It sounds selfish doesn’t it? I’ve been working away at NaNoWriMo, writing some days, thinking about writing some days, and thinking about how to bloody well write on other days! Writers block would be a blessing as it is not so much what to write any more, but how to. When the novel-writing month is over, I am going to have to sort out how my novel is written and finally put together, and so I’ve been trying to help myself by (re) reading a chapter of a book written by Jack Hodgins called ‘Point of View and Voice’ in A Passion for Narrative: a guide for writing fiction (1993, pp. 182-204). It has sent me into a bit of a spin, so I’ve dissected it in order to simplify it for myself. As there may be other writers out there, I thought I’d share it, instead of just helping myself! Whilst this exercise may seem absurd or ridiculous to you, and you may already know everything about how to write, and in what way is best for you, my little brain can come back to this, rediscover the simplicity of it all, and move on. As I have said before,  I am capturing my memories through my WordPress blog, so here goes…

These are the key critical terms and concepts

First person point of view can be told as a

• Protagonist – ‘I’ tells his or her own story
• Witness – tells the story as observed by him or her
• A reteller – tells a story told by someone else first

In the first person, the author could be telling the story in a number of ways

• Thinking it
• writing as if in a private journal
• writing it as a journal or letter
• speaking the story out aloud
• recording the story mentally
• self-consciously creating a literary structure that targets a specific future audience or reader

Third person point of view can be told as

• Omniscient – where the author knows everything about every character including their thoughts and motivations
• Objective – where the writer only knows what is seen and heard
• Omniscient in a limited manner – where the writer knows intimately about one main character and nothing about the other characters other than what he perceives is thought by the main character

Second person point of view is rare and is told in such a way that the writer appears to be talking to an earlier self, as if one half of his or her awareness is talking to the other half

Some advantages of points of view

• In the first person point of view, the advantage of this way of telling the story is that the author has complete freedom to tell the story in any way, with his or her own world view and biases remaining completely in tact
• In the third person point of view, if the story is told well, then the story will cause the reader to feel as if they know what is being thought and felt by the main      characters
• It is useful if writing about

Some disadvantages of points of view

• Readers of a first person point of view story could easily become confused if it is not clear which way the author is writing it
• If a writer is not very talented, a story told in third person point of view has to speak for itself

Responsibilities associated with Point of View

• Be aware if your own ‘voice’ and be very wary of adopting the voice of another writer
• When you become accomplished authors, your audience will be able to recognize your work, so develop your own point of view with care

Point of View – some things to consider

What is it, whose story is it, how much time has gone by since the events and the telling, should the story be told by the main character himself, should it be told in the first, second or third person and so on? In simple terms, is the story being told by ‘I’, ‘You’ or ‘They’?
What matters as the writer is that you consider who you want to tell the story. Decide how much personal involvement you are willing to give to it, what circumstances or personal experiences you will allow to ‘colour’ your story, and to in what context will you be involved in your ‘feedback loop’.

Activity(s) for me – who tells my stories?

• Framework
• Concepts
• Systems
• Contexts
• Involvement
• Willingness
• Reflection of self
• “Colours”

It all seems so easy now doesn’t it?!!!