Experimenting with Points of View

Perspectives:

Before writing a story, it's important to consider carefully what point of view you're going to use.   Most of us know the kinds of points of view available: first person, second person, and third person, which can either be omniscient or limited.  Writers, as a rule, know these perspectives.  But creative things can be done within the limits of these points of view.

Most modern fiction writers choose between first person and third person limited.  Third person limited is like in Harry Potter, wherein the narrator follows the perspective of one or more important characters to tell the story.  I, personally, prefer first person because I can use it to get deeply into the character's point of view, though a lot of writers can achieve a similar effect with third person limited.  If you're not sure which you'd prefer to use, experiment with it.  See what sounds better.  If you're trying third person, and it doesn't feel right, try first person.

Something New:

Experimental and interesting approaches are available with all of these perspectives.  With my current series of novels, I'm following the example set by Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help.  In that popular novel, three women, a white woman and two black women, take turns being the narrator.  The reader gets a more complete understanding of the situation because he/she isn't limited to just one set of eyes or thoughts.  The narrator in each case speaks in the voice of the perspectival character.  Currently, I am writing first person, alternating between the male character's and the female character's voices.  It's not a common technique, but I enjoyed using it to fully explore both an insecure, introverted woman and an insecure, introverted man.  I have yet to find out what kind of reception I will receive from the publisher since it's not a common technique.

The more common approach to this kind of shared narrative would be 3rd person.  The traditional, and somewhat outdated, way of writing would be to assume an impartial voice of a narrator who knows everything, but fewer and fewer writers use this approach because readers prefer the experience of feeling what the character feels rather than just hearing what they do.  It's easier for the writer to show rather than tell when viewing the story through the eyes of a character.  3rd person limited allows the flexibility of shifting perspectives between main characters and even minor characters involved in events critical to the story.  One danger with too much head jumping is that it's easy to flit back and forth in the middle of a chapter and, more problematic yet, a single paragraph.  Readers can find a dizzying amount of head jumping disorienting, and publishers take this as a clear sign of a novice writer.  I read a romance novel recently in which the meeting of the man and the woman was like a pingpong game, where each event was told from one perspective then the other in rapid succession, so there was no mystery, no tension, and no stability.  It's usually best to limit head jumping to between sections of a chapter or, better yet, a shift between chapters.

Best of all would be as with Harry Potter, to focus on one single perspective for the entire story.  Some stories can't easily be told this way.  However, remember that the reader still sees some chapters through Voldemort's eyes because Harry is in his head or having a dream at the time.  The reader still gets multiple perspectives by following Harry around.

Experimenting:

There are other techniques one can use with point of view that would be even more experimental.  I have read short stories told through the 2rd person perspective, one usually reserved for instruction manuals.  The most well-known type of 2nd person story is Choose Your Own Adventure books, in which the reader participates in the story, choosing what the characters will do.  But this is not the only use for the 2nd person perspective in fiction.  What could happen when the "you" addressed in the story actually does something like commits a murder and has to hide it?  Or when the "you" in the story is a detective or a romantic lead?  This could be either a narrative or an instruction manual, a how-to of crime, crime solving, or whatever.  I've seen this technique used, but it would be difficult to pull off well.  Examples are listed here.

With third person, the narrator is assumed to be trustworthy because he's simply a voice telling the story.  Why would he lie?  A truly good author writing in 3rd person limited or 1st person can achieve a higher level of art with an unreliable narrator.  Somehow, either through switching points of view or through some other means, the writer is able to indicate to the reader that his narrator is untrustworthy, that the narrator has a clear bias or is telling the story in such a way that it shouldn't be believed at face value.  In Wonderlandiful World of the Ever After High trilogy by Shannon Hale, the narrator first interacts with a character in a way that shows the narrator to be a character in his own right, and his descriptions suspect.  Then the true narrator goes insane.  His words make less and less sense as he's consumed by the Jabberwock's magic.  Maddie, daughter of the Mad Hatter, takes on the role of narrator and quickly shows her own biases and thought processes contrasting with the reality of the story.  When her father is in trouble, she doesn't even want to talk about what's happening. At one point in the narrative, Kitty, the daughter of the Cheshire Cat, takes over as another narrator and blatantly starts to make things up because what's actually happening is boring.  This kind of unreliable narrator enhances the intrigue and level of art in the story if done well, though it can confuse the reader if done poorly.  Here is an article with examples of novels with unreliable narrators.

Sometimes, an entire story can be inspired by points of view.  I have written fun short stories from the points of view of a McDonalds paper cup, the evil fairy in my own version of "Sleeping Beauty," and from the point of view of the frog in "Frog Prince," among others.  Sometimes, all it takes to make a story fresh is to see it from another point of view.  Disney with "Maleficent" and "Descendants," Broadway with "Wicked," and so many others have made this practice more common, though there is so much more territory left to explore.  One of the most interesting experiments in perspective was written by Orson Scott Card.  Multiple decades ago, he wrote Ender's Game from the point of view of Ender, an earnest young man in a military academy set in space.  About a decade ago, he retold the same story in Ender's Shadow from the point of view of Ender's subversive sidekick, Bean, who experienced the same events in an entirely different manner.  If you're interested in perspective hopping and what it does for a story, read those two novels back to back.

Heightening Drama: 

One of the things to consider with point of view, especially a shifting point of view, is which character to follow at any given time.  Which character's perspective will heighten the drama?  If there are two characters entering a situation, it may be more helpful to follow the perspective of the newcomer because the reader, too, will be new to this situation.  That character can stand in as the reader in their exploration of that situation.  For example, we enter the Wizarding World through Harry's eyes.  If one character is really hurting but not showing it, it may be interesting to get inside her/his head, so we can experience the whole depth of the character's pain. Orson Scott Card points out that too many tears by the main character can actually turn a reader off.  Sometimes, it may be best to follow the character who isn't suffering the most, so readers can watch the suffering character's heroic struggle.  The best way to figure out which character would be best to follow may be to write both perspectives and see which is more successful, which does a better job of enhancing the plot and meaning.

Reader's Lens: 

The point of view of the narrator and main character are your reader's lens through which they see the entire story.  If the narrator's perspective on the main character is engaging, convincing, and clear, the reader is far more likely to follow your books and listen to your entire story and its sequels.  If the narrator's voice is humorous, endearing, clever, or in some way unique in a good way, you'll probably get a fan base who will follow you to the ends of the earth and beyond.  That is the power of point of view.

The Magic of Humor

Sparkle

Sarah Boucher, a friend of mine, asked me to write a blog post she could feature on her blog here.  I imagine it won't appear for a bit, but this is what I came up with, with some added since I have more space on my own blog.  

My husband and I have watched many movies over the years and have determined what makes a good movie vs what makes a truly stellar movie worth watching repeatedly. A good story requires great characterization with clear motivation, and a meaningful plot.  A stellar story requires all that plus humor. 

I love Lloyd Alexander’s Taran the Wanderer series, Anne McCaffrey’s Harper Hall trilogy, and Brandon Mull’s more recent Fablehaven series.  They’re good books.  They have great plotting and characterization.  All of them have a smattering of humor here and there.  But my kids and I read the beginning of each of them to decide which book to read next, back to back with the snarky, tongue-in-cheek Percy Jackson series, written by Rick Riordan.  Percy won for all of us, hands down.  Why?  One could say it’s because the Percy Jackson has a fresh, exciting voice.  That is true.  But for me, the biggest reason is because of the humor.  Humor appears not just in one or two comic relief characters but in the chapter titles, the first person narration, around every corner, and in every confrontation.  A lot of authors don’t bother with chapter titles, but Riordan’s chapter titles include such titles as “I learn how to Grow Zombies,” “I Break a Few Rocket Ships,”” “I Go Snowboarding with a Pig,” “I Wrestle Santa’s Evil Twin,” and “We Meet the Dragon of Eternal Bad Breath.”  My kids plead with me to keep reading one more chapter, even after bedtime, because the titles amuse and tantalize at the same time.  Each chapter is fresh, funny, and well worth a few minutes of sleep.  The narrative isn’t all funny.  There are serious events, solemn moments, and emotionally potent times.  But they are counterbalanced by laughs.  The humor pulls us through the book like a force of gravity, making the experience of reading it truly pleasurable.  What makes the narrative magical is entirely lacking in the movies, of which even Riordan is severely critical. 

Unfunny vs Funny

Let’s look at the Star Wars series.  Movies 1-3 flop in part because all humor is produced by Jar Jar Binks, a buffoonish character who frustrates because he is a cheap shot for the kids and because he’s not funny to many adults.  Meanwhile, dialogue and banter are often absent throughout the rest of the trilogy. Therefore, the only humor distracts from rather than enhances the storyline.  Lacking their comedy relief, the other two movies don’t try to be funny.  The lack of humor makes them fall flat and feel untrue to the original trilogy.  As with many movies, we watch them once and walk away.  

A lot of movies and stories are like this for my family and others, flat not because the characters aren’t good or the story isn’t interesting but because they are like the description of the FBI in the movie “Men in Black”: “[They] have no sense of humor that [they] are aware of.”  We may watch them once, but they’re not worth revisiting because they’re not much fun.  Entertainment should be fun.  It should not feel like work to read a novel or watch a movie unless you’re writing papers on them.  Even serious stories can be made more likable and engaging through a touch of humor.  

What works in the Star Wars series?  Movies 4-7 work because of humor.  The Ewoks and the comedy duo straight man and chubby funny man, C3PO and R2D2, provide comic relief, but others also provide humor as well.  Anyone can be funny, whether intentionally or not.  Even the simple, ubiquitous line, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” becomes humorous when handled right.  Han Solo and Leia are both serious throughout the series, but they exchange banter and zingers on a regular basis that carry the movies with their humor and charm.  Audiences still chuckle over, “You stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder!” and Han’s winning response, “Who’s scruffy-looking?”  Luke, too, seems to take himself seriously, yet I went to a screening in the nineties of the original Star Wars movie, and some of the loudest laughs from an audience of seasoned Star Warriors came from Luke’s teenagerly whine, “Ah!  I was going to go to the Tashi Station to pick up some power converters!”  These are not lines with comic intent.  These lines are funny because they’re a combination of familiar and unexpected. 

Dialogue with humor provides magic for the original trilogy, and Force Awakens recaptures that, both with BB8, the quirky droid, and others.  [Spoiler alert].  Audiences see an entire village massacred then we get Poe Dameron’s line, “You speak first or I speak first?” to relieve the tension. One of the funnier scenes is the one in which Rey rescues herself using the force for the first time on a storm trooper played by James Bond’s Daniel Craig.  Two serious characters make a funny scene while being serious because what happens there is so unexpected and straight-faced.  Humor comes from fresh dialogue between intriguing characters with no “comedy relief” characters required. 

Your Turn

            In most writing, humor is critical to the enjoyment of the reader.  Humor doesn’t have to be constant or laugh-out-loud, but it should be present.  It adds sparkle and fun.  Entertainment is why most writers write and most readers read.  Adding humor to a situation can make an otherwise serious story more enjoyable.  Humor makes a reader care and helps carry the message and story into the reader’s mind and heart.  Everyone’s brand of humor is different.  Find yours, and your story will take on more magic and charm. 

Drives

Driving Forces: 

What drives your character?  I watched a well-written tv show this week that made me wonder if my characters' voices are as distinct as those in the show.  Then I saw a post on FaceBook that reminded me what that meant specifically.  What drives a person?  Their purpose or goal, their fears, their loves, and their losses.  I could talk about the differences between what they THINK their goal is vs. what their actual goal is.  These could be different.  A character could tell himself he's here to help another character when he's actually here because he wants to be loved.  The same is true for fears, loves, etc.  But that's a subject for another day.  What is their true goal?  If their motives are clear to the reader--even if they're not always clear to the character--the author, and therefore the reader, understands the character, and the character becomes more compelling.

Purpose: 

A real person is complicated and can have any number of goals.  However, most often, in their heart of hearts, a character wants one main thing, a dream, a hope, an aspiration.  A writer can look to the Enneagram for the goal as given in that character theory or that same writer can figure it out based on his or her origin or story.  

Why does the character get up in the morning or do what she does in the day?  What is the thing she wants MOST in the entire world?  Now, there could be an overriding goal for the character in general that is different than the goal of the moment.  Let's look at the song "I've Got a Dream" from "Tangled."  The current occupation of the entire bar full of warriors and villains is to maim and kill for money.  At first, the main characters assume that is their ultimate purpose, their greatest desire, in life.  But as the warriors and villains sing this song, they make it clear this isn't what they truly want to be doing.  This isn't their real purpose, just what they're doing now.  One of them wants to be a concert pianist, one a mime, one a sculptor, one a husband, and so on.  The circumstances of the moment are such that they can't fulfill their dreams.  So what is your character's goal of the moment and what is their ultimate dream or purpose?  Do they relate or clash?

I went through and figured out the ultimate goals of my main characters.  Connor is a lawyer whose real purpose in life is to avoid pain through having fun.  So when he has to sit and do law-related things, he does it, but the whole time, he's fantasizing about playing video games to avoid thinking about what's really going on beneath the surface.  His real purpose, then, is to avoid pain.  He will do ANYTHING to avoid pain.  So at the base of everything he says, there should be an element of pain avoidance.  Robin is a pilot and a dental assistant, but her real purpose in life is to protect others.  So everything she does should center on that goal in life or interact with it in some way.

Fears: 

Fears can also drive a character in a scene.  What keeps your character from living as he wants to live?  What stops him from achieving his dream or getting the girl?  Many times, the answer is fear.  This is his internal roadblock and another possible motivator for a scene.  Let's look again at that "Tangled" with the scene in which Rapunzel has finally escaped from the witch's tower.  Her stated goal is to see the glowing lights that float up to the sky every year on her birthday.  Her underlying longing is to find the joy the witch denies her.  Her fear nearly overcomes her and takes her back to the tower.

What internal conflict or fear bars your character from forward momentum?  Once again, I looked at my characters.  Connor's greatest fear is obviously pain.  He has experienced a lot of pain in relationships and will do anything to avoid them.  He dates but will run at any sign of a commitment.  Women aren't scary to him.  But women who want more than the thrill of the moment are. This prevents him from really growing up since relationships are part of adulthood.  Meanwhile, Robin's fear is men.  They have hurt her repeatedly, and she fully expects every man she meets to cause pain to herself and those around her.  Both of these fears are paralyzing when it comes to forward momentum in a romance.  So what keeps your character from doing what he or she wants to do?  It could be a physical barricade like Harry Potter's buddy Ron Weasley faces in scenes with giant spiders or it could be internal like Ron faces when he discovers he's interested in Hermione but doesn't know what to do about it.  The first section of this blog post is about what drives your character forward.  Now, figure out what holds her back.

Love and Loss: 

Either  a character's goal or fear may relate to love and loss.  Most characters love or have loved someone or something.  Otherwise, how can we love them?  How does love of the present or the past play into your character's goals or fears?  In the early Disney movies, future love is the title character's primary goal.  But this isn't the case in later Disney movies.  "Someday, my Prince Will Come," a song about how a girl's dream centers on romance, has given way to "Let it Go," a song about a character who doesn't think she needs anyone.  Cinderella lives for dreams of future love while Elsa is stuck in pain and loss of the past.  How does love from either the past or present complicate either goals or fears?  Maybe the character doesn't want love, will reject any love offered.  Do goals, loss, or fear drive the character the most in this case?  It depends on the character.  Why does the character have this relationship with love?  Or maybe the character is in love with being in love like Shakespeare's Romeo.  He would love anything that steps in his path.  How does this complicate his dreams and fears?  Maybe, like Snape, your character feels he can't love again because he's already found and lost the love of his life, and that love will ever affect his interactions with others.  

As mentioned, loss can also be a powerful storytelling device for enlightening a character's soul and motivation.  Maybe there's a character who wants no one's love or sympathy.  Look at Flynn Rider in "Tangled."  In the song "I've Got a Dream," he comes out sounding worse than the criminals around him because his dream is "much less touchy-feely."  He says he wants money.  But later, in a heart to heart discussion with Rapunzel, he confesses he really wants to escape being the hurt little boy he once was.  She sees his heart, feels his fear and pain of the past, and calls him Eugene, the name that describes that hurt little boy.

Love and loss are often tied together in ways that may or may not relate to romance.  Say you're writing about a hard-bitten character who thinks he neither wants nor needs people. But yet he has a dog for which he would die.  This is still love.  This character becomes sympathetic because he loves that dog.  Then the dog is murdered, and the character goes on a vendetta against those who did it.  We understand this character because he has loved and lost.  His love is in the past, but it still drives him.  We see his heart and understand pain and anger drive his character.  Though his actions are inhuman, love and loss drive him to those actions, so he is humanized.  This is very like Spider-Man's origin.  He loved his uncle.  Because of his own carelessness, his uncle was murdered.  He will forever after be driven to protect because he failed and, therefore, lost.  His drive will always be to protect.  His fear will always be more loss if he fails.  Romances are complicated by his fear of losing again.

Your Turn:

So what drives your character?  Most likely, desires or goals [her life's purpose], complicated or enhanced by love and/or the paired emotion of hate, loss, and fear.  So what are your specific character's drives?  If the audience can feel these drives in villains and heroes, your characters start to become real to the reader.  The characters start to jump off the page and carry the reader through book after book.  Characters that lack this kind of clarity of motivation become mushy, uninteresting, confusing.  Even if you're well advanced in writing a book, make sure you know these factors that limit and define each major character.  Is there a scene wherein your character defies what defines them?  Is there a real reason for it?  If not, you may want to rethink and rewrite.  No scene should be there simply for a writer's convenience.  Everything should be there to drive the character or the story.  Since characters should drive story, if your story is getting muddled, go back to the characters.  Chances are, that's where the muddle begins.

Getting the Eyes Right

Eyes?

A critical part of my characterization is to get the eyes right.  "Eyes?" you ask.  "What, you mean color?"  No.  Physical descriptions, as I've heard repeatedly, should be minimal in the narrative.

How to Use Description

For me, eye color and the rest of the description only matters when it plays a part in how the character feels about him/herself or in how another character sees them.  Say the character's eyes are brown like a puppy dog's.  That might not matter to the character, so he/she doesn't think about it.  However, that's what draws another person to them or makes them seem trustworthy.  Then the physical description matters.  For example, Harry Potter has his mother's eyes, and most of the other characters' initial reactions are to his mother's reflection in his green eyes or his father's reflection in his face.  Professor Snape's reaction to him is clearly complicated by Harry's resemblance to both parents at once.  This is when physical description matters, when the description is meaningful to the plot, the main character, or both.  

The Connotations of Appearance

If the description is more than minimal, it's just window dressing and may be more distracting than helpful.  I have heard from experienced writers that physical description should be a brief suggestion, so the readers can fill in the rest with their imaginations.  If a woman has "hair the color of a gold coin and eyes as cold as a frozen lake," she's clearly not supposed to be lovable.  We get an image without any more than that, though it suggests more.  Another female character may have "hair as golden as a sunset and eyes the color of a shimmering pool in summer," which gives us a woman similar in appearance to the first.  However, we get a more positive response with this description.  We want to meet the second woman but not the first.  It may be interesting if both descriptions turned out to be two other character's descriptions of the same woman.  But I'll have to think about how that would fit into a story.  

The Process

Then, you ask, "What DO I mean by getting the eyes right?"  This week, I sat down to reexamine my notes and characterizations preparatory to revising my novel and realized something was missing: images that captured each character for me.  No one will see these images but me.  However, they're a critical part of my notes.  First, as I described before, I come up with the gist of my characters and their relationships to each other.  Then, I get more descriptive, using the enneagram.  Third, I sit down and find an image that captures my sense of each character.  Who is this character to me?  How does he or she look and, more importantly, feel like to me?  Look at the image above.  This child tells a story in his  eyes.  Without this image, I may just describe a dark-skinned child with almost black eyes.  However, staring into this face, into those eyes, I see a soul worth exploring.  I can begin by talking about his chocolate brown skin and eyes like a whirlpool at night, troubled and churning.  If a picture is worth 1000 words, the image of a soul is worth far more.  

Finding the Soul

I look for images that show the eyes from as close up as possible and that give the right character and emotional sense.  I may spend quite a long time looking for just the right image because that image will then inform my writing.  I may even change the eye color of the character to match the picture.  This process helps me capture the character's soul in a way I may not otherwise be able to do.  This process may seem like a waste of time to some people since no one will ever see the photo but the writer.  But it helps me get the voice right.  It is absolutely critical to my writing process.  Without it, the character may get lost in the words.  Try looking carefully into the images above.  Who can you create from these photos?  Now, go and find images that fit your characters.