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hrjI'm not going to claim to be some sort of literary expert on point of view, but then if you wanted a Master Class on the topic, you'd go somewhere other than my blog. This is just a few thoughts on effects I've observed, things I've learned, and results I try to get in the ways I use point of view in my fiction.
I don't generally make specific plans in advance about what sort of point of view I'm going to use for a particular story--I tend to start by writing an opening and seeing if it works--but there are some very clear patterns in where I generally end up. Short fiction tends to end up being in first person. The major reason (when I think about it) is that I find it too easy for short third-person pieces to be very distanced. To slip into talking about the story rather than inhabiting it. And especially when I'm writing stories inspired by medieval literature, it's very easy for a third person presentation to fall into the rhythms of those historic genres and feel more like a pastiche than an original work.
I used this rather deliberately for effect in "Hoywverch", my Mabinogi-inspired story. It starts off in a direct copy of the medieval Welsh prose style--very distanced and formal, with the clear sense that there's a storyteller as an intermediary between you and the characters. But then it shifts to Elin's first-person POV after the first paragraph. That lets me keep some flavor of the original style while feeling free to loosen up the historic conventions a little more.
In some ways, one might thing that first person makes it easier to get inside a character's head--to get a more revealing look at their thoughts and emotions. But just as important--perhaps more so--is the ability to conceal. By sticking inside Elin's head, we get to experience her confusion and make her mistakes with regard to the other characters' thoughts and motivations. It makes it more clearly Elin's story: how she achieves her ends and grows through experience. (Don't worry, the second story in this series will follow Morfyth's point of view.)
I find that one of my favorite purposes in using first person is the ability to conceal, rather than reveal. It's easy enough to see how it can be used to conceal the actions and thoughts of other characters, but it can be even more powerful in concealing things about the narrator. Consider this: what would you have to do (in English) to conceal the gender of a protagonist in a third person narration? With a first person POV, it can sometimes be so easy to conceal gender that you need to deliberately insert cues (assuming you want to make it unambiguous). I found myself having to do that in "Hidebound" (the final Skin-singer story that's currently out with the beta readers). After I finished the first draft, I realized that a reader could get close to halfway into the story before realizing that the protagonist was intended to be female (particularly given that the protagonist has a female romantic partner, which gives the wrong cues to a reader expecting default settings).
I'm currently working on a short story inspired by the medieval "Romance of Silence" involving a female knight who has been raised as a boy (due to inheritance laws). Before I even started, it was clear to me that I needed to write in first person, not so much to conceal the character's sex, but to represent Silence's own uncertainty/ambiguity about gender identity. The other characters interact with, and speak of, Silence's gender as they perceive it to be (which differs at different points of the story), but by using first person, I can avoid assigning an authorial judgment. (Due to the obscurity of the original story, this may be a spoiler, but I kind of feel that the statute of limitations for spoilers on medieval literature long since ran out.)
I'm far less comfortable using first person for novel length works, perhaps because my technique needs more work to pull it off. (If so, I hope I'll get there, because Alpennia Book 4 is going to be in first person, largely to follow the conventions of YA literature.) But I still prefer the immediacy and benefits of a very close, rather than an omniscient, POV. And once again, one of the reasons for that has to do with the powerful ability to conceal.
When I first started writing Daughter of Mystery it seemed natural to write some parts in Margerit's point of view and others in Barbara's simply because--especially in the initial chapters--most often only one of them was present. As the story developed, I realized that if I were going to alternate points of view, I needed to make it clear that this was intentional (rather than sloppy) and to use it for deliberate effect. So in plotting things out, I started taking careful note of whose point of view certain events need to be seen from. And, as noted above, I found POV a powerful tool for showing what was happening rather than explaining it. In general, any strongly emotional scene in that novel will be depicted from the point of view of the other person.
It was on the first major revision pass through Daughter of Mystery, when I had the whole thing in hand and started from the beginning again, that I started paying more attention to exactly what linguistic techniques worked best for my purposes. At a broad level, a close third person POV can simply mean not showing anything your POV character isn't present for and not knowing anything they can't know. But at a more micro level, I discovered it meant being constantly aware of the POV character as the deictic center of the action--the focus relative to which everything else happened and was described.
I say "discovered" because at first it was a matter of reading something and thinking, "Huh, that clunked a little. Why doesn't it sound right?" When I applied a bit of analysis to find the common factors in what "felt right" versus "clunked" some clear patterns emerged. The strongest one--the one that was so clearly important that I added it to my revision checklist--was the use of proper names to "anchor" the point of view. It was almost as if the point of view was so tight that referring to the viewpoint character by name was as "wrong" as it would be in first person. The name felt like I was shifting POV external to the character and looking back at her. The only context where it didn't give me that feeling was when the name appeared as the subject and agent of the action, and to a large extent only when that action was physical or spatial (and not experiential).
Thus, if we're using Barbara's point of view:
Barbara crossed the room and touched Margerit on the shoulder. Margerit looked up at her.
but not:
Barbara crossed the room and touched Margerit on the shoulder. She looked up at Barbara.
Or:
The man stared at her from across the room; she felt uncomfortable.
but not:
The man stared at Barbara from across the room; she felt uncomfortable.
or:
The man stared at her from across the room; Barbara felt uncomfortable.
but if we need a name in there to anchor Barbara's experience, it could be rewritten:
The man stared at her from across the room. Barbara shifted restlessly, feeling uncomfortable.
(Out of context, it may be too easy to come up with unrelated reasons why one choice works better than another -- I'm trying to illustrate something that emerged from a larger body of continuous text.)
During that first major revision pass, I struggled a lot with how to beat the POV into consistency while avoiding pronoun confusion (especially given how many of my central characters are women!) and not veering off into awkward repetition. Now the bulk of those stylistic features have become second nature when I sit down to write Alpennia, and I can focus on the other issues I struggle with--like visual description (I'm getting better) and run-on paragraphs.
I don't generally make specific plans in advance about what sort of point of view I'm going to use for a particular story--I tend to start by writing an opening and seeing if it works--but there are some very clear patterns in where I generally end up. Short fiction tends to end up being in first person. The major reason (when I think about it) is that I find it too easy for short third-person pieces to be very distanced. To slip into talking about the story rather than inhabiting it. And especially when I'm writing stories inspired by medieval literature, it's very easy for a third person presentation to fall into the rhythms of those historic genres and feel more like a pastiche than an original work.
I used this rather deliberately for effect in "Hoywverch", my Mabinogi-inspired story. It starts off in a direct copy of the medieval Welsh prose style--very distanced and formal, with the clear sense that there's a storyteller as an intermediary between you and the characters. But then it shifts to Elin's first-person POV after the first paragraph. That lets me keep some flavor of the original style while feeling free to loosen up the historic conventions a little more.
In some ways, one might thing that first person makes it easier to get inside a character's head--to get a more revealing look at their thoughts and emotions. But just as important--perhaps more so--is the ability to conceal. By sticking inside Elin's head, we get to experience her confusion and make her mistakes with regard to the other characters' thoughts and motivations. It makes it more clearly Elin's story: how she achieves her ends and grows through experience. (Don't worry, the second story in this series will follow Morfyth's point of view.)
I find that one of my favorite purposes in using first person is the ability to conceal, rather than reveal. It's easy enough to see how it can be used to conceal the actions and thoughts of other characters, but it can be even more powerful in concealing things about the narrator. Consider this: what would you have to do (in English) to conceal the gender of a protagonist in a third person narration? With a first person POV, it can sometimes be so easy to conceal gender that you need to deliberately insert cues (assuming you want to make it unambiguous). I found myself having to do that in "Hidebound" (the final Skin-singer story that's currently out with the beta readers). After I finished the first draft, I realized that a reader could get close to halfway into the story before realizing that the protagonist was intended to be female (particularly given that the protagonist has a female romantic partner, which gives the wrong cues to a reader expecting default settings).
I'm currently working on a short story inspired by the medieval "Romance of Silence" involving a female knight who has been raised as a boy (due to inheritance laws). Before I even started, it was clear to me that I needed to write in first person, not so much to conceal the character's sex, but to represent Silence's own uncertainty/ambiguity about gender identity. The other characters interact with, and speak of, Silence's gender as they perceive it to be (which differs at different points of the story), but by using first person, I can avoid assigning an authorial judgment. (Due to the obscurity of the original story, this may be a spoiler, but I kind of feel that the statute of limitations for spoilers on medieval literature long since ran out.)
I'm far less comfortable using first person for novel length works, perhaps because my technique needs more work to pull it off. (If so, I hope I'll get there, because Alpennia Book 4 is going to be in first person, largely to follow the conventions of YA literature.) But I still prefer the immediacy and benefits of a very close, rather than an omniscient, POV. And once again, one of the reasons for that has to do with the powerful ability to conceal.
When I first started writing Daughter of Mystery it seemed natural to write some parts in Margerit's point of view and others in Barbara's simply because--especially in the initial chapters--most often only one of them was present. As the story developed, I realized that if I were going to alternate points of view, I needed to make it clear that this was intentional (rather than sloppy) and to use it for deliberate effect. So in plotting things out, I started taking careful note of whose point of view certain events need to be seen from. And, as noted above, I found POV a powerful tool for showing what was happening rather than explaining it. In general, any strongly emotional scene in that novel will be depicted from the point of view of the other person.
It was on the first major revision pass through Daughter of Mystery, when I had the whole thing in hand and started from the beginning again, that I started paying more attention to exactly what linguistic techniques worked best for my purposes. At a broad level, a close third person POV can simply mean not showing anything your POV character isn't present for and not knowing anything they can't know. But at a more micro level, I discovered it meant being constantly aware of the POV character as the deictic center of the action--the focus relative to which everything else happened and was described.
I say "discovered" because at first it was a matter of reading something and thinking, "Huh, that clunked a little. Why doesn't it sound right?" When I applied a bit of analysis to find the common factors in what "felt right" versus "clunked" some clear patterns emerged. The strongest one--the one that was so clearly important that I added it to my revision checklist--was the use of proper names to "anchor" the point of view. It was almost as if the point of view was so tight that referring to the viewpoint character by name was as "wrong" as it would be in first person. The name felt like I was shifting POV external to the character and looking back at her. The only context where it didn't give me that feeling was when the name appeared as the subject and agent of the action, and to a large extent only when that action was physical or spatial (and not experiential).
Thus, if we're using Barbara's point of view:
Barbara crossed the room and touched Margerit on the shoulder. Margerit looked up at her.
but not:
Barbara crossed the room and touched Margerit on the shoulder. She looked up at Barbara.
Or:
The man stared at her from across the room; she felt uncomfortable.
but not:
The man stared at Barbara from across the room; she felt uncomfortable.
or:
The man stared at her from across the room; Barbara felt uncomfortable.
but if we need a name in there to anchor Barbara's experience, it could be rewritten:
The man stared at her from across the room. Barbara shifted restlessly, feeling uncomfortable.
(Out of context, it may be too easy to come up with unrelated reasons why one choice works better than another -- I'm trying to illustrate something that emerged from a larger body of continuous text.)
During that first major revision pass, I struggled a lot with how to beat the POV into consistency while avoiding pronoun confusion (especially given how many of my central characters are women!) and not veering off into awkward repetition. Now the bulk of those stylistic features have become second nature when I sit down to write Alpennia, and I can focus on the other issues I struggle with--like visual description (I'm getting better) and run-on paragraphs.
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no subject
Date: 2015-03-27 12:42 am (UTC)Wouldn't that be clyw(h)i to match amdanat?
no subject
Date: 2015-03-27 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-27 03:52 am (UTC)1s clywhwyf
2s clywhych
3s clywho
1p clywhom
2p clywhoch
3p clywhont
Impers. clywher
Are you thinking of present indicative? But the intrusive (h) definitely signals the subjunctive. But thank you for keeping me honest!
no subject
Date: 2015-03-27 04:27 am (UTC)I liked the rest of your story too, by the way!
no subject
Date: 2015-03-27 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-27 03:47 pm (UTC)