Point of View in Fiction Writing

I propose to publish a series of pieces that together I will call Guidelines for Writing Fiction.  In this, the first in the series, I will discuss point of view (POV).

 

            One of the most crucial decisions an author must make is choosing a point of view for his story. Sometimes you just know, without thinking about it, that a story has to be first person or told from the point of view a particular character - and when you have this ‘gut feeling', your are probably right to go with it - but sometimes you don't. And when you don't, you have to think long and hard about the choice you make. My short story, A Loving Deceit, lived in my head for weeks before I decided on telling it from the point of view of a character that really played a small part in the story. Of course once you choose a character for the POV, that character becomes the protagonist, even if the story is not about him. Another point: once you decide on a POV, it is important to stay constantly aware of it throughout the writing process.

            Some stories are best suited to first person narrative, while others will fail miserably in the first person. Some writers confuse ‘person' with POV.  There are only two possible ‘persons', first and third.  First person narration reduces to point of view as well. In other words, if you chose first person narration, the only possible point of view is the narrator. Third person, on the other hand, offers numerous points of view. You can chose any of the characters to be the ‘eyes and ears' for the action, or you can tell the story from the point of view of an omniscient narrator. Basically, then, we have three choices:

           

1.      First person.

2.      Third person (character)

3.      Third person (omniscient) 

 

            The last of these, the omniscient narrator, is principally a nineteenth century technique, although it is often used to introduce a scene that quickly collapses into the POV of one of the characters.

 

            Although of different builds, the three runners were dressed in identical running suits, dark blue pants with white stripes running down the legs and matching jackets. As they made the turn near the water tower, Roger bumped into Wendell and threw him off stride. Wondering if the bump was intentional, Wendell . . .

 

            What makes this an ‘omniscient beginning' is the observation that the runners are of different builds yet wearing identical suits.  This observation is not one that one of the characters would make.  But with the word ‘wondering', we see the POV shift. The events are now seen from Wendell's point of view. Pick up almost any anthology of short stories and you will find beginnings like the one above. John Updike's short story, "The Rumor", begins,

 

            Frank and Sharon Whittier had come from the Cincinnati area and, with an inheritance of hers and a sum borrowed from his father, had opened a small art gallery . . . They had known each other as children. Their families had been in the same country club set. They had married in 1970 when Frank was freshly graduated from Oberlin and Vietnam-vulnerable and Sharon was only nineteen, a sophomore at Antioch . . .

 

            Updike actually continues with this omniscient narrator for a very long first paragraph.  Then,

           

            When Sharon first heard the rumor that Frank had left her for a young homosexual with whom he was having an affair, she had to laugh, for, far from having left her, there he was, right in the lamplit study with her, ripping pages . . .

           

            The first hint that the POV is shifting is "she had to laugh".  Not that she laughed, an omniscient narrator could see her laughing, but that she had to laugh.  Then of course it becomes obvious with "there he was, right in the lamplit study".

            The one advantage omniscient narration gives us is perspective and ease of summary. In the story above, notice how easy it is for Updike to summarize the background of Frank and Sharon Whittier. Most narrative summary is written in the omniscient POV. But what is gained in perspective is lost in intimacy. There is always a distance between an omniscient narrator and the story, a distance from the characters and a distance from the action. Consider the following:

 

            In the dog days of August, entire families retreat to their front porches or to the shade of the nearest tree.

            A tall oak stood in the yard of the house Cora rented. The lush expanse of the oak belied the barren nature of the surrounding yard, where little grew except sparse clumps of grass.

 

            Now, let's rewrite this from Cora's point of view:

 

            Cora blinked the sweat from her eyes and looked up at the underside of the old oak. It looked like the dog days of August had come to stay. What little grass that had survived the heat stood in sparse brown clumps around the yard.

 

            This rendering is more immediate, more intimate than the detached, omniscient POV. The reader gets an idea of what it feels like to be Cora on a hot summer afternoon.

 

Shifting Points of View:

 

            Except for shifting from omniscient narrator, once a point of view has been established you should, in general, stick to it. The reader has adjusted to the particular point of view you have established and unconsciously expects it. A shift of point of view confuses him and brings him ‘out of the story'. (Always remember, never do anything to call attention to the writing, keep your reader absorbed in the story, not the writing.)  Consider the following dialogue.

            “You ask him that every night,” said Sandra. She sometimes wondered if Jack weren’t retarded. “Can’t you get it through your thick head, he doesn’t like the damn stuff.”

            Jack was surprised by the anger in her voice.  She could get pissed about most anything these days it seemed.

 

            The first paragraph is from Robert's point of view, the second from Sandra's and the third from Jack's. Such shifts in point of view make it hard to get involved in the story. The author is asking the reader to jump from one person's head to another's.

            In general, short stories are told start to finish from a single point of view, whereas novels often shift the point of view from chapter to chapter.  Having said that, the John Updike story, "The Rumor", not only shifts from omniscient narrator to the wife's POV, but later to the husband's.  But it shifts to the husband's POV by means of a ‘break', a linespace where the shift occurs to alert the reader.

 

            Something about the way he was arguing with her strengthened Sharon's suspicion that - outrageous as it was - the rumor was true.

 

 

            Frank sensed her discomfort and . . .

 

            Here, the spacing prepares the reader for the shift in POV.  Often, an author will go even farther and repeat a part of a scene, showing it from the second POV.  For example,

 

            With their chins lifted, the queen and her attendants marched between the rows of tables to the dais. As she ascended to the high table, the queen glanced around and caught the scowl on her husband's             face.  Despite her attempt to settle gracefully into her seat, she was aware of the loud rustling of her skirts.

 

 

            The king watched the queen slide into her chair and shook his head.  Would she ever manage to do anything right?   

           

                  Here not only does the break prepare the reader for the shift in POV, it is made even more obvious by showing the queen seating herself from both points of view. 

 

 

First person narration is generally held to provide for the greatest intimacy between the reader and the narrator.  My own opinion is that first person can be approximated by third person, which is a subject we will discuss later. With first person narration, the writer is literally inviting the reader into the head of the narrator. The reader sees, hears, smells exactly what the narrator experiences.  My story "Measuring Up" is told in the first person. The reader experiences this story solely through the eyes and ears of the father. The limitation, of course, is that no other characters' viewpoints are possible. We only learn about them through the experiences of the narrator, what he sees them do and hears them say.  And how he interprets what he sees and hears. We are stuck with one POV and one POV only.  Although a few novels have used the technique of switching first person narrators from chapter to chapter (Faulkner's As I Lay Dying comes to mind), I can not recall ever having read a first person short story that shifted POV. 

            First person is at the opposite end of the spectrum from omniscience. Where omniscience gives the greatest perspective, but lacks intimacy, first person gives the most intimacy but lacks perspective. There is no objectivity in first person, everything is from the narrator's POV.

            The one requirement for first person narration is a narrator interesting enough to hold the reader throughout the entire story.  One of the reasons I chose first person narration for my story

Measuring Up was because I thought the narrator was interesting. He had a sort of sardonic sense of humor about himself and his situation.  And he expressed himself well. This is crucial, your first person narrator must be able to express himself. I also thought seriously about resorting to first person in my story Rookie of the Year, but decided against it because the beginning of the story required a lot of objective summary.

 

            When Marybelle Evans interrupted his life, Josh Cooper had been out of the majors for thirty-five years.  Rookie of the year in 1968, in 1969 he had tried to fire a fastball past Boomer Johnson, and Boomer had boomed it - a rocket back up the middle that caught Josh square in the      forehead and caromed off into the glove of second baseman Pepper Perez. Boomer was out, and so was Josh, flat on his back on the dusty mound. Josh, or Coop, as he was known around the league, came back in '70, but he had lost the movement on his fastball, and by '71 he was on his way home to Beaufort, South Carolina.

            In Beaufort he coached high school ball for a few years, until Principal Prescott wandered into the locker room one evening just half an hour after Miss Virginia Gordon, the social studies teacher, who was already out of her clothes and onto her back . . .

 

And on it goes for another full page. I don't think this would sound as good in first person.  Note that, like the examples earlier, the story begins with an omniscient narrator. Once the summary is complete, and we get to a scene, the narration shifts to Josh's point of view.           

            However, the end of the story, after Marybelle dies, and Josh is alone in the house, I think would have been stronger in first person:

            I dropped two pieces of wheat bread into the toaster, sliced up a tomato and some lettuce, and drizzled some oil into a frying pan, being careful not to spill any. Then I fried up the Canadian bacon, placed it on the folded paper towel, nice and neat, and patted it dry the way she'd taught me.

 

Interior Monologue

 

I mentioned earlier that third person narration could approximate first person.  Actually, it can approximate both first person narration and omniscient narration, depending on how strong the author wants to make the character's point of view.  If the author just ‘brushes up against' the character's point of view, then the narration becomes very close to omniscient.

           

            Roger's father walked through the door just as Roger was lighting a cigarette. The old man dropped his lunch pail on the table and sat down in his favorite armchair. Roger stubbed out the cigarette and picked up a magazine. He sensed a lecture coming.

            "How was your day, Dad," he said.

            "What a question.  You think it'd be any different than any other?"

            "I guess not."

            The old man looked down at the cigarette in the ashtray. "You take up smoking?"

 

            Except for the sentence, "He sensed a lecture coming," this is pretty close to omniscient narration. What is so liberating about third person, is that the author can get as deeply involved into the point of view of his character as needs to.  He can stay on the surface of the character's point of view, using an occasional, "he sensed," or "he wondered" without getting deeply inside, or he can delve deeper:

 

            Roger's father walked through the door just as Roger was lighting a cigarette. The old man             dropped his lunch pail on the table and sat down in his favorite armchair. Roger stubbed out the cigarette and picked up a magazine. He sensed a lecture coming.  His father was keen on lectures. Roger sometimes suspected it was his father's way of compensating for . . .

             

            In this rewrite the author has decided to take us inside Roger's head.  And this is where third person begins to approximate first person.  Consider the following:

 

            Monroe settled into one of the plastic chairs outside the examining room and opened a magazine.

            He sighed. Who was he kidding? He couldn't possibly read in the state he was in. Still, better to look at the ads than to stare at the other patients. Or to think about what was about to happen.

 

            The difference between the above and first person narration is the use of ‘he' instead of ‘I'.  Otherwise, it accomplishes essentially the same thing.  It allows us to see the world through the eyes of the character. Passages such as this are generally known as ‘interior monologue'.  James Joyce's Ulysses is entirely interior monologue; in fact, it utilizes a technique known as ‘stream of consciousness', which is a special form of interior monologue.

 

That's all folks.