MOVING POINT OF VIEW: how to do it

If you give your narrator access to more than one consciousness, and/or to a "god's-eye" point of view, then at some point you have to think about moving between them. This is where so many writers trip up, and I assume why so many of the more narrow-minded teachers and editors tell you not to do it. But it's not complicated, and it's not difficult to get right.

What usually goes wrong is that the narrative is fairly deep in Ben's point of view as he sits sulking in the corner, scorning his horrible family in detail and wondering if the dog has found his stash of weed under the sitting room carpet. But the writer then realises that some bits of plot need to be caught up with, and "head-hops" out, to tell us what Aunty Mary thinks of Ben's Motorhead tee-shirt, or that Uncle Joe's having a heart attack in the kitchen. The writer then drops us straight back into Ben's ruminations. At the best it just means we feel a bit lost, as the connection we felt with Ben is broken, but then we have to pick it up agin. Feeling a bit lost, with no connections, makes the world and the characters less vivid... and a reader who doesn't feel the world is vivid is likely not to bother to pick the book up again. At the worst we don't know what's going on.

The other thing that goes wrong is that the writer just hops us from head to head, sentence after sentence, so the reader has no special emotional involvement with any one character.

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There was relatively little information about Degas at the RA, and, for some visitors, too few of his paintings. He seems, going by the evidence, to have been not so much a stage-door Johnny as a backstage Peeping Tom with an eye for young girls in unusual poses. The emphasis in this exhibition was on early photography and its ability to capture movement, a quality that was to prove so useful to painters

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See This Itch of Writing for links to the other three parts of this four-part series

EXTERNAL NARRATORS

A narrator who isn't a character in the story will tell everything in third person, because as an "I" they're not present in the events. Evelyn was thinking about seducing Alex, while on the other side of town Joanna was planning to seduce Evelyn. But, of course, it's up to the storyteller - you - which consciousnesses you get the narrator to lead the reader inside. And it's up to you whether the narrator can tell things that no character in the story knows.

And, of course, that also means that the narration may not enter any individual consciousnesses. This objective point of view is sometimes (and perhaps more usefully) called dramatic point of view. 'Dramatic', that is, in the sense that it tells nothing that the audience of a play couldn't see: dialogue, setting, and physical action. We're told nothing of what characters think or feel: nothing of the inside of their heads or bodies. Hemingway's story "Hills Like White Elephants" is a classic example, although as that Jauss article points out, he twice breaks the "rule" of objectivity, to immensely powerful effect. That effect is partly the result of what John Gardner in The Art of Fiction describes as the "savage sparsity" of this kind of narrative.

If the narrator does give us access to individual characters' thoughts and perceptions of what's going on - shows us the world through characters' eyes and minds, and perhaps with their voices colouring the narrative - then it's called subjective point of view. That's much the most common kind of narrative, because the normal project of fiction in our culture is to admit us to characters' minds and feelings until we're convinced by them: until we feel that these characters-in-action are real.

So, assuming you do want your narrative to take on at least one subjective point of view, how many might you, the storyteller, choose to let the narrator narrate from?

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This is Part Two of a four part post. Part One: the basics is here.

INTERNAL NARRATORS (i): The character as narrator

If your narrator is internal, a character-narrator, then the question of point of view is usually assumed to be simple. A character who is inside the story tells their story in first person, because "I" was there. So Andy narrates: I saw John with the stolen brooch in his hand - I guess he stole it, but I don't blame him. His baby was crying in the next room, so he must have stolen it to buy milk. I frowned, because I didn't think I could bring myself to report him. And generally speaking the narrative will take on at least some flavour of Andy's voice, because voice is the combination of what is said, and how it's said - and here Andy's character will shape that.

A character-narrator such as Andy, it's usually said, is limited to narrating what he can perceive, and what he knows: his consciousness is the lens through which we're granted access to the scene, and it's our first tool in understanding it.

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Members only clubs are a big part of the British culture as far as I can tell. There’s something about having a spot of ‘business’ lunch at the club or gathering for ‘social’ drinks after work that reeks of tradition, not that I have anything against tradition or clubs for that matter. Or showing off!

Admittedly, I am not a joiner. Particularly, I shy away from the type of establishment that requires unreasonable qualifications and exorbitant fees. But and a big but that is, I have been a guest at some of the most prestigious clubs in London–the Arts Club, the Reform Club, the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) to name drop a few.

Subsequently, I have caught the club fever and am on the look out for one of the old boys or a new kid on the block that welcomes modern day writer-author types exclusively, and their guests, of course. Shush, I know it smells of all the things that we non-conformists loathe.

But many writers, this one included, belong to associations such as the Society of Authors which offer relevant services and opportunities to network and hosts fantastic physical and virtual events–all reasonably price I might add.

Wonderful, but the thing is, such organizations do not necessarily have a clubhouse, a place where we authors can relocate to when we need to meet someone or just flee in case of an emergency such as when we need a haven because life around us–drilling and banging–has become unbearable.

Honestly, I can’t even suffer in silence. Still, you are probably shaking your head and thinking, dear girl, retreat within yourself. Isn’t that what writers do? Of course, I must retreat.

Besides, clubhouses cost money, lots of it. Fair enough but you can’t blame me for imagining. In the meantime, however, on such an occasion last week when I needed a meeting place, I did happen upon a members club that flung its doors open to me, not even a member.

Not exclusively for any particular group, the Commonwealth Club, conveniently located in the heart of London near Trafalgar Square, opens Searcy, its restaurant, to members and visitors alike. The menu features continental cuisine as well as dishes from a commonwealth country.

During my visit, we sampled Ugandan food: some sort of sweet potato soup, chicken served over mashed smoked plantains, and some lovely beans that I can’t remember the name of for the life of me. Never mind, I don’t remember seeing cassava on the menu either but Paul insists it must have been there.

Regardless, my guests–two lovely Americans, one from Georgia and the other South Carolina–appreciated the central location and loved dining at a club, even if it wasn’t mine. As for me, I had a pleasant experience too, particularly gliding through the lounge as if I belonged.

But and a big but that is, I didn’t really belong, not really. I couldn’t just park myself in a corner with my netbook without being questioned, could I? Hmmm, maybe I could have. I feel the need to feed the club fever.

Forget about joining; I’m not a joiner anyhow. I will opt for floating. Why not? After all, I am spoilt for choice here in London.

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Point of View seems to get more aspiring writers in more of a fuss than almost any other technical issue... with the inevitable result that there's also more nonsense talked about it, and more prescriptive "rules" bandied about, than almost any other technical issue. I've even heard "first person" described as a point-of-view, which is a category error.

But it's not, actually, that complicated to understand the basics, so this is the first of my fourt-part breakdown of the issues, for you to decide for yourself how you're going to handle it. And, indeed, many writers handle PoV naturally and well from the start, so don't worry if you haven't ever thought about it. Maybe - just maybe - you don't need to. Having said that, most aspiring writers do need to think about it, because most aspiring writers do let their writing down by handling it badly. First, let's clear the decks a bit.

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A few weeks ago, my daughter's school Chamber Choir was singing Evensong in Southwark Cathedral, so I went along to listen. Many years ago, when I first crossed the Thames to live South of the River (which as all Londoners know is slightly more drastic than crossing the Channel to live permanently in France), in the daytime Bankside was busy with suits, doctors, and wholesale cabbages. But outside the working week it was Tumbleweed Town: anyone who could fled to the salubrious suburbs, and those few who couldn't had nothing to tempt them out of their grim blocks of flats.

Now the council blocks have been done up, there are university halls of residence, lofts and flats and family houses for urban living, there's Borough Market, the Globe, the Golden Hinde, the London Assembly, at least ten branches of Pręt ŕ Manger, and you can walk along the Thames Path, from Deptford on your bank and St Katherine's Dock on the other, to Lambeth Palace and the Houses of Parliament. It's full of people living and working and drinking and talking. In becoming more modern, Southwark has become more ancient: it's once again the mirror-image of the city across the tide that gave birth to it.

Southwark Cathedral wasn't built as a cathedral, but as a church: St Mary Overey (as in, Over the Thames). So although it's a fine bit of Early English Gothic it's not particularly large or complex. But it still has that unity in difference which is the great joy of mediaeval architure: the pointed Gothic arches don't come just in large and small, but can stretch broad or high, vaulting above your head, or stooping to make a canopy over a baby's little tomb. Some of the columns are like bundles of saplings, others are great, ribbed tree-trunks; you walk through puddles of colours where the light from the stained glass windows splashes down as regularly as a wave.

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A true account of a short bus journey...

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One of the things about becoming an author is that people start asking you for opinions and advice. But I've sometimes heard an author saying or writing things about How to Write (as opposed to How I Write, which is different) which have made me think, "Oh, help! I hope no one here thinks it's the only way, and/or the ticket to success!" That's not because I write better, or sell better, than whoever's talking. It's because I know that there are other ways than the one they've just described. The opposite is also true.

I know of one aspiring writer, now published, who claims blithely that he 'never plots.' But he has a powerful, instinctive grasp of plot; as the sentences grow across the pages there's a mental dance of instinct: "X... no Y, with a bit of Z... no, A would be better, yes, we're off again". If you don't have a that instinctive plot monitor, say - and lots of writers who are good in other ways don't - then it's probably wise to do some conscious plotting and planning fairly early on, or you're likely to find that you're 30k words across a soggy marsh of nice but pointless writing, and sinking fast.

The opposite is also true: it's easy enough to say "You must plan before you write a word" if your sure and certain instinct will always tell you when you should abandon the plan because the scaffolding has become a strait-jacket. But that sends a lot of aspiring writers wrenching their characters about as miserably as the writer wrecking good prose to get rid of the word was; they can't yet hear that still, small voice of warning, or they hear it but don't have the confidence to heed it.

I think that whether or not each of us formalises advice/opinion giving into some kind of teaching/lecturing/workshopping, as soon as anyone gazes at our book in our hand and wants to know how they can get there, it behoves us all to acquire the mindset of the good teacher.

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So here’s the thing…

On Saturday I waved goodbye to Mr HW and sulking cats to head south for the ‘Getting Published Event’, run by the Writers’ Workshop (details here: http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/festivals/index.shtml)

Even though I signed up months ago and bagged the early bird price (hey, I’m a cheerful, good-natured Scot – I have to conform to one of our national stereotypes!) it was not inexpensive, and after an eight-hour train journey with no catering (not good enough, East Coast Trains), I was beginning to wonder if I’d been a bit rash – surely I’d have been just as gainfully employed beavering away at the novel in progress, curled up on my chair at home with a cat on either side? And the ‘Book Doctor’ feedback session, which had seemed like such a good idea back in July, was starting to make me feel very, very nervous…



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