Point of View Leaping
Not too long ago I sat down to begin work on a novel. It was one of those projects that captured my imagination to the point of excitement. I couldn’t wait to get started. After the first chapter I sat back and smiled. Then I read the last few pages. My smile faded. Something wasn’t right. It took me a long sleepless night to figure out what the problem was. It wasn’t the writing or the story. It was the point of view. I realized that writing the story from one character’s point of view wasn’t going to work. To achieve the intimacy I needed with the reader I had to allow two characters to speak through me. I had to perform a literary leap frog back and forth between them. They both needed to tell the story… together. That was how my novel Milenka was born.
Try this the next time you write, or are planning a story. I wouldn’t suggest leap-frogging between character’s POVs, but I do suggest this experiment. Write the first three pages in two different ways.
Third Person - Imagine your following your character around and describing what you see. This “over the shoulder” perspective is very popular and a vast majority of what you read is in the third person. You can either do this as if you were invisible in the same room as the character, only knowing what your character knows (third person limited), or you can do this as an omniscient being who can also see things your character can’t (third person omniscient).
First Person - You are the character. You can see through their eyes. It doesn’t matter if the character is of the opposite sex (think Quantum Leap!).What do you see, feel, do?
If your familiar with this you may have noticed I left out the Second Person point of view. That was done on purpose as I feel it is a very awkward style of writing for both the writer and the reader.
So after performing this little exercise, which were you more comfortable with?
Photo Courtesy of 10 Ninjas Steve
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Comments
Let me give this a shot:
“As you wake up you look around. There’s a sound. You haven’t heard anything quite like it. You sit up and will your mind awake. Was it a dream? You listen but the sound is gone….”
That’s my attempt at second person.
And I hope you enjoy Milenka! Happy Mother’s day!
I know that writing from a first person POV is more challenging due to the limits of that character’s knowledge and experience. I’ll be intersted in see how you played leap frog with your characters in Milenka. Thanks for the link to amazon. I just clicked a copy of it for myself. An early mother’s day gift to me. I deserve it. I ususally don’t read fiction so you are stretching me.
OK now, I have always wondered what second person POV was. Can you give a quick explaination?