Points of View

One of my betas recently suggested that a story of mine would work better from a different point of view, which sparked this train of thought. It's something I've become more aware of recently, although it's long been a pet subject of mine, as anyone whose work I've beta-ed will tell you. Several times, probably. I first became interested in it when I wrote a story showing the same evening from three different points of view, something that was much harder and more confusing than I'd expected. With remix/redux going on at the moment, it seemed an appropriate topic for discussion.



The point of view (POV) from which a story is told makes a huge difference to the reader's impression of events. I'm not really talking about stories from the POV of an animal or child, which I'm leaving out of this discussion, considering them to be their own genre of story. Rather, I'm thinking of the way that the angle the reader is given on a set of events changes, enhances or controls the way they understand the story.

For Readers
As a reader, the voice of the person telling me the story is hugely important. I'm totally dependent on the way they tell things and, if they're an unreliable narrator, I have to filter the story accordingly. Catcher in the Rye could only be told from Holden's POV but all the time, the reader is aware that he is not necessarily the best source for events. As much is learnt about a character from how they narrate as what they narrate.

At a trivial level, you might be able to work out from the above paragraph that I like literature and have done some lit. crit.; from my journal postings and comments, you could probably pick up that I like to move when I talk, based on the number of *actions* that I usually include. In good fiction, you can learn about the character's motives and feelings, even if they're only really telling you about someone else.

For Writers
As a writer, choosing the POV can make or break a story. A story that doesn't work from one angle may make much better sense from another. In the case of Housefic, I've seen several people say that writing from House's POV can be really quite tricky, and often it's best to 'see' him from the outside. This was certainly my experience, and I often think that half the fun with House is guessing what he's going to do next, or what his reasons for doing something are, so seeing him through someone else's eyes works well.

An outside POV also helps with the writer's eternal wrestling match to 'show' rather than 'tell' – it's much easier to 'show' when you're outside the person you're talking about. For my money (and writing) this is the primary advantage of choosing the right POV. It makes the writing much tighter and sharper.

Omniscience
There is, of course, always the omniscient POV, although it's worth noting that what 'omniscient' POVs usually do is move you from one POV to the next, something deelaundry uses for great comic effect in a recent story. (see below). It's also easy to think that the 'omniscient' POV is what you see on the television. The '4th wall' gives the viewer a look at the whole scene at once, and camera angles switch from person to person, to give you every actor's reaction to the scene. This is highly effective on the screen, much less so in writing. In discussion, several of us realised that we very much imagine what the scene would look like on the screen, then write down what we see. However, the effect of this on the page can be jarring, jumping from one person to another and distracting the reader from the thread of the story.

When you watch a TV show, although you might feel omniscient, the director is in fact acting as your guide, showing you what you need to see in order to understand the story and/or the characters. In prose, you generally need the perspective of a character to take the director's place and 'guide' you through the relevant action. Incidentally, the TV episodes that are tight in one character's perspective tend to be the most striking, and often the most confusing. In House, think of No Reason, where, whatever you think of it, seeing everything only through House's eyes is memorable if nothing else!


1st Person
This is probably the most interesting of all points of view, as the reader is literally inside the head of the narrator, knowing not only what they can see, but what they're thinking and feeling as well. In this, the writer has to get the voice absolutely spot on for the reader to go along with it, and also has to be especially careful not to say things that the narrator couldn't know. Often authors (including myself) have to find way to twist the story so that the character – and the reader – get all the information they need. See Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for a brilliant twist on this use of the 1st person narrator. [Please, if you comment on this, avoid spoilers!]

The other pitfall of this kind of writing is that it's so easy to trip over into 'telling' rather than 'showing', where instead of narrating, the character intrudes so much between the reader and the action that they lose interest. Having said that, a well-written, tight 1st person story is possibly the most satisfying to read, giving the right mix of emotional input and plot. For me, 'angst' doesn't work well in the 1st person for some reason – I think there's a tendency to melodrama that gets in the way.

2nd Person
I think this must be the hardest POV to get right. The quality of the writing really shines through, and a misplaced word or phrase stands out so much more than in 1st or 3rd person narrative. This is probably because 2nd person narrative is quite hard to read, and so the reader is far more aware of the words and phrasing than they would be otherwise. Interestingly (and only slightly digressionally), I don't think I've ever read an example from this POV in the past tense, only the present. There's something about the directness of it that demands the present, I think.

anamatics' "First" series (archived here is one of the few examples I can find. It's a clever, seriously ambitious undertaking, and shows how the 2nd person puts you both inside and outside the character's perspective at the same time.


3rd Person
What most of us write/read in most of the time. POV is just as important in these stories, as (as noted above) the character is acting as our guide through the story. Even when the story is in the 3rd person, I get very used to a character's 'voice' and get distracted when it changes. It can also be confusing to see the same thing from two perspectives at once, not to mention the time-delay – you can end up seeing the same moment several times, because the POVs become confused. On the other hand, giving multiple 3rd person perspectives on the same scene can be highly effective – see perspi's chapter below.

Generally speaking, it is rather off-putting for a reader to jump between POVs between or within paragraphs. Things are usually clearer when being told by only one voice, and the consistency helps with the dramatic illusion. I like to really get behind the character, knowing what they know, and using the fact that they're narrating to learn about them, as well as the character they're watching. I think the mistake that is often made when writing in the 3rd person is to ignore the fact that even this narrator has a voice, which the reader becomes attuned to, and so fall back into the 'telling' trap.


Since this is a Housefic forum, I thought I should pull out some Housefic examples of what I mean.

Crash by deelaundry
Great example of the comic use of the 'omniscient' point of view. Each switch is foreshadowed by a mention of the character's name, so we usually know where we're going next, and the fact that the plotline is so surreal means that the omniscient POV seems appropriate!

Pills and pop-tarts Chapter 3 of No Little Charity by perspi
The narrative at the beginning of this chapter alternates between House and Wilson, something that was a source of discussion in the drafting stages. The alternation works here, giving both sides of the story and giving a whole picture of what is actually quite a short space of time.

A Map of the Body by pwcorgigirl
This is a great example of using the outsider – in this case the masseuse, Ingrid – to learn something new that we already knew!

Annals III by nightdog_barks
The section near the end of the first part of this, where Gregorius and James are exchanging mental 'letters', works so well. The synchronicity of the characters is far more effectively shown this way – it just wouldn't be the same if they 'told' each other about it.

Paying the Price by mer_duff
This is tight inside Wilson's POV, and so not only do we get a startling effective description of choking, we get to see what we love about the House/Wilson relationship on screen – how so much can be said when so little is said.

Yours, Mine and His by, well, me...
This was the story that started everything off, and so I thought I should include it. Writing 3 different perspectives on the same few hours was a much bigger challenge than I'd expected (thanks, perspi, for setting the whole thing off), not just to find something new to say, but to make sure I'd covered all the old.

I'm sure you've all got your own favourite examples - care to share?



A/N: All examples are used with the authors' permissions. Thank you to them for letting me use them and making suggestions along the way.