Young Writers Society

It's All About Perspective

Dedicated to Johannah, the Living Flower I study as a botanist. But then again, that's just my perspective. ;)

Perspective is key to everything in the world. Everything. How you view this chapter’s title and opening sentence will affect how you receive what I’m about to say. Disbelief and skepticism will tint your processing of this chapter to doubt the validity of my claims. Curiosity will open you to hear my line of reasoning. And believing that we share a common belief in this will lead you to simply compare how closely we fall together on this topic. But these are not the only ways you can come at the content in this chapter, and I don’t have the time or desire to burrow down and detail all possible viewpoints. Besides, that’s not the point of this chapter; exemplifying the different narrator POVs [point of view] is what I’m outlining.

In English (and in any language), there are three persons, or Points of View, the First, Second, and Third Person. First Person is the "I, me, my, myself, mine" pronouns, all the pronouns involving the speaker. Second Person is the group "you, your, yourself" (etc.), the pronouns that are directed at the person spoken to. The last Person, Third Person, is everyone else "he, him, his, she, her, hers, they, them, theirs" and so on and so forth. In Writing, the POV mimicks our English speech: First Person narratives use pronouns like "I" and "me" outside of character dialogue [a Character saying, "I myself went and did that." does not constitute a First Person narrative, but is a Character speaking in First Person]. Examples of books that use First Person Narrative: the Hunger Games Trilogy and the Percy Jackson series. Second Person narratives are extremely rare, and I have yet to encounter a published book (much less a successful book) that uses the Second Person narrative. However, Second Person narratives would look like You were walking to the store, when suddenly a large dog jumped out in front of you. You pulled up, your heart rate spiking from adrenaline. The thought, 'I hope that dog is friendly,' crossed your mind. I don't believe we see much of that type of writing due to the fact that the author is speaking as if they can intimately read your most secret thoughts, and that can strike people as highly condescending (or a number of other different ways that I don't care to outline. Remember, this chapter is all about your perspective.) And then there's the most common narrative perspective, Third Person. The Third Person voice is the most versatile, as it allows the author a certain amount of distance from the characters, and leaves the writer free to jump to other characters' points of view within the same novel. Rick Riordan is a good example of a writer using both First and Third Person POVs, with his Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus series. In the Percy Jackson books, Riordan uses the First Person POV, speaking from Percy's perspective throughout all five books. In the Heroes of Olympus, however, he uses the Third Person POV, and switches between three different characters' viewpoints in the first two books (and all six in the third). Although I understand most readers probably haven't read those books (and some don't like them), there are other books that have great examples of an author using MPOV, or Multiple Points of View. Sometimes the MPOV is a more clustered description, such as an author describing every character's thoughts on a recent event, or broken up, when the writer switches viewpoints every chapter, or even as large as waiting half the book to switch viewpoints. Example of a clustered MPOV: The vase shattered by the feet of the three girls. Marcy, the oldest, sucked in her breath and wondered what Mother would think. Eppie laughed and couldn't believe how much fun it had been to play soccer indoors. And Hilda, ever the ambivalent one, simply grunted and started collecting the shards. The more drawn-out MPOV would take up too much room to give an example here, but Kira's Story [in my other writing] contains many examples of the spaced MPOV.

Distance is also involved in the narrative POV. With First Person, everything is seen through the main character's eyes, all the action 'up close and personal.' First Person POV is very limiting, as the writer can't switch to another character's perspective without using a literary device like dreams or visions, and filling in the details, what all the other characters did while out of the Main Character's line of sight, can lead to tedious recounting of events through character dialogue. A word of caution for First Person POV: the longer and more eventful another character's experiences while away from the Main Character, the more difficult and cumbersome the retelling when the two characters are reunited.. But First Person POV isn't impossible, and some authors have done that POV quite well [Suzanne Collins and Rick Riordan, as previously noted. I have heard that Stephanie Meyers used First Person POV in her Twilight Saga; however I have not read the books and cannot attest to that fact.]

Unlike First Person POV, Third Person POV is highly flexible and can be microcopically focused or zoomed out to the 'omniscient' perspective. With Third Person POVs, the narrator can get very personal with the main character (or other characters), detailing the character's thoughts and reactions, giving the reader a feeling of kinship and intimacy with the character being thus examined. Example of Close-up POV: She stood at the street corner, waiting for the taxi. Stupid driver's late again. She rubbed her sweaty palms against her jeans, huffing in frustration. There's no traffic, and he can't even get here on time. Could have walked there faster than this. Her skin tingled from the muggy humidity, reminding her of the last time she waited for a cab- an hour spent in freezing rain. A car whizzed past, scattering dust into her face and hair. Okay, so this wasn't as bad as last time. At least she wasn't freezing her panties off without an umbrella, being drenched to the bone with ice water. Now, although the character's thoughts are clearly spelled out, they aren't expressly called that by any quotation marks or italics. With that same scene, the narrator can give a little more distance without changing any details, although including other items. Example of the 'normal' Third Person POV: She stood at the street corner, waiting for the taxi. She tried to dry her palms on her jeans, but with the high humidity she ended up pressing the fabric into her sticky thighs, making it cling like a second skin. Huffing in exasperation, she looked up at the sound of a car rumbling by, only to receive a faceful of dust. That's the same exact scene, but given from different narrative distances. A little closer focus would perhaps give a sentence or two expressing her thoughts, probably along the lines of "I can't believe he's late again." she thought as she waited. A POV a little farther away, and you have As the wind rustled her hair, an approaching car rolled down the street, ignorant of the woman standing on the side of the road. The shopkeeper glanced out his window, shaking his head in sympathy at the lady waiting on her ride. The people walking by her paid her no attention, bent on completing their day's work or reaching their destination. There are any number of distances that can be established by the Third Person, including 'Omniscient,' where the narrator views things from a level higher than a "bird's eye." Such an Omniscient POV could look like this: The city bustled with activity, traffic flowing through its streets like blood through capillaries. Interstate roads sent out pulses of semis and home-going workers to and from the other major cities of the region, speckled here and there with the occasional flat tire or over-heated engine. Jets thundered in and out of the airport, expanding a traveler's reach beyond that of the road, flights headed over seas to view the small hubs called cities in foreign languages. And all that activity whirled over the land and skies, blissfully ignorant of the lone woman waiting on a street corner for the taxi. Omniscient POV is a broad, sweeping POV that takes in practically everything, and the physical distance from the main character could be from a literal bird's perspective, or even higher, such as a person on a space station viewing Earth. The planets rolled around their star like marbles, little pebbles lapping around the star incessantly. And that star took its turn in the cosmic bowl, travelling in the band of a galaxy, which circuited in the giant, sparkling cloud of galaxies swivelling around the black hole. And throughout all the vastness, all the silence of that great stellar dance, on one tiny speck amidst those galaxies, a lone woman stood waiting for her hired cab to arrive. Although that's a bit exaggerated, that is a plausible Omniscient POV. And there's nothing wrong with using something like that, especially if it works for you. I am not advocating any of these POVs as the "best" POV to use: I'm simply trying to give you a variety of examples, new tools to stick in the proverbial toolbelt.

Don't think that once you choose a POV you're stuck. That's the fun of writing. Although there are countless blends of Third Person POVs, ranging from the narrator switching to a different character's viewpoint to simply panning the landscape to arrive at a different city to pick up a new perspective, there could be a blend of POVs. Starting with a First Person narrative, you could have the characters interact with the narrator, and then build a 'story within a story,' describing it from a Third Person POV without ever eliminating the First Person narrator. The Kingdom of Boredom (another one of my stories) has become an ongoing experiment in blending the First and Third Person narratives [often with the two intermingling]. Try experimenting with both the Person and the distance in your narratives and see which one is right for you. And a word of advice: force yourself to write in POVs that you don't like. If you don't like using First Person ("Here, here!"), write in it anyway for exercise. You may never use any of your First Person POV writing; that's okay, since the purpose of writing outside your comfort zone is to expand your ability and hone your attention to details. When you write in POVs that you wouldn't normally, you have to focus on details that would typically be ignored. Take that new perspective and apply it to your normal writing.

Any questions?

Addendum: Verb Tense

I have to throw this in here, since this is the chapter about perspective. The three main verb tenses are past, present, and future. Of those three, the first two are the "foundational" tenses, the main tense used in the narrative. The biggest forewarning with verb tense mainly applies to First Person, although the principle is the same for Third Person. If you choose to write in the past tense when using First Person POV, BEWARE!!! Using the past tense with First Person will lessen the tension in your story, especially in life-threatening situations. Why? Because the main character's telling the story, and if everything has already happened, then the main character had to have survived in order to be telling the story. That's one of the reasons the Hunger Games Trilogy is written in the present tense: Katniss is telling the story, and it's happening right now. If she were to die during the story, it would end right there, and there wouldn't be any forewarning, because the verb tense was the present tense. That is part of the reason why the Percy Jackson series isn't as intense as it could be. Percy surrounded by monsters that are ready to kill him? Nah, that's okay, 'cause it already happened and he 'lived to tell about it.'

That verb tense issue doesn't come into play as much with Third Person simply because the narrator is a different person. True, the narrator may stay so close to the main character that it's written as if the main character is the narrator, but it is not impossible for the story to go on if the main character dies with Third Person POV. In Third Person, when the main character dies, the narrator simply focuses on another character. The only major difference between using past and present tense in Third Person is whether or not you want the story to feel like it's happening right now, or actually be happening right now.

Future tense occurs in stories, whether it be the dialogue or the narrative, but as a whole it is not the most prominent or most used tense. Perhaps a story could be written in the future tense, but I have yet to find a published book using future tense as the main, foundational verb tense.

As a quick aside, there are tones in narrative as well, but the only one I will touch on is the conditional, or 'skeptical/doubtful' narrative. In this kind of narrative, the narrator does not know what happened, and tells the reader either what they believe happened, or several explanation for what might have happened. These can occur, but as a whole there aren't many books that have survived with a 'doubtful narrator.' My admonition: use sparingly, or at least in moderation. Readers expect the narrator to either give them an answer, or a good reason for withholding the answer. If you are using the doubtful narrator as a common occurence, your readers will grow tired or frustrated, and will 'cease and desist' on the reading front