Point of View
Point of view can absolutely make or break a story. When you have limited time, as I do, the wrong point of view can make you decide to put down one novel and pick up another. There’s no sense in wasting your time reading something that doesn’t feel write or doesn’t flow properly.
So, how is a story’s perspective set up? It’s done by using a certain verb tense and a certain kind of narrator.
With verb tense, you generally have the choice of either past or present tense. Most successful books are written in past tense (Harry Potter, Twilight, Lord of the Rings, etc.). If you are a beginning writer, you should start out with past tense. The benefit of present tense is a more casual and immediate feel . . . yet the problem is it almost seems sort of lazy. In addition, some things that work in past tense don’t work nearly as well in present tense.
Below is a passage from Stephenie Myer’s Twilight. The original is the past tense version; I have converted the same passage into present tense.
Tense
Past Tense
“Do you come up to Forks much?” I asked archly, as if I was hoping for a yes. I sounded idiotic to myself. I was afraid he would turn on me with disgust and accuse me of my fraud, but he still seemed flattered.
Present Tense
“Do you come up to Forks much?” I ask archly, as if I am hoping for a yes. I sound idiotic to myself. I am afraid he will turn on me with disgust and accuse me of my fraud, but he still seems flattered.
In this instance, something that worked in the past tense doesn’t work quite as well in the present tense. “I am afraid he will turn on me” just seems awkward somehow. It doesn’t convey fear the way it feels like it should. To make it work properly, the sentence would need to be rewritten.
Many times, there is something almost whimsical about the present tense. The problem, however, is that it’s distracting.
Most readers are accustomed to reading past tense. Maybe you don’t particularly want to cater to others’ whims, but it can be difficult to make a story written in present tense work for the reader. Just like you shouldn’t avoid using punctuation, so should you not avoid following convention in a matter such as this. You want the writing to flow easily through the reader’s mind. Any distractions could make the reader lose interest.
I will note, however, that the present tense does help create a sense of immediacy when you have a fast-paced story. Take this passage from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games:
All the general fear I’ve been feeling condenses into an immediate fear of this girl, this predator who might kill me in seconds. Adrenaline shoots through me and I sling the pack over one shoulder and run full-speed for the woods. I can hear the blade whistling toward me and reflexively hike the pack up to protect my head. The blade lodges in the pack. Both straps on my shoulders now, I make for the trees. Somehow I know the girl will not pursue me. That she’ll be drawn back into the Cornucopia before all the good stuff is gone. A grin crosses my face. Thanks for the knife, I think.
Note what happens when I convert it to present tense instead:
All the general fear I had been feeling condensed into an immediate fear of this girl, this predator who could kill me in seconds. Adrenaline shot through me and I slung the pack over one shoulder and ran full-speed for the woods. I heard the blade whistling toward me and reflexively hiked the pack up to protect my head. The blade lodged in the pack. Both straps on my shoulders now, I made for the trees. Somehow I knew the girl would not pursue me. That she would be drawn back into the Cornucopia before all the good stuff was gone. A grin crossed my face. Thanks for the knife, I thought.
Note how a slight sense of urgency is lost when you convert the passage to past tense. Yet before you take that as your final “okay” for using the present tense, think about how it is possible to bring back some of that urgency, even though using the past tense, simply by a little rewording:
All my general fears condensed into an immediate fear of this girl, this predator who could kill me in seconds. I had to get away.
I slung the pack over one shoulder and ran full-speed for the woods. The blade whistled toward me. Reflexively, I hiked the pack up to protect my head. The blade lodged in the pack.
Both straps on my shoulders now, I made for the trees. I knew the girl would not pursue me. She would be drawn back into the Cornucopia before everything was gone. A grin crossed my face. Thanks for the knife, I thought.
Urgency can be created through smaller paragraphs and shorter sentences, as you can see above. You don’t have to rely on present tense to make that happen.
Narrator
Perhaps even more important than tense is the choice of narrator. Here are your options:
First Person (the “I” POV – from Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief)
All I wanted to do was lie in the dry grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you’re halfway to Methana.
Second Person (the “You” POV – from William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!)
But you were not listening, because you knew it all already, had learned, absorbed it already without the medium of speech somehow from having been born and living beside it, with it, as children will and do: so that what your father was saying did not tell you anything so much as it struck, word by word, the resonant strings of remembering.
Note: This POV usually works best with present tense, yet Faulkner uses the second person in past tense here with success (note, however, that second person isn’t the only POV used in this novel, which was a good decision on his part).
Third Person (the “He, She” POV – from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice)
While settling this point, she was suddenly roused by the sound of the door-bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once before called late in the evening, and might now come to inquire particularly after her. But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room.
The first thing I have to say about the narrator is don’t write in second person. Unless you’re a literary genius like Faulkner, it’s obnoxious. It takes a lot of searching to find many famous books written in second person—and even then, as I noted above, that is not the only POV usedin the Faulkner novel that I took the example from. Second person usually seems more suited for something sultry than it does for something that actually has a point.
When you say “you,” you are essentially directing the actions of your reader. Guess what? The reader doesn’t need to read “about themselves.” Let them buy a diary if that’s what they are interested in. I just don’t think there’s much of a place for this if you have any desire to be taken seriously as a writer.
Deciding on Tense
So, should you write in first person or third person? Well, it depends. A beginning writer should probably write in third person since it’s the standard. However, there are pros and cons to first person that should be noted.
In first person POV, the main downside is you are limited to one person’s perspective. If your story necessitates seeing more than one perspective, you are probably better off not doing first person. You could have chapters labeled with the name of the individual whose first-person perspective you are showing, yet that can sometimes get clunky. It might be better to simply do a third-person POV. Otherwise, you are going to have to make it clear at the beginning of every chapter, through use of the narrative, just whose POV is being explored.
What’s good about first person? Well, the reader connects more with the narrator. After all, the narrator’s innermost thoughts are displayed for the reader. If it’s an unlikeable or flat character, however, that could very well be problematic, as no one wants to constantly see the inner workings of a mind that doesn’t interest them. In third person, where there’s a little distance, it isn’t as problematic.
Yet a story might be built around a first-person narrator in a very interesting way—the narrator may not know the truth about what is going on or may completely mislead the reader intentionally or unintentionally (with good or bad results). Take Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, for instance. (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) It’s a mystery novel where the narrator turns out to be the murderer. Since it is written in first-person, you might think you could trust the narrator to tell you whatever he knows; however, that is apparently not the case.
Try a story out in first-person and third-person narrations. Maybe a character is funnier when shown in first person. I personally have tried to write something in third person that fell flat, only to find it worked much better when I changed it to first person. I felt like I needed the deeper level of empathy.
However, please note that you should be very careful about first person. It invites a sort of casualness that can be dangerous. For instance, you are probably more likely to use contractions, sentence fragments, etc. Maybe it will work, and maybe it won’t. You just need to be careful not to become too casual with your first-person writing, as it needs to remain comprehensible. Unless you are certain you are writing the next Ulysses, comprehension and easy readability should always come first. That’s why second person and present tense are best avoided.
What about third-person narration, where you tell the story through a nameless entity? That is the standard, and if you are a beginning writer, it is a good place to start. It will encourage more formality and enable you to get a better handle on your writing style.
When it comes down to it, everything you are doing as a writer is for the benefit of the reader. In Stephen King’s On Writing, he discusses the two theses of his book, saying:
The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals. Vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style, and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments.
The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one it is possible with lots of hard work, dedication and timely help to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.
POV is an important instrument for a writer. Choosing the right POV is one step on your road to becoming a good writer. Choosing the right POV at the beginning of writing a story can save you a lot of work down the road, allowing you to focus more on things like character development.
Third Person POV – Some Specifics
Even when you have decided on third-person narration, there’s still another choice in front of you.
You get to choose: Do you want your narration to be limited to the “perspective” of one character (where everything you see occurs in the same room as one character, just the way much of the Harry Potter series sticks with what Harry sees and thinks), or do you want the narration to encompass a lot of different characters’ experiences?
What is the benefit of being limited to one character? Like with first person, the reader starts to really relate to that specific character. However, the reader is allowed a little bit more distance (enough to allow more criticalness), it is more formal, and it is less distracting to the reader. If your story allows you to do this, then great! It’s not a bad narration style.
If you feel like your story necessitates knowing what several people are doing, then you can give the perspectives of several different characters. You can choose to do that in the same scene, or you can use scene breaks to distinguish between changes of the third-person “perspective” you are writing from. I absolutely 100% recommend the latter. If you show the thoughts of several different characters in one scene, it is jarring, confusing, and unfocused. Jann and I call this “POV wandering,” and we have made a determined effort to stamp it out of all our stories. If you need to show someone else’s POV in third-person, then use a scene break in between the two perspectives. It will really help your readers.
The great thing about this method is that you can have a little bit of fun with it. Maybe one man thinks of all other men by their last names in his perspective; maybe someone else always thinks of people by nicknames in their perspective. Maybe an alien comes to Earth and doesn’t know what a toilet is, so he perceives it as a water container. There’s different things you can do with it.
Look at this passage from Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars: Heir to the Empire:
“Finally awake, are you?” a woman’s voice said from the side.
Startled, Luke twisted his head toward the voice. His first, instantaneous thought was that he had somehow missed sensing whoever was over there; his second, following on the heels of the first, was that that was clearly ridiculous and that the voice must be coming instead from an intercom or comlink.
He finished his turn, to discover that the first thought had indeed been correct.
She was sitting in a high-backed chair, her arms draped loosely over the arms in a posture that seemed strangely familiar: a slender woman about Luke’s own age, with brilliant red-gold hair and equally brilliant green eyes. Her legs were casually crossed; a compact but wicked-looking blaster lay on her lap.
Now, this passage is written from Luke’s perspective. Because of that, he doesn’t automatically know who this strange woman is speaking to him. This also allows the dramatic element of him learning that there is someone in the room with him who just so happens to have a weapon in her lap. By limiting it to Luke’s experiences only (and not cluttering it up with the other character’s experience), there is a focus to the scene and a closer connection to Luke as a character. Having one character to follow through a scene gives you a focus—you can show that person’s reactions and perspectives of others (which could very well be wrong somehow).
Notice how if I inserted Mara’s POV in there as well, it would take away the focus (see the bolded paragraph to see my changes):
“Finally awake, are you?” a woman’s voice said from the side.
Startled, Luke twisted his head toward the voice. His first, instantaneous thought was that he had somehow missed sensing whoever was over there; his second, following on the heels of the first, was that that was clearly ridiculous and that the voice must be coming instead from an intercom or comlink.
He finished his turn, to discover that the first thought had indeed been correct.
Mara stared at the man, barely able to disguise the disgust she felt for him. She was sitting in a high-backed chair, her arms draped loosely over the arms. She was a slender woman about Luke’s own age, with brilliant red-gold hair and equally brilliant green eyes. Her legs were casually crossed; a compact but wicked-looking blaster lay on her lap.
I embellished a little to make it more obvious that I was inserting a little of Mara in there. Yet notice how it feels sort of ping-pongy. “Here’s what he sees, here’s what she sees.” It’s much better to focus on just one perspective in a scene rather than doing this POV wandering.
The Bottom Line
So what’s the bottom line?
In my opinion, a beginning writer should start out writing in past tense, using a focused third-person perspective that does not show several different perspectives in one scene. Once you’ve written a lot, then you can branch out to see the effects of other perspectives. Yet I would avoid present tense and second-person narration. I don’t think the pros will ever outweigh the cons of those, though there are some people who might disagree!
