Point of View
Once upon a time, when I lived in the American Southwest, I bought a copper wall-hanging in the shape of a Zuni bear. Standing forever in profile, this bear had one eye, one ear, two legs, and a very long heartline. He also had a nice round rump with no tail. Looked like a bear to me. I named him Barney.
When my husband and I succumbed to the urge to go walkabout, we left Tucson to move aboard a 42-foot sailboat. Barney moved with us, changing location from above the fireplace of our adobe home to an equally honored position on a bulkhead facing the boat’s companionway. And when we sailed across the South Pacific, Barney sailed with us, keeping us safe all the way.
While we were moored in the Kingdom of Tonga, Australian couple Andy and Ange came aboard to see the boat. As soon as they entered, Ange saw Barney and exclaimed, “Oh, look, Andy! They have a wombat!”
My point? Reality is a matter of perception, and perception depends on perspective. So does fiction. Only in fiction it’s more often referred to as point of view, or POV. And POV is one of the most important aspects of any literary work.
From whose perspective is the story being told? The most common points of view used in fiction are first-person, third-person limited, third-person omniscient, and omniscient.
In first-person POV, all observations and comments are filtered through the mind of one particular character, usually the main character, or protagonist. However, some very successful stories, including the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, have used the first-person narrative of someone other than the protagonist to describe the protagonist and relate the unfolding events of the story to the reader. In the case of the Sherlock Holmes stories, that narrator is the great detective’s sidekick, Dr. Watson.
First-person narration works well for certain types of fiction, especially detective stories where a mystery needs to be solved and the reader discovers clues only as the detective does and thus participates in solving the mystery right along with the (usually) main character. In some ways this POV seems easier than others in that the author only has to get wholly into the mind of one character. You normally need to develop that character’s unique vocabulary, attitude, and voice for dialogue anyway, and then you can just stay with that same voice when revealing the character’s thoughts. First-person may well be the best choice when the narrating character has a strong, distinctive voice that engages the reader.
But first-person stories are peppered with pitfalls to trip up that POV, and the longer the story – especially in the case of novels and novellas – the more likely you are to fall into some of them. While sensory evidence may make it reasonable for your first-person narrator to assume such things, he can’t actually know that the young woman at his side is breathless with desire or that the man he is fighting is too tired to keep punching him or that his own eyes are blazing with desire or anger. These are things only those other characters can know or observe.
Third-person limited, which limits the POV to only one character, or at least only one character at a time (usually per scene or chapter), has many of the same benefits and limitations as first-person POV but is presented differently, using pronouns such as “he” and “she” instead of “I” when expressing a character’s thoughts, which may distance the reader a bit more from that character but can allow the reader to get inside the mind of more than one character in the story.
With third-person omniscient, you can enter the heads of as many characters as you like and see what everyone is doing at once, so to speak. And you can even expand on that by using the omniscient POV, which allows you as author and “unseen narrator” to include your own commentary on story elements throughout the narrative, perhaps giving an entirely different viewpoint for the reader to consider besides that of the characters involved. Some authors use this method to develop the theme of the story.
Of course, since we’re talking about fiction here, there are no absolute rules, and some authors mix up POV by using first-person narration for one or more characters and third-person for the rest. This can be done successfully as long as the reader is clear on which character is narrating the story whenever first-person narration is used.
I recently read a crime story where the voice of the main character, a private detective, was always presented in first-person while all other characters, including very major ones, were presented in the third-person POV. When the focus of the story switched from a third-person character to the main character, a new chapter was introduced. In this way, there was no confusion for the reader.
Years ago, on the other hand, I read a novel that was written entirely in the first person but switched back and forth every other chapter between two characters. This was very confusing to me for the first several chapters until I recognized the pattern. But then a chapter beginning with these same two characters in conversation repeated focus on the same character as the previous chapter had, and I was lost. Yes, I was able to discern the POV after a few paragraphs of dialogue, but why make your readers go through such tribulation?
Another POV issue to be aware of is that of bouncing back and forth between two or more characters in the same sentence, paragraph, or scene. This is called “head-hopping.” While it is common and even accepted in some genre fiction, especially romance novels, head-hopping is frowned upon in much of the literary world and can be distracting to readers, thus pulling them out of the story just when you are trying your best to draw them further into it. Most writing gurus recommend using only one POV for each scene or even each chapter.
When I was a young adult, I once admired a Mercedes Benz that passed by while I was chatting with an older Norwegian friend.
“I would never have a Mercedes,” he said with unusual harshness in his voice.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Those,” he replied, “are the cars the Gestapo drove when they came in the middle of the night to yank you out of your bed and haul you off to your death.”
“Oh,” I said.
Remember that while fireworks may seem beautiful to you and awesome and fun to your child, they are often terrifying to dogs and war veterans. The same aspects of life may be viewed very differently by different people. A pencil is nothing more than a simple tool for writing to an author or a schoolchild, but it may be viewed as a useful weapon by a trained killer.
Everyone views the world from zir own perspective, and your characters, be they human, animal, or alien, no matter what their world may be, do likewise.
What point of view do you use in your writing? Why did you choose it and what, if any, problems have you encountered as a result?
Please leave a comment if you have anything to share concerning POV in fiction. I am always interested in other writers’ perspectives, and I’m sure my readers are, too.
Copyright 2019 © Ann Henry. All rights reserved.
Photo Barney copyright 2018 © Ann Henry. All rights reserved.