reflections on point of view
In
his book The Undressed Art – Why We Draw,
Peter Steinhart talks about the work of Robert Solso, a psychologist at the University of Nevada who believes that most of us draw
from a canon of familiar forms in our memories.
For instance, if asked to draw a teacup, we’d most likely sketch a cup
with the handle on the right side, rather than the left side or the top or
bottom of the teacup. We rely on what we
already know. As writers, we can fall
into similar familiar patterns when choosing a point of view for our story. But a familiar form may not be the best for
our story. The artist learns by
sketching. So let’s play with point of
view.
Before you choose a point of view for your story, take time to consider all of the possibilities. Voice is elusive. The “means of perception” through which we tell stories is considered one of the most difficult elements of craft to master. Editors often say, “I don’t know how to define voice, but I know it when I see it, or when I hear it.” Point of view is closely linked to the mystery of discovering voice.
Before you choose a point of view for your story, take time to consider all of the possibilities. Voice is elusive. The “means of perception” through which we tell stories is considered one of the most difficult elements of craft to master. Editors often say, “I don’t know how to define voice, but I know it when I see it, or when I hear it.” Point of view is closely linked to the mystery of discovering voice.

Our
palette offers many choices—first, second, and third person, and each of these
points of view comes in singular and plural voices.
· First person singular uses “I” to tell the story (see Log Cabin Quilt by Ellen Howard for an example). First person plural uses “We” to tell the story (see Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco).
· Second person singular uses “you” to tell the story to a specific person (see If You Were Born a Kitten by Marion Dane Bauer), or it can be used as an alternative narrative voice, in place of first person (see Freewill by Chris Lynch). Second person plural uses “you” to tell the story to a group of people or to refer to a group of people. This voice is more generally used as excerpts in stories.
· Third person singular uses “he,” “she,” or “it” to tell the story (see The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare). Third person singular is often used as a limited point of view, meaning we stay inside the thoughts of one character throughout the story. Third person plural uses “they” to tell the story and is often an omniscient point of view, meaning that we know the thoughts of two or more characters throughout the story (see The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall).
Let’s explore each of these points of view in detail.
The advantage of first person point-of-view is that the author creates a sense of intimacy and individuality that can be very appealing to readers. When the main character has an intriguing voice, the reader is pulled into the story. Voices of a different time period or culture, and regional voices, such as southern or western voices, can be particularly engaging. First person voice is a favorite of many readers. Care must be taken, of course, to truly capture individuality. Here are just a few examples of distinct voices in first person:
· The young adult novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. The voice reflects a boy with a particular condition, Asperger’s Syndrome, and is distinct because of the exact recall of details and the stilted, dispassionate tone.
· The picture book, Log Cabin Quilt, by Ellen Howard. This voice is distinct because of regional expressions like laid our mam to rest and ain’t no room for suchlike, and the simple honesty in the child’s voice—“I felt the gladdest I had since home.”
Other examples of distinct, first-person voices include:
Picture book – Saving Sweetness by Diane Stanley
Middle-grade – Down in the Piney Woods by Ethel Footman Smothers
Young adult – Bloody Jack by L. A. Meyer
There are three main challenges to choosing a first-person voice. The first involves strict limits in language. First person stories for children are told through the eyes and voice of a child. If your narrator is a child, the language must sound genuine to children and not just cute or charming to adults. If your narrator is a teenager, she cannot reflect on her experiences with the wisdom and insights of someone who is 20 or 30 years old. Even a sixteen-year-old is still a child and engages in life with less experience, less sophistication, and less distance of perspective than an adult.
In The Craft of Writing, William Sloane says, “Anything a writer does that deepens reader involvement strengthens the fiction. Everything, especially the author’s voice, that corrupts this identification damages the illusion of fiction.” Author intrusion is a danger to the first person voice, especially during revision. When we clean up wordy passages, we may be tempted to use more sophisticated or literary language and lose the voice of our main character.
The second challenge with first person voice is overuse of the pronoun “I.” Author Norma Fox Mazer called this pitfall, “the chattering factor.” Throughout the story, your character must describe what he is feeling and observing without sounding as if he is an egomaniac (unless of course, he is one). Careful editing is required to create the conversational tone of a first-person narrative voice without sounding overly chatty.
The third challenge is the limited viewpoint. The reader must stay in the main character’s mind—his or her thoughts, emotions and voice—for the entire novel with no relief. The narrator, and thus the reader, can only imagine what other characters are thinking.
First person voice can be singular or plural. Plural first person, which uses the pronoun “we,” is most often found in excerpts of stories when the narrator relates a specific event he or she participated in with a group of individuals. First-person plural point-of-view is used occasionally as a predominant voice in picture books, such as Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco, and in longer stories, such as the young adult novel, Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth. Some first-person plural interviews are also featured in Ellen Levine’s non-fiction book, Freedom’s Children (p. 35, p. 63-65, p. 139).
When choosing first person point of view, be sure the voice is compelling and distinct and that it reflects the age, experience, and upbringing of your narrator. If your story is a deeply personal one or is naturally unfolding with an engaging voice, first person may be the best point of view for your story. If you are not sure or are struggling with the writing, try “sketching” a few pages in second or third person.
Second person voice offers several unique perspectives. Although challenging to sustain for an entire novel, second person is often used in short stories, picture books, and as excerpts in first person and third person stories. Second person is also sometimes used in non-fiction to involve the reader in the story. An example of this is the “If You Lived…” series, which includes the title, If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King by Ellen Levine.
One of the most common uses of second person is to involve the reader in the story by speaking directly to “you,” which is the singular point of view. Second person can also be used to address a group of people (plural point of view) or as a universal condition that many people share (also plural point of view). Kate DiCamillo uses second person to address the reader in her Newbery winning novel, The Tale of Despereaux. The novel is written in third person omniscient point of view, but includes frequent asides to you, the “Reader,” as in this example:
“That word, reader, was adieu. Do you know the definition of adieu? Don’t bother with your dictionary. I will tell you.” (65)
Alison McGhee also uses this technique in Shadow Baby, a novel written in the first person voice of the main character, Clara, that includes numerous second person excerpts, such as:
"You might assume that the life of an old man who lived alone in a trailer in the Nine Mile Trailer Park in Sterns would hold no interest for an eleven-year-old child. You would be wrong. "(8)
Throughout the book Clara asks questions, such as “Do you see what I mean?” and “Are you beginning to see that?” which are meant for the individual reader. But McGhee also uses a different technique for second person in this example:
In certain snow conditions you can’t see your hand in front of your face. Tamar and I were coming home from Boonville one winter day when I was nine. She was driving. It was whiteout conditions: snow blowing fast and furious, horizontal because of the wind. When you look out a window and you see snow blowing horizontally, it’s instinct to turn your head sideways. (79)
Here, when Clara says “you,” she is speaking in more generalized terms. She is including all people, even herself, and their universal experiences in winter. The “you” in this case is not a direct aside to the individual reader.
Second person can also be used by a character yearning to disconnect from his or her circumstances or personality. The word “you” creates a bit of distance, as if the character is observing his or her actions rather than experiencing them. Norma Fox Mazer uses this technique in When She Was Good, a novel told in the first-person voice of Em, a young woman struggling to survive on her own. At a climatic scene in the novel, when Em grows frantic about money, her voice switches to second person:
But when you open your purse, you see you don’t have the money, and you say you’ll just take the oatmeal and an orange, and the checkout girl with her stiff pink cheeks has to void the receipt and start over, and someone behind you says in a loud voice: You’d think people would check their purses before they went out of their houses, and your shoulders hunch in agreement… (193)
Here, Mazer even uses second person within second person as someone in the checkout lane, hiding behind a judgmental attitude, says, “You’d think people would check their purses…”
The switch from first person to second person serves as a poignant moment for Em as she begins to disconnect from the horrors of her past. The passage runs for three pages and concludes the chapter with the line, “Maybe you thought you were like a mouse that lives on scraps and crumbs” (195). The next chapter reverts back to first person with a line that signifies Em’s growth in becoming independent: “I have my job-hunting rules” (196).
Second person is also occasionally used as the voice throughout a story or novel—a challenging but powerful storytelling experience. In picture books, second person is most often used to include the reader in the story. Examples include: If You Should Hear a Honey Guide by April Pulley Sayre, If You Were Born a Kitten by Marion Dane Bauer, and How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman.
In short stories and novels, second person is more likely to be used because the narrator does not want to accept the reality of his or her life. The use of the word “you” creates some distance in perspective, resembling an out-of-body experience for the narrator. It also sets up a tension for the reader, who wants the main character to reconnect to his life. This technique is used by Kathi Appelt in the story, “These Shoes,” from her young adult short story collection, Kissing Tennessee. The narrator, Tawny, wishes with all her heart that her circumstances were different:
Then you wouldn’t get called trailer trash whenever you step onto the school bus. “Trailer trash.” You hear it just beneath the skin, just below the sound level. You know it’s been said only loud enough for you to hear. Loud enough to hear but not loud enough for you to know who said it. There it hangs above the green vinyl seats in the air of the school bus, like a bubble, moving along with you and the rest of the kids at thirty miles per hour all the way to school. (107-108)
Second person is also used by Chris Lynch in his Printz Honor award-winning young adult novel, Freewill. The narrator, Will, a young man concerned about his possible involvement in local murders, also tries to disconnect from his life by referring to himself as “you” rather than “I:”
This is where the conversation pauses because, after all, where is it supposed to go from there? You are too old, Will, to develop a character trait as large as a sense of humor now, don’t you think? Where would you get one? How would you go about cultivating it? [Angela] is right, it is missing, and having it would be a blessing. But you were not wired that way. You were not blessed. (78)
Another technique for second person is to speak directly to a particular person, usually in a blend of first and second person voices in which the narrator speaks to another named individual. In this case, the reader feels as if she is listening to or being included in the conversation. Norma Fox Mazer uses this technique in her short story, “Dear Bill, Remember Me?” from the young adult short story collection of the same title. Paul West also uses this technique in his non-fiction book, Words for a Deaf Daughter. In this book, he addresses his daughter, Mandy. Although one of the dangers in writing in second person is overuse of the pronoun “you,” the following excerpt is an excellent example of how to avoid this hazard by enriching the story with details:
Christmas has come and all but gone, but you, who seize upon many things just as they are about to disappear…sit as if carved in alabaster, or cuttle-fish bone, while one of us goes out of the room to rewrap one of your many presents and ostentatiously smuggle it in again. Unable to contain yourself any longer, you pounce upon the bearer and rend the fancy paper, usually giving the contents the merest inspectional glance.
It isn’t, for once, innocent greed; it’s a mystery that you want repeated over and over again: the trim pageantry of wrappings, the flimsy strait-jacket of Scotch tape and silver string, the pretense and the tantalizing and the certainty that a parcel never lets you down. (184)
In summary, second person is an intriguing voice that can be used to include or involve the reader in the story, speak directly to a particular individual, refer to shared or universal experiences, or represent a character that does not want to accept who he is, or who wishes her circumstances were different.
Third person point of view bridges a broad spectrum from third-person-limited, in which the narration focuses closely on one character, to third-person-omniscient, in which the narration focuses on a few or all of the characters. We’ll begin with the focus on one character.
Third-person-limited point of view stays so close to one character’s viewpoint, that at times it nearly mimics first person in language and thoughts. The advantage of third person limited is that it allows more freedom in language and offers the reader relief every time it pulls back a little from the character. The reader sees more of the story than just the mindset of one character. Third person limited allows your writing to act like a camera. You pull in tight for close shots—go inside the mind of your character—and ease back for wide angle shots to show what your character is doing without sounding as self-conscious as first-person point of view.
In John Gardner’s book, The Art of Fiction, he explains this technique, called psychic distance, to maintain intimacy and keep what he calls the “fictional dream” of storytelling. His book is an excellent resource to further understand this technique.
Here is an example of the engaging effect of psychic distance from the young adult novel, The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare:
The family had already left for the Meeting House and Mercy, busy at her spinning, did not hear [Kit] return. Kit crept up the stairs, but the empty bedchamber was not the refuge she needed. She had to talk to someone. Mercy would listen with gentleness, of course. But how could she ever explain to Mercy about Nat? There was only one person who could understand.
It is a good chance to take Hannah this piece of cloth, anyway, Kit reasoned. At least this one afternoon I can be very sure of not meeting any seafaring friends there. She stole down the stairs again and took a winding path through the back meadows to Blackbird Pond. (168-169)
In this example, we remain close to Kit’s thoughts. We are actually in her mind with several of the lines, including, “At least this one afternoon I can be very sure of not meeting any seafaring friends there.” Then we ease back out, smoothly, with the line that follows, “She stole down the stairs again,” and we trail along beside her out the door. With a third person viewpoint, the narrator can describe Kit’s actions with words like “stole down the stairs,” that would sound self-conscious in first-person.
Third-person-limited, like third-person-omniscient, offers limitless possibilities for narrator voices. The narrator can even mimic the voice of the main character, as in this example from an early-middle-grade novel, Ramona the Brave, by Beverly Cleary:
Ramona had had enough. She had been miserable the whole first grade, and she no longer cared what happened. She wanted to do something bad. She wanted to do something terrible that would shock her whole family, something that would make them sit up and take notice. “I’m going to say a bad word!” she shouted with a stamp of her foot.
That silenced her family. Picky-picky stopped washing and left the room. Mr. Quimby looked surprised and—how could he be so disloyal?—a little amused. This made Ramona even angrier. Beezus looked interested and curious. After a moment Mrs. Quimby said quietly, “Go ahead, Ramona, and say the bad word if it will make you feel any better.”
Ramona clenched her fists and took a deep breath. “Guts!” she yelled. “Guts! Guts! Guts!” There. That should show them. (150-152)
In this example, we are never far from first-grader Ramona’s thoughts. The words, “There. That should show them,” are her thoughts. We feel Ramona’s frustration. When we read the sentence, “Mr. Quimby looked surprised and—how could he be so disloyal?—a little amused,” we dart into Ramona’s mind, and yet if this story were told in first person, the words, “disloyal” and “amused” would stand out as author intrusion. A first grader would not be able to tell this story the same way, to say that the stamp of her foot had silenced the family or that she had clenched her fists and taken a deep breath. In third-person-limited, we see the whole picture.
In his book, Making Shapely Fiction, Jerome Stern says of third person voice, “You are narrating, but not entirely in your own voice. Your reader hears your character’s voice through you, and simultaneously hears you through your character” (248). The narrator voice can mimic the sentence structure and tone of the main character’s voice, but in third-person-limited, the narrator can also use slightly different language than the main character would, and the reader does not lose the effect of the fictional dream. Using the right language and creating the right feel for a story is a balancing act in any point of view.
Third person omniscient point of view allows the narrator to dwell for brief or extended periods in the minds of two or more characters in the story. This point of view was once widely used in literature and has become popular again in novels such as The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo and The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall. Third-person-omniscient point of view requires great skill because of the difficulty of maintaining reader interest when hopping from character to character. Each character must be equally compelling and often must struggle with individual conflicts. But when done well, this perspective creates the warm comfort of an engaging storyteller.
The voice of that storyteller offers limitless possibilities. Kathi Appelt’s picture book, Bubba and Beau, Best Friends, demonstrates how a third-person-omniscient narrator can convey a regional voice as well as first-person:
"Right after Bubba was born, Mama Pearl wrapped him in his soft pink blankie and whispered into both of his soft pink ears, “I love you, Bubba Junior.” She sighed. He was the perfect little Bubba. Big Bubba was just plumb tickled! He kissed that boy right on the top of his head. Then, because he was so excited, he went outside and revved up Earl, his trusty pickup truck, and honked the horn as loud as he could. Toot! Toot! Tooooooooot! "(3-5)
In this brief example of an omniscient narrator, we know what Mama Pearl is thinking and what Big Bubba is thinking, and maybe even what Earl the truck is thinking. The narrative voice comes straight from the heart of Texas.
Another example of omniscient voice comes from The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. In this scene, Cruella de Vil has kidnapped the puppies and Missis worries that the puppies will be killed:
“No, they won’t,” said Pongo. “The pups were stolen because they are valuable. No one will kill them. They are only valuable while they are alive.”
But even as he said this, a terrible suspicion was forming in his mind. And it grew and grew as the night wore on. Long after Missis and Perdita, utterly exhausted, had fallen asleep, he lay awake, staring at the fire, chewing the wicker of his basket as a man might have smoked a pipe.
Anyone who did not know Pongo well would have thought him handsome, amusing, and charming, but not particularly clever. Even the Dearlys did not quite realize the depths of his mind. He was often still so puppyish. He would run after balls and sticks, climb into laps far too small to hold him, roll over on his back to have his stomach scratched. How was anyone to guess that this playful creature owned one of the keenest brains in Dogdom?
It was at work now. All through the long December night he put two and two together and made four. Once or twice he almost made five. (32)
The first two paragraphs are in Pongo’s point of view, but the third and fourth paragraphs are in the narrator’s point of view, although the line—“He was often still so puppyish”—and the line right after that are close to or in the Dearlys’ point of view. The advantage of third-person-omniscient point-of-view is this ability to dip into several characters’ thoughts while maintaining a distinct narrative voice.
Author Marion Dane Bauer says that a writer’s voice and character’s voice intertwine to become a narrative voice, “the passion that an author brings to her writing gives [the story] her voice…it comes from the deepest substance of the author.” Authors bring their experiences and sense of place to every story they create. Memories allow us to speak with confidence and authority. Voices filled with such understanding of life are mesmerizing, no matter what the point of view.
Consider these engaging lines from omniscient point of view novels:
"The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!" (from The Westing Game by Ellen Rankin).
"Maybe it was another time that their moments would meet. Maybe it would happen in a few days, or next week. Maybe it would happen when they were fifty. But just now they had missed, and the jet trails of the crisscrossing moments left an awkward vacuum in their wake." (from Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins).
"As he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before. All was a-shake and a-shiver—gleams and sparkles, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched." (from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame).
When choosing point of view, ask yourself what matters most about your story. What is the emotional core? How can your passion—your deepest substance—flavor the characters, plot, and setting? Try hinting at that substance in the opening of your story in different points of view, and see what happens.
One of the biggest decisions we make with point of view is distance of perception. If we want to create an intimate voice, writing initial passages in first-person can be illuminating. Apply this technique to each character, not just the main character, to discover individual personalities. Whether or not we use first-person, these voices help express passion. If we choose third-person point of view, we can use first-person passages for dialogue, indirect discourse, and interior thoughts to keep the reader close. First-person passages tap into the hearts and emotions of our characters and allow these qualities to flavor the narrative voice.
Another technique to maintain close perception is to avoid sentences that filter images through the main character’s consciousness. Eliminate sensory verbs such as “saw” and “heard,” and simply state what the character sees or hears. Here is an example of filtering images that distance the reader because the focus is on the act of perceiving rather than what is perceived:
"Up north at the cabin, I feel brave when we take our canoe on the water. I see the river flowing over the rocks and hear it rushing by."
Here, the verbs “feel,” “see,” and “hear” do not add emotion or sensory images. We are told what the character is experiencing rather than shown.
The following example from Marsha Wilson Chall’s picture book, Up North at the Cabin, shows how powerful a story becomes when we are shown vivid sensory images:
Up north at the cabin
I am a fearless voyageur
guiding our canoe through the wilderness.
The river spills over the rocks
and whispers to me--
Kawishiwee…Kawishiwee--
and rushes on to anywhere.
In this example, we experience the river along with the young girl without saying what we “see” and “hear.” Author Jane Resh Thomas explains it this way:
If the text says, He saw/felt/smelled/tasted/heard, the narrator necessarily stands between the reader and the character, telling, explaining to the reader what is going on in the sensorium of the character, rather than dramatizing, showing, revealing. The predicate of the sentence is saw, so the sentence focuses on the act of perception rather than the thing perceived; the act of seeing is commonplace, inherently less interesting than whatever the character perceives.
In her young adult novel Lyddie, Katherine Paterson wonderfully captures the sounds Lyddie hears in the factory without saying that she hears them. We stay close to Lyddie’s thoughts throughout the passage. Paterson does use the verb “saw” to describe what Lyddie sees but in a way that connects us to the other eyes in the room:
"Creation! What a noise! Clatter and clack, great shuddering moans, groans, creaks, and rattles. The shrieks and whistles of huge leather belts of wheels. And when her brain cleared enough, Lyddie saw through the murky air row upon row of machines, eerily like the old hand loom in Quaker Stevens’s house, but as unlike as a nightmare, for these creatures had come to life. They seemed moved by eyes alone—the eyes of neat, vigilant young women—needing only the occasional, swift intervention of a human hand to keep them clattering." (62)
My final example shows an interesting technique of using both third-person and first-person points of view in one story. In “The Old Chief Mshlanga” by Doris Lessing (from the collection Somehow Tenderness Survives, stories selected by Hazel Rochman), the story begins in third-person as a way for the narrator to distance herself from her behavior as a child:
"Later still, certain questions presented themselves in the child’s mind; and because the answers were not easy to accept, they were silenced by an even greater arrogance of manner. It was even impossible to think of the black people who worked about the house as friends, for if she talked to one of them, her mother would come running anxiously: 'Come away; you mustn’t talk to natives.'
It was this instilled consciousness of danger, of something unpleasant, that made it easy to laugh out loud, crudely, if a servant made a mistake in his English or if he failed to understand an order—there is a certain kind of laughter that is fear, afraid of itself. " (26-27)
This distancing technique is similar to using second-person point of view for a character that does not want to accept responsibility for his or her actions. The effect is dramatic when the voice in this story suddenly switches to first-person and the narrator takes responsibility for her actions as she relates an event that changed her perspective:
"In front of me, perhaps a couple of hundred yards away, a group of three Africans came into sight around the side of the big antheap…they came on steadily, and the dogs looked up at me for the command to chase… A Chief! I thought, understanding the pride that made the old man stand before me like an equal—more than an equal, for he showed courtesy, and I showed none. "(27-28)
I hope you’ve enjoyed these reflections on point of view. Best wishes for your own writing as you explore the many creative possibilities!
Suggested Reading for Further Study on Point of View and Voice
Brown, Renni, and Dave King. Self-Editing for Fiction. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Chapters 3, 7, and 12
Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction. New York: Longman, 2003. Chapters 7 and 8
Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction. New York: Random, 1991. Fictional dream – pp. 31-32, Point of view – pp. 75-76, 155-159.
Hale, Constance. Sin and Syntax. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Pp. 37-44, 213-214
Macauley, Robie, and George Lanning. Technique in Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987. Chapter 5.
Sloane, William. The Craft of Writing. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983. Chapter 3.
Stern, Jerome. Making Shapely Fiction. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991. Point of View, pp. 178 – 192, Voice, pp. 247 – 249.
Yagoda, Ben. The Sound on the Page. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
· First person singular uses “I” to tell the story (see Log Cabin Quilt by Ellen Howard for an example). First person plural uses “We” to tell the story (see Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco).
· Second person singular uses “you” to tell the story to a specific person (see If You Were Born a Kitten by Marion Dane Bauer), or it can be used as an alternative narrative voice, in place of first person (see Freewill by Chris Lynch). Second person plural uses “you” to tell the story to a group of people or to refer to a group of people. This voice is more generally used as excerpts in stories.
· Third person singular uses “he,” “she,” or “it” to tell the story (see The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare). Third person singular is often used as a limited point of view, meaning we stay inside the thoughts of one character throughout the story. Third person plural uses “they” to tell the story and is often an omniscient point of view, meaning that we know the thoughts of two or more characters throughout the story (see The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall).
Let’s explore each of these points of view in detail.
The advantage of first person point-of-view is that the author creates a sense of intimacy and individuality that can be very appealing to readers. When the main character has an intriguing voice, the reader is pulled into the story. Voices of a different time period or culture, and regional voices, such as southern or western voices, can be particularly engaging. First person voice is a favorite of many readers. Care must be taken, of course, to truly capture individuality. Here are just a few examples of distinct voices in first person:
· The young adult novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. The voice reflects a boy with a particular condition, Asperger’s Syndrome, and is distinct because of the exact recall of details and the stilted, dispassionate tone.
· The picture book, Log Cabin Quilt, by Ellen Howard. This voice is distinct because of regional expressions like laid our mam to rest and ain’t no room for suchlike, and the simple honesty in the child’s voice—“I felt the gladdest I had since home.”
Other examples of distinct, first-person voices include:
Picture book – Saving Sweetness by Diane Stanley
Middle-grade – Down in the Piney Woods by Ethel Footman Smothers
Young adult – Bloody Jack by L. A. Meyer
There are three main challenges to choosing a first-person voice. The first involves strict limits in language. First person stories for children are told through the eyes and voice of a child. If your narrator is a child, the language must sound genuine to children and not just cute or charming to adults. If your narrator is a teenager, she cannot reflect on her experiences with the wisdom and insights of someone who is 20 or 30 years old. Even a sixteen-year-old is still a child and engages in life with less experience, less sophistication, and less distance of perspective than an adult.
In The Craft of Writing, William Sloane says, “Anything a writer does that deepens reader involvement strengthens the fiction. Everything, especially the author’s voice, that corrupts this identification damages the illusion of fiction.” Author intrusion is a danger to the first person voice, especially during revision. When we clean up wordy passages, we may be tempted to use more sophisticated or literary language and lose the voice of our main character.
The second challenge with first person voice is overuse of the pronoun “I.” Author Norma Fox Mazer called this pitfall, “the chattering factor.” Throughout the story, your character must describe what he is feeling and observing without sounding as if he is an egomaniac (unless of course, he is one). Careful editing is required to create the conversational tone of a first-person narrative voice without sounding overly chatty.
The third challenge is the limited viewpoint. The reader must stay in the main character’s mind—his or her thoughts, emotions and voice—for the entire novel with no relief. The narrator, and thus the reader, can only imagine what other characters are thinking.
First person voice can be singular or plural. Plural first person, which uses the pronoun “we,” is most often found in excerpts of stories when the narrator relates a specific event he or she participated in with a group of individuals. First-person plural point-of-view is used occasionally as a predominant voice in picture books, such as Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco, and in longer stories, such as the young adult novel, Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth. Some first-person plural interviews are also featured in Ellen Levine’s non-fiction book, Freedom’s Children (p. 35, p. 63-65, p. 139).
When choosing first person point of view, be sure the voice is compelling and distinct and that it reflects the age, experience, and upbringing of your narrator. If your story is a deeply personal one or is naturally unfolding with an engaging voice, first person may be the best point of view for your story. If you are not sure or are struggling with the writing, try “sketching” a few pages in second or third person.
Second person voice offers several unique perspectives. Although challenging to sustain for an entire novel, second person is often used in short stories, picture books, and as excerpts in first person and third person stories. Second person is also sometimes used in non-fiction to involve the reader in the story. An example of this is the “If You Lived…” series, which includes the title, If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King by Ellen Levine.
One of the most common uses of second person is to involve the reader in the story by speaking directly to “you,” which is the singular point of view. Second person can also be used to address a group of people (plural point of view) or as a universal condition that many people share (also plural point of view). Kate DiCamillo uses second person to address the reader in her Newbery winning novel, The Tale of Despereaux. The novel is written in third person omniscient point of view, but includes frequent asides to you, the “Reader,” as in this example:
“That word, reader, was adieu. Do you know the definition of adieu? Don’t bother with your dictionary. I will tell you.” (65)
Alison McGhee also uses this technique in Shadow Baby, a novel written in the first person voice of the main character, Clara, that includes numerous second person excerpts, such as:
"You might assume that the life of an old man who lived alone in a trailer in the Nine Mile Trailer Park in Sterns would hold no interest for an eleven-year-old child. You would be wrong. "(8)
Throughout the book Clara asks questions, such as “Do you see what I mean?” and “Are you beginning to see that?” which are meant for the individual reader. But McGhee also uses a different technique for second person in this example:
In certain snow conditions you can’t see your hand in front of your face. Tamar and I were coming home from Boonville one winter day when I was nine. She was driving. It was whiteout conditions: snow blowing fast and furious, horizontal because of the wind. When you look out a window and you see snow blowing horizontally, it’s instinct to turn your head sideways. (79)
Here, when Clara says “you,” she is speaking in more generalized terms. She is including all people, even herself, and their universal experiences in winter. The “you” in this case is not a direct aside to the individual reader.
Second person can also be used by a character yearning to disconnect from his or her circumstances or personality. The word “you” creates a bit of distance, as if the character is observing his or her actions rather than experiencing them. Norma Fox Mazer uses this technique in When She Was Good, a novel told in the first-person voice of Em, a young woman struggling to survive on her own. At a climatic scene in the novel, when Em grows frantic about money, her voice switches to second person:
But when you open your purse, you see you don’t have the money, and you say you’ll just take the oatmeal and an orange, and the checkout girl with her stiff pink cheeks has to void the receipt and start over, and someone behind you says in a loud voice: You’d think people would check their purses before they went out of their houses, and your shoulders hunch in agreement… (193)
Here, Mazer even uses second person within second person as someone in the checkout lane, hiding behind a judgmental attitude, says, “You’d think people would check their purses…”
The switch from first person to second person serves as a poignant moment for Em as she begins to disconnect from the horrors of her past. The passage runs for three pages and concludes the chapter with the line, “Maybe you thought you were like a mouse that lives on scraps and crumbs” (195). The next chapter reverts back to first person with a line that signifies Em’s growth in becoming independent: “I have my job-hunting rules” (196).
Second person is also occasionally used as the voice throughout a story or novel—a challenging but powerful storytelling experience. In picture books, second person is most often used to include the reader in the story. Examples include: If You Should Hear a Honey Guide by April Pulley Sayre, If You Were Born a Kitten by Marion Dane Bauer, and How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman.
In short stories and novels, second person is more likely to be used because the narrator does not want to accept the reality of his or her life. The use of the word “you” creates some distance in perspective, resembling an out-of-body experience for the narrator. It also sets up a tension for the reader, who wants the main character to reconnect to his life. This technique is used by Kathi Appelt in the story, “These Shoes,” from her young adult short story collection, Kissing Tennessee. The narrator, Tawny, wishes with all her heart that her circumstances were different:
Then you wouldn’t get called trailer trash whenever you step onto the school bus. “Trailer trash.” You hear it just beneath the skin, just below the sound level. You know it’s been said only loud enough for you to hear. Loud enough to hear but not loud enough for you to know who said it. There it hangs above the green vinyl seats in the air of the school bus, like a bubble, moving along with you and the rest of the kids at thirty miles per hour all the way to school. (107-108)
Second person is also used by Chris Lynch in his Printz Honor award-winning young adult novel, Freewill. The narrator, Will, a young man concerned about his possible involvement in local murders, also tries to disconnect from his life by referring to himself as “you” rather than “I:”
This is where the conversation pauses because, after all, where is it supposed to go from there? You are too old, Will, to develop a character trait as large as a sense of humor now, don’t you think? Where would you get one? How would you go about cultivating it? [Angela] is right, it is missing, and having it would be a blessing. But you were not wired that way. You were not blessed. (78)
Another technique for second person is to speak directly to a particular person, usually in a blend of first and second person voices in which the narrator speaks to another named individual. In this case, the reader feels as if she is listening to or being included in the conversation. Norma Fox Mazer uses this technique in her short story, “Dear Bill, Remember Me?” from the young adult short story collection of the same title. Paul West also uses this technique in his non-fiction book, Words for a Deaf Daughter. In this book, he addresses his daughter, Mandy. Although one of the dangers in writing in second person is overuse of the pronoun “you,” the following excerpt is an excellent example of how to avoid this hazard by enriching the story with details:
Christmas has come and all but gone, but you, who seize upon many things just as they are about to disappear…sit as if carved in alabaster, or cuttle-fish bone, while one of us goes out of the room to rewrap one of your many presents and ostentatiously smuggle it in again. Unable to contain yourself any longer, you pounce upon the bearer and rend the fancy paper, usually giving the contents the merest inspectional glance.
It isn’t, for once, innocent greed; it’s a mystery that you want repeated over and over again: the trim pageantry of wrappings, the flimsy strait-jacket of Scotch tape and silver string, the pretense and the tantalizing and the certainty that a parcel never lets you down. (184)
In summary, second person is an intriguing voice that can be used to include or involve the reader in the story, speak directly to a particular individual, refer to shared or universal experiences, or represent a character that does not want to accept who he is, or who wishes her circumstances were different.
Third person point of view bridges a broad spectrum from third-person-limited, in which the narration focuses closely on one character, to third-person-omniscient, in which the narration focuses on a few or all of the characters. We’ll begin with the focus on one character.
Third-person-limited point of view stays so close to one character’s viewpoint, that at times it nearly mimics first person in language and thoughts. The advantage of third person limited is that it allows more freedom in language and offers the reader relief every time it pulls back a little from the character. The reader sees more of the story than just the mindset of one character. Third person limited allows your writing to act like a camera. You pull in tight for close shots—go inside the mind of your character—and ease back for wide angle shots to show what your character is doing without sounding as self-conscious as first-person point of view.
In John Gardner’s book, The Art of Fiction, he explains this technique, called psychic distance, to maintain intimacy and keep what he calls the “fictional dream” of storytelling. His book is an excellent resource to further understand this technique.
Here is an example of the engaging effect of psychic distance from the young adult novel, The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare:
The family had already left for the Meeting House and Mercy, busy at her spinning, did not hear [Kit] return. Kit crept up the stairs, but the empty bedchamber was not the refuge she needed. She had to talk to someone. Mercy would listen with gentleness, of course. But how could she ever explain to Mercy about Nat? There was only one person who could understand.
It is a good chance to take Hannah this piece of cloth, anyway, Kit reasoned. At least this one afternoon I can be very sure of not meeting any seafaring friends there. She stole down the stairs again and took a winding path through the back meadows to Blackbird Pond. (168-169)
In this example, we remain close to Kit’s thoughts. We are actually in her mind with several of the lines, including, “At least this one afternoon I can be very sure of not meeting any seafaring friends there.” Then we ease back out, smoothly, with the line that follows, “She stole down the stairs again,” and we trail along beside her out the door. With a third person viewpoint, the narrator can describe Kit’s actions with words like “stole down the stairs,” that would sound self-conscious in first-person.
Third-person-limited, like third-person-omniscient, offers limitless possibilities for narrator voices. The narrator can even mimic the voice of the main character, as in this example from an early-middle-grade novel, Ramona the Brave, by Beverly Cleary:
Ramona had had enough. She had been miserable the whole first grade, and she no longer cared what happened. She wanted to do something bad. She wanted to do something terrible that would shock her whole family, something that would make them sit up and take notice. “I’m going to say a bad word!” she shouted with a stamp of her foot.
That silenced her family. Picky-picky stopped washing and left the room. Mr. Quimby looked surprised and—how could he be so disloyal?—a little amused. This made Ramona even angrier. Beezus looked interested and curious. After a moment Mrs. Quimby said quietly, “Go ahead, Ramona, and say the bad word if it will make you feel any better.”
Ramona clenched her fists and took a deep breath. “Guts!” she yelled. “Guts! Guts! Guts!” There. That should show them. (150-152)
In this example, we are never far from first-grader Ramona’s thoughts. The words, “There. That should show them,” are her thoughts. We feel Ramona’s frustration. When we read the sentence, “Mr. Quimby looked surprised and—how could he be so disloyal?—a little amused,” we dart into Ramona’s mind, and yet if this story were told in first person, the words, “disloyal” and “amused” would stand out as author intrusion. A first grader would not be able to tell this story the same way, to say that the stamp of her foot had silenced the family or that she had clenched her fists and taken a deep breath. In third-person-limited, we see the whole picture.
In his book, Making Shapely Fiction, Jerome Stern says of third person voice, “You are narrating, but not entirely in your own voice. Your reader hears your character’s voice through you, and simultaneously hears you through your character” (248). The narrator voice can mimic the sentence structure and tone of the main character’s voice, but in third-person-limited, the narrator can also use slightly different language than the main character would, and the reader does not lose the effect of the fictional dream. Using the right language and creating the right feel for a story is a balancing act in any point of view.
Third person omniscient point of view allows the narrator to dwell for brief or extended periods in the minds of two or more characters in the story. This point of view was once widely used in literature and has become popular again in novels such as The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo and The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall. Third-person-omniscient point of view requires great skill because of the difficulty of maintaining reader interest when hopping from character to character. Each character must be equally compelling and often must struggle with individual conflicts. But when done well, this perspective creates the warm comfort of an engaging storyteller.
The voice of that storyteller offers limitless possibilities. Kathi Appelt’s picture book, Bubba and Beau, Best Friends, demonstrates how a third-person-omniscient narrator can convey a regional voice as well as first-person:
"Right after Bubba was born, Mama Pearl wrapped him in his soft pink blankie and whispered into both of his soft pink ears, “I love you, Bubba Junior.” She sighed. He was the perfect little Bubba. Big Bubba was just plumb tickled! He kissed that boy right on the top of his head. Then, because he was so excited, he went outside and revved up Earl, his trusty pickup truck, and honked the horn as loud as he could. Toot! Toot! Tooooooooot! "(3-5)
In this brief example of an omniscient narrator, we know what Mama Pearl is thinking and what Big Bubba is thinking, and maybe even what Earl the truck is thinking. The narrative voice comes straight from the heart of Texas.
Another example of omniscient voice comes from The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. In this scene, Cruella de Vil has kidnapped the puppies and Missis worries that the puppies will be killed:
“No, they won’t,” said Pongo. “The pups were stolen because they are valuable. No one will kill them. They are only valuable while they are alive.”
But even as he said this, a terrible suspicion was forming in his mind. And it grew and grew as the night wore on. Long after Missis and Perdita, utterly exhausted, had fallen asleep, he lay awake, staring at the fire, chewing the wicker of his basket as a man might have smoked a pipe.
Anyone who did not know Pongo well would have thought him handsome, amusing, and charming, but not particularly clever. Even the Dearlys did not quite realize the depths of his mind. He was often still so puppyish. He would run after balls and sticks, climb into laps far too small to hold him, roll over on his back to have his stomach scratched. How was anyone to guess that this playful creature owned one of the keenest brains in Dogdom?
It was at work now. All through the long December night he put two and two together and made four. Once or twice he almost made five. (32)
The first two paragraphs are in Pongo’s point of view, but the third and fourth paragraphs are in the narrator’s point of view, although the line—“He was often still so puppyish”—and the line right after that are close to or in the Dearlys’ point of view. The advantage of third-person-omniscient point-of-view is this ability to dip into several characters’ thoughts while maintaining a distinct narrative voice.
Author Marion Dane Bauer says that a writer’s voice and character’s voice intertwine to become a narrative voice, “the passion that an author brings to her writing gives [the story] her voice…it comes from the deepest substance of the author.” Authors bring their experiences and sense of place to every story they create. Memories allow us to speak with confidence and authority. Voices filled with such understanding of life are mesmerizing, no matter what the point of view.
Consider these engaging lines from omniscient point of view novels:
"The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!" (from The Westing Game by Ellen Rankin).
"Maybe it was another time that their moments would meet. Maybe it would happen in a few days, or next week. Maybe it would happen when they were fifty. But just now they had missed, and the jet trails of the crisscrossing moments left an awkward vacuum in their wake." (from Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins).
"As he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before. All was a-shake and a-shiver—gleams and sparkles, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched." (from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame).
When choosing point of view, ask yourself what matters most about your story. What is the emotional core? How can your passion—your deepest substance—flavor the characters, plot, and setting? Try hinting at that substance in the opening of your story in different points of view, and see what happens.
One of the biggest decisions we make with point of view is distance of perception. If we want to create an intimate voice, writing initial passages in first-person can be illuminating. Apply this technique to each character, not just the main character, to discover individual personalities. Whether or not we use first-person, these voices help express passion. If we choose third-person point of view, we can use first-person passages for dialogue, indirect discourse, and interior thoughts to keep the reader close. First-person passages tap into the hearts and emotions of our characters and allow these qualities to flavor the narrative voice.
Another technique to maintain close perception is to avoid sentences that filter images through the main character’s consciousness. Eliminate sensory verbs such as “saw” and “heard,” and simply state what the character sees or hears. Here is an example of filtering images that distance the reader because the focus is on the act of perceiving rather than what is perceived:
"Up north at the cabin, I feel brave when we take our canoe on the water. I see the river flowing over the rocks and hear it rushing by."
Here, the verbs “feel,” “see,” and “hear” do not add emotion or sensory images. We are told what the character is experiencing rather than shown.
The following example from Marsha Wilson Chall’s picture book, Up North at the Cabin, shows how powerful a story becomes when we are shown vivid sensory images:
Up north at the cabin
I am a fearless voyageur
guiding our canoe through the wilderness.
The river spills over the rocks
and whispers to me--
Kawishiwee…Kawishiwee--
and rushes on to anywhere.
In this example, we experience the river along with the young girl without saying what we “see” and “hear.” Author Jane Resh Thomas explains it this way:
If the text says, He saw/felt/smelled/tasted/heard, the narrator necessarily stands between the reader and the character, telling, explaining to the reader what is going on in the sensorium of the character, rather than dramatizing, showing, revealing. The predicate of the sentence is saw, so the sentence focuses on the act of perception rather than the thing perceived; the act of seeing is commonplace, inherently less interesting than whatever the character perceives.
In her young adult novel Lyddie, Katherine Paterson wonderfully captures the sounds Lyddie hears in the factory without saying that she hears them. We stay close to Lyddie’s thoughts throughout the passage. Paterson does use the verb “saw” to describe what Lyddie sees but in a way that connects us to the other eyes in the room:
"Creation! What a noise! Clatter and clack, great shuddering moans, groans, creaks, and rattles. The shrieks and whistles of huge leather belts of wheels. And when her brain cleared enough, Lyddie saw through the murky air row upon row of machines, eerily like the old hand loom in Quaker Stevens’s house, but as unlike as a nightmare, for these creatures had come to life. They seemed moved by eyes alone—the eyes of neat, vigilant young women—needing only the occasional, swift intervention of a human hand to keep them clattering." (62)
My final example shows an interesting technique of using both third-person and first-person points of view in one story. In “The Old Chief Mshlanga” by Doris Lessing (from the collection Somehow Tenderness Survives, stories selected by Hazel Rochman), the story begins in third-person as a way for the narrator to distance herself from her behavior as a child:
"Later still, certain questions presented themselves in the child’s mind; and because the answers were not easy to accept, they were silenced by an even greater arrogance of manner. It was even impossible to think of the black people who worked about the house as friends, for if she talked to one of them, her mother would come running anxiously: 'Come away; you mustn’t talk to natives.'
It was this instilled consciousness of danger, of something unpleasant, that made it easy to laugh out loud, crudely, if a servant made a mistake in his English or if he failed to understand an order—there is a certain kind of laughter that is fear, afraid of itself. " (26-27)
This distancing technique is similar to using second-person point of view for a character that does not want to accept responsibility for his or her actions. The effect is dramatic when the voice in this story suddenly switches to first-person and the narrator takes responsibility for her actions as she relates an event that changed her perspective:
"In front of me, perhaps a couple of hundred yards away, a group of three Africans came into sight around the side of the big antheap…they came on steadily, and the dogs looked up at me for the command to chase… A Chief! I thought, understanding the pride that made the old man stand before me like an equal—more than an equal, for he showed courtesy, and I showed none. "(27-28)
I hope you’ve enjoyed these reflections on point of view. Best wishes for your own writing as you explore the many creative possibilities!
Suggested Reading for Further Study on Point of View and Voice
Brown, Renni, and Dave King. Self-Editing for Fiction. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Chapters 3, 7, and 12
Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction. New York: Longman, 2003. Chapters 7 and 8
Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction. New York: Random, 1991. Fictional dream – pp. 31-32, Point of view – pp. 75-76, 155-159.
Hale, Constance. Sin and Syntax. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Pp. 37-44, 213-214
Macauley, Robie, and George Lanning. Technique in Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987. Chapter 5.
Sloane, William. The Craft of Writing. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983. Chapter 3.
Stern, Jerome. Making Shapely Fiction. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991. Point of View, pp. 178 – 192, Voice, pp. 247 – 249.
Yagoda, Ben. The Sound on the Page. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.