What’s Your Point of View Anyway?

Now, my fair friends, it is time to talk about one of the unsung elements of fiction. It’s not as fancy and show-offy as some of the other elements (I’m looking at YOU, character and plot!), but, like structure, point of view is a critical component of your story and the point of view that you choose to use will have a profound effect on your writing.

Let us journey via the Way Back machine, back to high school, where some of you may have learned about point of view. If this is your introduction, no time machine needed. Just read on.

What is Point of View?

You can think of point of view exactly as it sounds. Are you viewing (or narrating) your story from a distant point of view? Are you inside one character? Does the story’s point of view bounce around between multiple characters? Or are you just outside all of them? Are you telling the story from the present or the past?

Point of View Components

There are two elements to point of view: person and tense. The person, in today’s modern storytelling, will almost always be first or third person. First-person will use an ‘I’ perspective. As in “I stole a dozen eggs from the grocery”. Third-person is told from the ‘he, she, it’ perspective, so the previous sentence might become “Gus stole a dozen eggs from the grocery”. Got it? Good! Easy Peasy.

What about the Second Person?

Every once in a while, you might hear about storytelling from the second-person point of view, the ‘you’ perspective. Bright Lights Big City by Jay McInerney is written in the second person, and that book had a movie made from it.

Please stick to the first and third persons. 

Why?

Second person is distracting to the reader. It’s difficult to pull off. And it’s trying too hard to be unique, but it can’t be unique. Jay already did it. 

I’ll come across a second person short story now and then in a graduate writing class, and it’s always clumsy. The story tells me that I’m driving down a dark road, that I’m buying a gallon of milk, that I’m frog hunting in the bayou, whatever. I know that I’m in my living room reading a book. It destroys the fictive dream. One story had the audacity to tell me that I had a sister, which I know that I do not. The nerve!

If you want to try it, go ahead, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Isn’t There an Omniscient Point of View?

There is an omniscient point of view! It’s a little old-fashioned and rarely used these days, but it is a viable choice. That being said, I don’t care for it. I can tell you right now that I will never use this point of view in anything I write.

In the omniscient point of view, the narrator is all-knowing and jumps from mind to mind.

I happen to be currently reading a book that uses this point of view, and it’s clumsy. Dickens used it well, but the current author I’m reading did not. I’m constantly confused by whose point of view I’m experiencing the story through. It’s annoying. 

If you’d like to try it yourself, though, be my guest. I’d suggest that you read something classic that uses it to see how it is done well. A Tale of Two Cities comes to mind.

So, How Do You Tell a Story from Multiple Viewpoints Then?

How Close is Your Point of View?

This is a less talked-about component of person. In addition to which person you are using, you will also need to decide how close you are to that person. You can be from a distance, describing your character’s actions as if you are watching them. Or, you can be right inside your character’s mind, describing their every thought. This is called Deep Point of View, and it’s the method I usually prefer. We’ll have an article on the ins and outs of that point of view coming up.

Tense

Your tense will be the time perspective of the story. Past tense: “Gus stole a dozen eggs from the grocery”. Or present tense: “Gus steals a dozen eggs from the grocery”. I suppose that you could also say, “Gus is stealing a dozen eggs from the grocery,” but we know from To Be or Not to Be that most of the time, “Gus steals a dozen eggs from the grocery” would be the better choice.

Tense seems easy, but it can be tricky. It can be easy to accidentally slip out of one tense and into another, especially if you are used to using one tense and want to give another a whirl. 

You may want to give a few point of view combinations a try before you settle on one. Personally, when I change point of view, the story comes out of me differently. Below, I will illustrate this with the results of a writing exercise that I recently did.

Third Person-Past Tense

   Ella Mae ran her fingers through the hot dishwater, which already puckered her fingers. She rubbed her fingers together amid the forks and saucers and felt the slinkiness that the capful of bleach added to the water. She always added a capful of bleach, and the smell of it took her back to her Mama’s kitchen every time. 

   But that room had stunk of bleach, the floors scrubbed raw with it, the curtains whitened with it, the countertops doused with it at every given chance. The stench could bring tears to the eye on a hot day. 

   Ella Mae caught a finger on a knife and lifted it to her mouth, sucking away the drop of blood that burgeoned on her skin, wondering what was wrong with her that she enjoyed the taste. And possibly the pain. 

   She had learned to endure pain as a child, and even more as a young woman, in Mama’s kitchen, with her fingers digging into the farmhouse table that had traveled time to stand in her own kitchen, her arms splayed and bracing her body. She would tighten her entire body against each stroke of Daddy’s belt, holding her screams inside her until they threatened to blot out her sanity. But she wouldn’t make a sound. He seemed to enjoy it too well. 

   And in time, she had come to enjoy it as well, in a way.

   They had bonded somehow during those acts of violence, with him heaving the leather strip with all his might, sweat breaking across his brow, air rushing out of him in great gusts in his effort to bring even a whimper from her, the only child of his that proved to be a challenge to his authority. When he tired, he would stop, and Ella Mae would stand and turn to face him with dry eyes and a steady stare. He never looked away, only measured her with his eyes, and on the last occasion, the night before her wedding, he gave her the tiniest nod, as if in approval.

   She left the house the next morning in her Sears catalog dress with a cardboard suitcase, bound for her destiny. Triumph surged through her, knowing that she had survived her father, and that she had, in a sense, beaten him in his own game. Knowing that he would never beat her again. Not knowing that her new husband would pick up where her Daddy had left off.

First Person-Present Tense

   I run my fingers through the hot water, swirling in the capful of bleach. I always add a capful of bleach. It adds a silkiness to the water and kills every germ, though the stink of it reminds me of my Mama’s kitchen all too well.

   Mama damn near drowned her kitchen in bleach. Soaked it into every crevice, scoured it in, made the whole place reek to the point that the fumes would blind a man. 

   Dammit if I don’t catch my finger on a knife. The pain cuts through me, and my finger goes to my mouth on instinct. I suck at the blood. It tastes too good. What is wrong with me?

   I kind of like the pain also.

   Of course, I can take pain, learned how to from my father’s beatings, given with a leather belt while my fingers dug into the table, bracing myself against the blows. I told myself not to make a sound, not to cry, not to flinch. He might be in control of the belt, but I would win this. He couldn’t take my dignity. Or so I thought. 

   But somehow, the pain that he brought served as a type of brutal affection.

   It was the only time that he touched me, or even truly acknowledged my existence. Our battles of flesh and blood, with him contorting himself and wailing with all his might trying to get a peep out of me, and me refusing to give him the satisfaction, proved my value to him, made him see that I was worth something, even though I was a girl, which I know he had always hated. I’d looked at him afterwards, right in the eyes, with mine full of power. That last time, the night before my wedding, I swear he gave me a tiny nod. Like he approved of me finally. After all of these years. Then I almost did cry.

  I left that house the next morning for my husband’s house with only the clothes on my back and what I could carry in one hand, knowing that I had won. I hadn’t broken. My father would never beat me again, although my husband would, early and often. Like voting in Chicago.

So whatever your point of view is, just make sure to keep it consistent and use the one you are most comfortable with, that you feel tells your story best. For now, happy writing!

Join us on Facebook and never miss an article!