Point of View in Fiction -
What's Right and What's Wrong Rob Parnell
The great
Chinese ruler, Mao Tse Tung, once said, 'In order to
break the rules of a system, one must first learn and
understand them.' (Okay, I paraphrase - he was
actually talking about Communism.)
But so it
is with POV in fiction. Learn the rules first, then you
can break them.
I get so
many emails from writers asking how they should deal with
point of view that I thought it might be interesting to
discuss the subject here.
The truth
is, there's no right or wrong way to do things - but
there are guidelines that, if you adhere to them, will
mark you out as a good and competent writer. Similarly,
if you ignore them (without understanding what you're
doing) then you'll most likely come across as an amateur.
Before we
go on, let's make sure we know the terms of reference.
For most
fiction, you have 4 basic alternatives.
1. First
person, where everything is told from the limited POV of
the protagonist - the classic 'I' story. Good because you
can get right inside the feelings and motivations of the
main character. Bad because only the narrator can propel
the plot - that is, nothing can happen that the hero is
unaware of.
2. Third
person, where the writer (and reader) follows the action
through the actions of one protagonist. Good because you
can get inside and outside of the character, describing a
rounded personality with some objectivity.
3.
Omniscient, where the writer can describe the actions and
inner feelings of all of the characters from any point of
view that seems appropriate. Good because of its
flexibility. Bad because it is open to abuse and
mishandling.
4. A
combination of all of the above.
Now, most
aspiring writers have little trouble with options 1 and 2
- the limitations are relatively obvious when you use
them. It's in the 3rd option where writers start to
flounder.
Consider
this piece:
Jenny
thought about what he'd said. He was right, she was
lonely and would do anything to stop him from leaving.
Finally, she said, "Do you care at all?"
"Of
course." Don looked away, trying to contain his
angst. Should he tell her about Debra? He wanted to but
knew it would only make things worse. He chose to lie.
"We've grown apart, Jen..."
Gwen
entered the room. Instantly, she could tell something was
wrong. She scanned the lovers' faces and decided to leave
them to it. Head bowed, she left.
This is
fairly typical of the kind of inexperienced writing I'm
sometimes asked to comment on. The writer desperately
wants the reader to know all sides of the story, thinking
that this creates drama and intrigue - but simply put, it
doesn't. It creates confusion for the reader. What's
called 'head-hopping' makes a reader uneasy for one main
reason:
Identification.
Readers want to relate to one character at a time - it's
human nature. Therefore, it would be unnatural for a
character to know what another was thinking. Indeed, it's
NOT knowing what the other character is thinking that
goes a long way to creating drama!
The
practice of 'head hopping' has all but been eradicated in
most modern literature but is still prevalent in some
romance, especially during love scenes. Sometimes the
romance writer is so keen to let the reader know that
love (or whatever) is being reciprocated that they
abandon the line between two points of view and merrily
leap from one brain to another, sometimes, I find, to the
point of nausea!
Note this:
just because something is or was common practice, doesn't
make it right. Writing is a craft and we, as
craftspeople, should surely learn from the mistakes of
the past and seek to improve our writing techniques.
Agatha
Christie was famous for her head hopping - you might be
in a room with Miss Marple and half a dozen others and
never knows whose head you would end up in! This gave the
reader the illusion they knew the innermost thoughts of
characters. I say illusion because Christie did it to
mislead - she was never totally honest with the reader -
for good reason: she wanted to hold back the identity of
the killer till the last page!
This kind
of deliberate misdirection - the type that 'cons' the
reader - is frowned upon nowadays. We modern writers have
to be cleverer than that.
There's a
famous scene in Carrie, which Stephen King mentions in
his book On Writing. Most of the book is told from
Carrie's POV but there's one scene where Carrie leaves
the room and the POV jumps, without a break, to her
mother. King says he did this deliberately - to jolt the
reader into accepting a particular plot point. This is a
fine example of breaking the rules when you know them.
Despite the
challenges for the aspiring writer, the modern trend is
towards alternating chapters of third person omniscience
and occasional forays into first person, not exclusively
limited to the protagonist.
But why is
the most challenging of styles now the norm?
One word:
TV. Without so much as making a framed suggestion,
television and movie scripts have forced us to think in
terms of objective omniscience - a state where we are
privy to the actions of most of the lead characters
actions and reactions in real time. This works so well
because it reflects the way we have come to view reality
- a linear series of interactions that lead to a
believable outcome.
It's little
wonder that most modern novelists concerned with 'willing
suspension of disbelief' now use the same format - where
each chapter introduces new characters whom we get to
know and understand before moving on to another situation
or group of individuals that we implicitly expect to have
something to do with the plot.
But in the
actual writing, where should we place the point of view?
We should already understand that in any given scene we
should identify with one character at a time - but which
one? The best advice I ever received was that scenes are
most effective when told from the POV of the person with
most to lose.
For
example, in a love scene, the partner with most at stake
emotionally should be your focus. Similarly in a
thriller, the hero who's about to lose his life, his
lover or his livelihood through his actions should be
your focus.
In literary
novels, your focus should be on the character most
affected by the unfolding story. In fantasy and science
fiction too, you'll have noticed that the story is more
often than not told from the POV of the hero charged with
saving the world, the spaceship or the poor hapless
villagers.
Follow this
particular guideline and you won't go far wrong.
Then,
later, when you understand the power of placing the POV
in the right place, can you feel free enough to
experiment - by deliberately moving the focus around.
Dickens was good at this. He would focus his attention
(and thereby the readers') on unsympathetic characters
from time to time to heighten the effect of returning to
the protagonist.
Modern
authors too - like James Patterson and Thomas Harris -
will occasionally tell parts of the story from the POV of
the killer. To give us a sense of menace, madness and
revulsion so that we identify more strongly with Clarice
Starling and Alex Cross when we return to them.
To conclude
- my advice is that you choose to write scenes, chapters,
sections etc. from one POV at a time. And if you do feel
the need to change POV midstream, have the courtesy to
place a blank line in the text to alert the reader to the
change!
