…and keep me from becoming confused…which happens enough, thank you very much.

OMNISCIENT
Omni= all or everywhere. Picture a camera on a boom. The director has it move around to take in a scene. The classics used to be written this way. SEFFW says omniscient point of view in its mildest form does have its uses. In their example, the fact that we’re in nobody’s head for several paragraphs builds a sort of tension, “like ominous background music throughout the novel.” p. 46. You get a certain perspective that can’t be attained through anyone’s POV.

Caution: When using omniscient, you may gain perspective, but you lose intimacy.

So, to recap thus far. First person creates intimacy but loses perspective. Omniscient creates perspective, but loses intimacy.

THIRD PERSON
“If the first person invites intimacy and the omniscient narrator allows for perspective, the third person strikes a balance between the two.” –p.47

Okay, here the authors slipped into college talk. They say, “Actually, it can strike any number of balances--it’s the attempt to define precisely these various degrees of intimacy versus perspective that leads the obsessive to describe twenty-six different flavors of point of view. It’s much less complicated simply to treat the third-person point of view as a continuum, running from narrative intimacy to narrative distance.” –p. 47

I need a recess.

I can see what they’re saying, that it’s like a slide-ruler, where you can get as close or back off depending on the effect you want to have on your readers. Ten percent intimacy, ninety percent perspective. Slide that ruler in the next paragraph to draw in the intimacy by going deeper into the character’s POV. Keep sliding until we are not only in their head, we’ve become them.
CREATING INTIMACY
Language:
To create intimacy in third person, we’re told to use the language of the POV character. This doesn’t necessarily mean to use “ain’t” or drop a “g” in those “ing”s. On p. 49 the authors give a good example of this. (Note: In the old book a different example is given on p. 42. It’s a crass snippet that may offend some of you. I’m glad it’s not included in the new version. Thus, I’ll include the new example in its entirety.)

June bugs growl like bulldozers in the corners of Big Lucien Letourneau’s slanty old piazza and the old twisty tree-sized lilac bushes put off a smell. Big Lucien is nowhere around tonight. Norman is not around. Little Lucien is squatted with his back against the clapboards, his eyes closed, listening to the tantes (aunts) whisper in French just inside the screen door. . .something about the gas stove, he surmises. From Carolyn Chute’s Letourneau’s Used Auto Parts

Little Lucien’s view of life is presented in this paragraph, June bugs sound like bulldozers and lilacs put off a “smell”.

To see what the above passage does when one backs off from the intimacy, I’ll rewrite it, removing Little Lucien’s language:
June bugs buzz in the corners of Big Lucien Letourneau’s slanty old piazza and one can smell the old lilac bushes . Big Lucien is nowhere around tonight. Norman is not around. Little Lucien is squatted with his back against the clapboards, his eyes closed, listening to the tantes (aunts) whisper in French just inside the screen door. . .probably something about the gas stove.

It’s very subtle, but you can see in the first example, that the world is colored with more of Little Lucien’s POV. Which draws us closer to him. Which creates more intimacy. I’m not sure I want to know Little Lucien that well if he thinks lilacs “smell”. But, I digress.

“When you use your characters’ language in your descriptions, you not only convey the sights and sounds around them, you also convey their history, their education, and the culture they live in, without any additional effort.” P. 50.

Emotions:
Intimacy can be created easily with emotions. Take Little Lucien’s view of June bugs and lilac bushes. Both are apparently nuisances to him. Lilacs are my favorite flower. So I would describe it this way:
The scent of the large lilac bushes drifted toward Kathy and wrapped around her like a hug.
Take that, Little Lucien! Although I do agree with you about June bugs. Man, are they noisy!

“Allowing your characters’ emotions to steep into your descriptions also lets you use description more freely.” P. 50. Sometimes when we describe, it stops the flow of writing. That’s when your critique group cries out collectively: “TELLING!” But throw in those emotions, and now it’s interesting. If we allow our scenes to flow through our characters, kind of like a filter, it draws in the reader, creating an intimacy that you don’t see when reading, say, The Denver Post.

What can narrative intimacy do for the story? It can “convey a wide range of emotions, including some so subtle that your viewpoint character may not even be aware of them.” P. 51. WHOA! Did you read that? I missed that in my first read through of this chapter. When we put emotions into our writing, it can go so deep that even our characters aren’t aware that they’re showing them to us. Wish I had an example to share, but I’m not sure that my writing can pull that off, at least on a conscious level.

Another excellent reason for narrative intimacy, is if we only convey emotions through dialogue or interior monologue, we only see the upper level emotions: anger, fear, lust. This can be weary to the reader. SEFFW had a client who did just this in his writing. “He had to learn to allow his viewpoint character’s mood to color the narration before he could capture ennui, anticipation, contentment, and a host of subtler feelings.” P. 51. (Excuse me while I go look up “ennui”. . .a state of dissatisfaction and weariness. . .Well, why didn’t they just say that?)  Putting emotions in the narrative allows us to go deeper. I could have said in my lilac example, “The scent of the lilac bushes drifted toward Kathy.” But, by including the “hug” I’ve portrayed contentment, possibly a nuance of memory that even Kathy isn’t aware of. Hmm.

NARRATIVE DISTANCE
There are times when we don’t want such intimacy for our readers. SEFFW lists four, although I’m sure there are several reasons to create narrative distance.
1. When the focus should be on the action of the scene. In this case, keep the narrative voice more impersonal.
2. When writing from a minor character’s POV. There’s no need to round out this character and make him appear more important than he really is. This can throw off a reader, who has invested several paragraphs getting to know this guy, only to never see him again. (On a side note, we can still get some characterization in quickly with our minor characters. I did this in a story where a helicopter pilot was shuttling people to view the aftermath of a hurricane. He wore a cap that said “POW/MIA Never forget”. Quick and subtle, and hopefully powerful.)
3. When the description is beyond the POV character’s vocabulary or state of mind.
4. When the POV character is a psychotic killer. SEFFW suggests “you might want to write his scenes using a more neutral, distant voice. After all, you want to engage your readers, not drive them to distraction.” P. 52. Apparently the authors have never read a Brandilyn Collins suspense. She digs into the villain’s POV and does it very effectively. <shiver>

HEAD-HOPPING
Even when creating narrative distance, it’s best to stay in one character’s POV. In SEFFW’s first example from Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, the author is in everybody’s head, hopping from one to the other. P. 40. (P. 29 first edition.) We don’t have time to get to know just one character. Intimacy is broken. All novels are written with a warm body in mind, be it a human, alien, or animal. Okay, some alien’s aren’t warm, but go with me on this. The whole reason for the reader to pick up a novel is to read and identify on some level with the characters. They may think they just want to read a good western, or sci-fi, but in truth, it’s all about relationship--relationship between the reader and your characters.

Some authors can pull off switching POVs in a scene. I only include this here in the same way a kindergarten teacher would say, “Someday, children, you will learn to read and write.” I’m saying to you, “Someday, new writers, you will learn how to switch POVs.” Suffice it to say, that the mature writers do this by artistically adjusting the narrative distance, so that the reader doesn’t invest themselves emotionally in one character only to be thrown into the head of another. Technique, my friends. It all has to do with the craft of writing.

When we’re writing a story with multiple POVs and when introducing a new scene, it’s best to make it clear who the POV character is right away--usually in the first sentence, but that’s a guideline more than a rule. Just be conscious not to create confusion for the reader. When switching POVs without jerking the reader from one character to another, end the scene, insert a linespace and begin the new scene. Many successful authors are doing this. It’s okay.

A lot of the craft is portrayed in that most FUNdamental technique: Point of View. It shows who your characters are by conveying emotions, history, and world view. In the words of SEFFW, it’s a “powerful tool. Master it.”

  

FUNcersizes:
1. Read Chapter 3 if you haven’t already done so.
2. Go to my website, www.KathleenEKovach.com and click the “On Writing” button. I have an article there called “What You See Is What You Get”. It’s one I wrote about POV and it was included in the ACFW newsletter several months ago. Read through it, even though it’s mostly a hands-on exercise for writer’s groups. It gives very basic information about the pure POV. (Plus, you get to read my most ambitious work to date, “Blood on the Cover.”)
3. Check your wip.
    a. How much language, world view, or emotion of your POV character are you putting into your narrative?   
b. If you are attempting to switch POVs within a scene--which I go on record as saying this isn’t a good idea if you’re just starting out--scrutinize the emotional distance flowing in and out of the scene. Stay distant when first introducing character #1, draw closer for intimacy, than back off before introducing character #2.

Comment if you’re having trouble, or if you want to share a major breakthrough. I only know if you’re reading these articles if you pop in here once in awhile to tell me. <hint>

One last thing: I’d like to keep the critiquing at a minimum and only address the particular subject at hand. We’re sharing such small scenes that an effective critique isn’t really possible. Thanks, guys, for understanding.