Writing Tip #22: Point of View

Prompt: Study the art displayed here and write what arises. Be observant. Tell a story. When you are done, read it out loud to yourself and then re-approach the same story but from a different point of view. For example, if you wrote from the "I" POV the first time, try the story again in the "you" or the "she/he" points of view. See where this approach takes you.

Lesson: Generally speaking we have three points of view available to us and they are based on pronoun use. Pronoun defined is: a word that substitutes for a noun or a noun phrase, such as "I,""you,""them,""it,""ours,""who,""which,""myself," and "anybody." "I" is the 1st person, "you" is 2nd person and "she/he" is third person.

Question to ponder: Why use each POV, what is the effect?

Generally speaking, the "I" voice, also known as first person, is immediate and keeps the reader close to the writer. It's confessional but also intimate. The third person voice, "he" or "she" voice, provides some distance and space. The "you" voice--second person, is a way to create inclusion with the reader and draw them in to share the journey.

Points to touch on: "of the three POV choices, second person is the rarest, in non-fiction as well as fiction and poetry. It's not hard to figure out why: second person POV calls attention to itself and tends to invite reader resistance. Imagine recasting "For five years I lived in Alaska," to "for five years you lived in Alaska." That's exactly what a POV shift to second person would do; it places the reader directly in the shoes of the author, without narrative mediation. Clumsily used, second person screams out for the reader to say, "No, I didn't" with an inner shrug of indignation and stop reading." Tell it Slant, Pg. 144

Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story, "I began to read the greats in essay writing—and it wasn't their confessing voices I was responding to, it was their truth-speaking personae."

"Though memoir is the nonfiction form most closely associated with an "I," it can be written in second or third person…these kinds of techniques –experiments with POV, use of different tenses (past, present, future), finding just the right metaphorical image to anchor the piece—all serve to help the memoir elevate itself out of self-centered rumination and into the arena of art." Pg. 97, Tell it Slant.

Your Turn: Post your stories and your revisions. Let's see where this prompt took you.