Point of View pt. 1 (the basics)

"Thanks for the memories, even if they weren't so great."--Fall Out Boy, Thnks fr th Mmrs

Today I've been inspired by some of the revising I've been doing to talk about point of view. One of the most basic tools of the author is point of view (who is telling your story--literally, the point of view it's from). You have a few basic options that anyone who's ever taken a creative writing class is familiar with: first person (I), third person limited (He), or if you're crazy, second person (You). Each of these has advantages and disadvantages.

In first person, the narration comes entirely from the point of view of one character. This method means that every sentence, every word, develops character. From the tone and voice of the narrative you learn how the narrating character speaks and tells stories. From its content you learn what they find important to relate. Hopefully at some point you learn why they want to tell the story they're telling. The list goes on. At no point can you escape from the character's head, so every little detail gives a subtle touch-up to their character.

Unfortunately, it's extremely hard to pull off and takes a lot of practice. To make a character sound convincing in the first person while telling an interesting story at the same time is not an easy task, and not every story can be told from first person anyway. In the first person, every fact is suspect, and sometimes you don't want that.

When that's the case, you'll most likely want a third person limited point of view. The third person limited point of view is told in the third person, with the narrator having access to the thoughts of one character. For instance, "Her eye was twitching. He could see she was nervous." is a third person limited point of view passage. We have access to "his" thoughts (in the second sentence), but not hers. In the first sentence, we have an objective fact. He does not think her eye is twitching--it is. (Compare this to "Her eye was twitching in nervousness"--a third person p.o.v. sentence from "her" point of view).

Third person limited point of view is a very useful point of view to work from, and most novels are written in successive third person limited p.o.v. chapters (especially in sci-fi/fantasy). The difficulty in this p.o.v. lies chiefly around navigating which thoughts belong to which characters and keeping a consistent point of view throughout a section. How easy would it be to write "He looked like her dead uncle. He could see she was nervous. She felt uncomfortable."--whose point of view is this? It's unclear. Either of them could have access to the knowledge that he looked like her dead uncle. The second sentence could either be a report of him observing her or of her observing him. The third could either be her reporting her emotions or him analyzing his observation in the second sentence.

Second person point of view is told in the second person, but implies a narrative character anyway. "You open the door and step through. You're free." is a second person point of view passage. It involves the reader directly in the story, and since the reader knows that they didn't actually have anything to do with it, it tends to lead itself to "What if?" scenarios. What's interesting about it is the development of the invisible narrator. Who is it that is claiming I walk through this door? Why do they think that there is freedom on the other side? Why are they commanding me, anyway?

Obviously, there's some fertile ground to work with there, but second-person point of view is rare and off-putting to readers. I've never encountered it outside of literary fiction, and even there it's unusual.

Those are the basics, as I see them. Point of view is infinitely complicated, and there are professors who make their living studying and writing huge, convoluted papers on it and writers who make their living stretching its boundaries, but for a start, this will do. In my next post I'll cover some more advanced techniques to consider when using it--the ones I've been playing with that prompted this post in the first place.