Mike Shevdon

In this article in my series, Twelve Rules of Writing, I will be looking at point of view from a story-telling perspective. To remind you how this was addressed in my tongue-in-cheek article here’s the original.

10. Which point of view should I adopt?

This depends on genre.  If you’re writing pornography or recipe books then second person present is what you’re looking for. If you’ve chosen science fiction you need to write in the future tense and if it’s historical fiction you need the past-imperfect.  First person present is essentially for the psychologically disturbed and third person is for insurance policies.

Should stories be told as if the writer is experiencing them, or as an observer? The point of view colours the way in which the tale is experienced as a reader. Let’s take a more unusual example first:  ~

You take the stairs, one at a time, ascending each tread as slowly and carefully as you may. Your fingertips brush the smooth waxy grain in the banister so that you sense many hands that have come this way before. Your eyes lift as you ascend, even though you cannot yet see what is at the top. You hear each creak as your weight shifts onto each stair….

Using second person present puts the reader directly in the position of protagonist, which can be useful where the experience is a strong part of the narrative. It is more commonly used in horror or erotica, both of which may benefit from a sense of immersion and direct involvement. A byproduct of this perspective is that it denies the reader free will and the writer is constantly in the position of instructing the reader in what they will do and how they will do it. This can be tiring as it forces the reader to constantly question whether they would follow the instructions as written. Used sparingly it can be a powerful tool, but in overuse it often becomes oppressive and fails to engage.

Shifting to third person perspective gives us a little distance and allows the writer to narrate. The following is in third person past tense:

Tony watched the street from the darkened window. His eyes sought the shadows, looking for a glimmer of reflection or a shape out of place. He felt he was being watched, and wanted to know why. A glint of metal from beneath a tree, close to the trunk where there should be nothing to catch the light, told him that someone watched him in return.

Shifting that into present tense changes the mood, upping the tension:

Tony watches the street from the darkened window. His eyes seek the shadows, looking for a glimmer of reflection or a shape out of place. He feels he is being watched and wants to know why. A glint of metal from beneath a tree, close to the trunk where there should be nothing to catch the light, tells him that someone watches him in return.

Comparing these two paragraphs we can see that the second is more immediate. It has a sense of tension and action that the first is denied because the events in the first example have already happened. In the second example events are happening now and things could change at any moment. For shorter pieces third person present can work very well for exactly these reasons, however over a longer piece it’s hard to maintain the tension through extended periods, especially when the tension ramps down again.

Stories have a natural rhythm of their own, and while publishers are fond of quoting books as having a pace that never lets up, in practice this reads as unnatural and forced. Everyone has to breathe at some time, even characters in a book, and if they are never allowed to consider their actions and reflect on what’s happened then it will seem as if they are flotsam, washed along by waves of events with no control or influence, making them uninteresting as characters. The best characters make the most difficult choices, but how can they choose if they never reflect on their actions?

Second person past tense is rarely used because it is a combination in conflict with itself. By placing the story in second person you are setting the reader as protagonist, but by placing it in the past you are saying events have already happened. As a reader you are even further out of control than you are with second person present.

The other main choice is first person past tense.

I was staring into space when it happened, so I didn’t really see. I could feel the wind as the tube train buffeted towards the platform and hear the grinding and squealing as the driver applied the brakes. I was part of the crowd waiting for the train. There was no sign that the guy beside me was in any distress. He just stood there with everyone else, until the train was yards away. Then he stepped forwards, leaned over the edge and toppled onto the tracks.

This is an extract from the opening of Sixty-One Nails, which is written mostly in first person perspective. The reason I chose this was that I wanted to reader to experience the discovery of the world as Niall, the protagonist, discovers it. This is both a strength and a weakness because the reader can’t know anything the protagonist doesn’t know and can’t see anything he doesn’t see. The viewpoint is vulnerable to their prejudices and subject to their assumptions. It also means we can tap into the character’s thoughts, revealing insights into their decision process and emotional reactions.

There is a danger in this that the narrative becomes introspective and locks into self-examination. The character’s voice can take on a whiny quality as they begin to wonder why all the bad things in the story happen to them. This can distance the reader from the character, undermining the empathetic relationship between reader and protagonist. The opposite can also happen, with the character seeming like an empty cypher for the story, manipulated by events and immune to the consequences. The character can seem untouchable, which distances the reader once again.

With Niall, I wanted to have someone who was completely closed off, emotionally damaged from a crashed relationship, immersed in a work-sleep cycle, a workaholic estranged parent who had locked themselves into a numbing cycle to avoid the pain of dealing with the rejection and guilt of his marriage break-up. When he has a heart attack in chapter one, he isn’t really dying – he’s already dead. He’s numb to the world and sees only what’s in front of him.

First person present worked well for this, but when I came to write The Road to Bedlam it seemed insufficient to simply present Niall’s view, especially as his view had shifted. There were things going on around Niall that he couldn’t see and we had come to know Blackbird, at least through Niall’s eyes. Including some passages from Blackbird’s viewpoint, but switching these from first person to third person, allowed me to follow Blackbird’s thread of the story without compromising the relationship. If I had used first person perspective with Blackbird the reader would have gained intimate knowledge of Blackbird’s feelings about Niall, something I wanted to explore later and which forms one of the core threads of the arc-plot.

If you are fortunate enough to get feedback from a large number of readers you will find that some people expect your characters to wear their heart on their sleeve and voice their emotions openly and expressively. Others will want your characters to stop talking about how they feel and get on with the plot. The simple fact is that you can’t please everyone. As a writer, what you can do is be true to your characters. Your choice of viewpoint is linked to your expression of those characters in the context of that story and forms the basis of the reader’s relationship with the character, so it can make or break the empathetic link that is so important.

Point of view is a powerful tool for a writer and like most powerful tools should be used with care. The choice of viewpoint depends on the story and characters and provides the writer with the opportunity to zoom in to a character’s inner dialogue or zoom out to get a wider perspective.

It’s not just for insurance policies and the psychologically disturbed, after all.

In the series following on from the tongue-in-cheek article Twelve Rules of Writing, we are up to rule 9 and the subject is exposition.

Here’s Rule 9 for those who need a reminder or who missed it first time around:

9. How should I deal with exposition?

Here the old ways are best, I’m afraid.  First tell them what you’re going to tell them.  Then tell them.  Then tell them what you’ve told them.  If they haven’t got it by then they should be reading something simpler.

But isn’t the rule: Show, Don’t Tell, I hear you ask? A simple question: do you tell a story or show it? Showing is for dogs and horses.

Exposition is a key part of writing, especially in Fantasy where the world you are portraying may not function like the real world. Often the plot and character action is driven by the difference between the real and imaginary world, and the temptation to explain what the differences are and why they’re there is enormous.

If you give in to temptation, though, what emerges is flat and uninteresting explication, and in the worst cases all sense of the story is overwhelmed by the author explaining some aspect of the world directly to the reader through the voice of one of the characters. It’s as if they’re saying, “I had to work all this stuff out, so you’ll have to listen to me explaining it”.

Of course, no-one sets out to write a story in this way. They set out to tell the wonderful story in their head, but in order to tell it they get bogged down in detail and the tale is overwhelmed by exposition.

Look for these tell-tale signs:

One character explaining to another character something they should both already know.

“Bob, do you remember when we were young and we used to go up to the old Slater place and look for those special mushrooms that we used to take home and cook in butter and herbs? Do you remember how strange they used to taste, Bob?”

There is no purpose to this conversation. Bob already knows about the mushrooms and the only reason to mention them is so that the reader knows too. However, it may be essential for the reader to know about the mushrooms for the purpose of the plot, so getting the information across becomes important. This can be achieved by bringing in new information, and adding conflict.

“Now you listen to me, Bob. You got to stop eating the mushrooms from the old Slater place. They’ve changed somehow. They ain’t the same as they were when we were kids, and if you think I’m donating one of my kidneys when yours stop working, you got another thing coming.”

Long passages of factual information (will there be a test later?).

The castle stood on a basalt outcrop riven by time and etched with the passing of years, formed when the world was young from the extruded molten rock from the volcano beneath it, which cooled and solidified to form the foundations seen now as the dark rocks of the….etc. etc.

If you find yourself writing long descriptive passages with dense factual information, ask yourself: If I take it out, does the story suffer? If not, it’s fine to keep it in to give you a strong mental picture while you are writing it, but lose it at the edit stage. If the reader really does need to know this, make it immediate and personal and keep it to the relevant information.

As Jamie trudged up the long path to the castle at the top of the high outcrop, he could feel the heat from the black rock through the soles of his thin sandals. Sweat ran in to his eyes as he peered up at the high walls, the heat of the day reflecting dully from the igneous basalt.

Sections which detail quantity or measurement.

The river crossing was particularly difficult as the banks were now seventy two yards apart and the river over ten feet deep in the centre, and though there was a ferry, it cost four crowns and three shillings, which was more than the three crowns, twelve shillings and fourteen pennies that Karum had in her purse.

As a writer, you need to trust your reader’s imagination and let them do some of the heavy lifting for you. Ask yourself, do they really need to know how wide the river is, or how deep? Would the character be able to measure it, and if so, to what purpose? Aren’t they more likely to make a snap assessment?

Karum emerged from the trees onto a wide pasture, a water meadow where cattle grazed when the river was not in flood. Even though at this season the river flowed within its banks she could see that it was too deep to ford. She emptied her purse into her open hand. It would not be enough for the ferryman. She would have to find some other way.

Passages which rely on ‘because’ or ‘for the reason that’ or even ‘in spite of’:

In spite of the ancient custom that men would never wear hats in the temple, Jim’s father refused to doff his cap within it’s precinct because the shiny pate of his head would catch the light from the golden statues in the courtyard, making his bald head look yellow.

This lacks the immediacy and conflict to bring it to life. If the tradition of removing hats in the temple is somehow important to the plot, then it has to come out through conflict, perhaps in dialogue:

“Take your cap off,” whispered Jim.
Jim’s father looked into the courtyard where the golden statues reflected the afternoon sun. He looked at the back of his hands. The yellow light already tinted his skin a sallow and sickly colour. He could feel the sweat on his bald pate under the cap.
“I’ll leave it on. It’ll be fine,” he said.
“No hats in the temple, Dad. What’s the matter?”
“It’s nothing. You go on ahead. I’ll wait here.”
“We’re only here because of you. Take it off.”

Prologues

The use of a prologue to set the scene is particularly prevalent in fantasy. Usually it involves the settling of some ancient conflict which then has consequences for the characters of the story many years later. Setting aside the cliché, we should look at the reason a prologue is used. Most often it is to explain what the story is about so that the actions of the characters can be seen by the reader in the context of that ancient conflict.

This is exposition, placed boldly, right from the first page, and is likely to result in rejection from publishers and agents, who see this a lot and will be unlikely to read on to discover how original and brilliant the rest of the story is. But if your story relies on an ancient and forgotten conflict to explain the actions of your characters, how do you deliver that explanation without resorting to exposition?

For this we turn to the secret intelligence services for inspiration.

The Need to Know

Adopt the MI5 approach and deliver information on a need-to-know basis. Only explain back-story (using the techniques outlined above) when the character has earned the right to know and has an urgent and pressing need for that knowledge to guide their actions.

This has a number of advantages:

It makes the revelation timely and relevant, slotting into the story in a way that feels natural for the character, and adding depth as a new context is revealed for the events to that point.

It avoids the reader having to memorise the detail in the book in order to enjoy it – after all, this isn’t supposed to be a memory test. Your reader may have to put the book down for a week or a month, and it would help if when they picked it up again they didn’t have to start leafing back through it to understand what’s happening.

It allows the characters to discover the information through the events of the story rather than having it explained, leading to mystery culminating in revelation. This is a powerful tool for story-telling, which builds empathy between the characters and the reader as the reader asks themselves; if I discovered that, what would I do?

All this comes back to showing the reader what’s happening through the actions and discoveries of the characters, rather than telling them through exposition or by narrating through a character voice. Letting the story emerge at its own pace allows you to increase the suspense and develop depth and complexity, so that the characters shine through.

So it seems that showing is not just for horses and dogs after all, but for authors too.