Auth-mentors · Viewpoint

It's clear from all the questions that viewpoint and narrative remain this murky fog that writers hear about but continue on with their exposition.

Flat telling without dynamic showing. Writers get caught up in these arguments... 'That's the way it was in the classics.' Egads, don't fall into the trap. What worked over a hundred years ago doesn't reflect on today. Today we have people with less attention span, less patience, and less time to spare. Your average reader wants to dive in.

They want a good story from word one. It's incumbent on us writers to try to accommodate, publish or perish as they say. Before diving into how viewpoint improves narrative, let's review the idea of narrative itself. A narrative is a recounting of events that happened. Now, how you VISUALIZE and DEPICT those events, and DRAMATIZE them are devices and techniques, but those WAYS of enhancing the audience experience are things riding ON the narrative. They themselves are NOT the narrative.

For example, a simple narrative is : This morning, I got up, drove to the grocery store, bought some milk, visited with a few friends, and returned home. This is a retelling of those events using the literary device of exposition. As you can see, it's flat, a delivery of facts with no embellishment. There's no detail here, and it's not particularly entertaining. This is why when you use exposition to tell a story, other writers will frown at you and mumble something about show not tell. So, in review : NARRATIVE IS NOT

• Description
• History / Facts / Research
• Opinions / Ideas / Prejudice NARRATIVE IS
• Events
• Viewpoint
• Temporal structure Now, I threw in viewpoint and temporal structure. Those aren't related to events, so why did I include them? A narrative can portray the events out of chronological order.
• FLASHBACKS
• FLASH FORWARD
• Per chapter time twisting Narrative can also SKIP, REWIND, and SUSPEND time.
• PROLOGUE
• EPILOGUE
• INTERLUDE
• PRELUDE
• Space and star breaks
• Transition words, phrases, and passages Now, I spent all this energy talking about time winding in narrative. There's a reason, time is THE most critical management element in story. It affects tension, it governs pacing, and lends authenticity to the fabric of the story being told. Only when in a viewpoint, can you simulate the passing of time by hooking into the character's senses, their sequential perception of events. My previous discussions about narrative and viewpoint, I put the view mechanisms first, but in this discussion I'm hammering on narrative itself and why device choice in story telling is so critical to the quality of the product you create. A good writer should understand that mood, tone, word choice, sentence and paragraph length all effect the reader's perception. This is called subjective time control. A slow relaxing scene will be more decorative, more relaxed with passive phrases, the sentences may be longer and the words measurably more florid. On the other hand, fight and action scenes are portrayed in a more choppy fashion. Think of the periods in the sentences like bullets being fired. It's sharper, with harsher wording, fragmented... jarring to convey the urgency to the reader in both the depiction and in the printed words on the page. With all these things in our considerations, now the viewpoint mechanisms. Here's the three traditional viewpoints:
• First person - Viewed from the character's eyes ONLY. Uses the 'I' pronoun.
• Second person - The reader is projected INTO the story, events are enacted ON them. Uses the 'you' pronoun.
• Third person - An arbitrary viewpoint that can be anyone or anything in the story. Uses the 'he/she' pronoun. Sometimes the words 'omniscient' or 'limited' are tacked on the viewpoint type to change the attributes of that depiction technique. These more general definitions of viewpoint work. However, they don't give a sense for whether one is better than the other. Enter the idea of 'focus distance'. Writers have this tendency to think more information is better. This runs counter to the reality. It is tight information control that creates suspense. You can't be surprised if you've been told something will happen. When the author hops from head to head in a crowded room reeling off the what everyone is thinking it has deleterious effects on the story:
• Each new head hop distracts from the protagonist
• With everyone's thoughts apparent, there's little to no suspense
• All of the shifting slows down and confuses the narrative So, from this we get that a tighter focus makes the narrative more compact and easy to follow. It makes information control simpler (and more justifiable), and with information under strict need-to-know you can create suspense and mystery. Further, being tight to a character means, being more in contact with what's going on in their bodies and minds. The techniques of physical/emotional registers become more natural to include. So, viewpoint as a function of focus distance: So, here we have EIGHT viewpoints (NOTE: 2nd person is so rarely used that it's not included). So, right off "omniscient" tag is added. Omniscient viewpoint is primarily characterized as "author intrusion". Details are not being related through a character in the story, the information is dumped, with varying levels of eloquence usually attributed to the author. These "dumps" stop the story and are the earmark of a narrative-less story telling. In the diagram, omniscient attributes are scaled one to five... starting with 3rd person (increased scope) and going up to tier 4 omniscient (full author intrusion / exposition).
• Third Person Increased - Some external information and limited para-abilities are attributed to the viewpoint character. The writer may on occasion inject into the character and have some out-of-character knowledge

2.

Omniscient Tier 1 - Limited out of character information access (can see the thoughts of other characters)

• Omniscient Tier 2 - Some head hopping or information exposition foreknowledge - author intrusion is more common.
• Omniscient Tier 3 - Head hopping is more prevalent, and authorial intrusions are common.
• Omniscient Tier 4 - Authorial intrusion is near constant, viewpoint has no recognizable source and there is no distinction between the protagonist and other characters in the story. 3rd Person Limited - The Viewpoint Boss So, now, let's introduce the most versatile viewpoint. I am a strong proponent of 3rd person limited. This technique tries to simulate the tight aspects of 1st person, while retaining some of the general flexibility of 3rd person. In emulating the first person, we accept the limitation of only looking through the viewpoint character's eyes, tuned into their physicality and senses. The goal of this technique is to really tune into visceral detail. To restrain information, pushing suspense and tension with careful revelation. 1st Person - The past and present Using all present tense can be applied to any viewpoint. It increases immediacy significantly. However, this comes at the cost of a tremendous amount of flexibility. It all-but strangles any kind of temporal shifting in the narrative (without some cost of reader's involvement / immersion). Still, first person present tense is popular for those writers who usually end up losing hair, sleep, and sanity when confronted with the pedantic requirements of tense, authoritarian information control, and claustrophobic internal monologue. This is why I make it a separate viewpoint from first person past tense. First person is THE premier viewpoint for people starting off in writing. A better end result can be achieved more quickly by using the technique. Adhering to it prevents the writer from doing distracting things in the story like exposition or head hopping. First person also enables devices like the unreliable narrator. Like any person telling a story, the 'I' character can be dishonest, and not necessary reveal everything in its true light. While I say first person is attractive, it has dangerous pitfalls, especially in the long and complex narratives, especially ones that logically require more than one viewpoint. Viewpoint - The Test Drive Let's look at the first four viewpoint techniques, using them each to portray the same scene. 3rd Person Limited Dae sensed the bleeding, but couldn't see it. He hadn't awoken in a light-less space, this was the obsidian darkness of lost sight. His trembling fingers contacted gashed and burned eyes. His terror increased as he felt down one leg to find a ragged oozing flesh instead of knee. Dae's anguished yell either didn't make noise or he'd gone too deaf to hear above the high pitched ring in his ears. This time he failed to protect them. With no legs and no eyes, he doubted he could atone for his lapse. This person has just been in an explosion if you hadn't already guessed. It's close enough to be visceral, right? Do we REALLY need to get closer...? Let me switch this to first person for you. 1st Person I sensed bleeding, but couldn't see it. This wasn't a light-less space, this was the obsidian darkness of lost sight. My trembling fingers contacted gashed and burned eyes. Terror surged in me as I felt down one leg to find ragged oozing flesh instead of knee. Letting out an anguished yell either didn't make noise or I'd gone too deaf to hear above the high pitched ringing in my ears. This time I failed to protect them. With no legs and no eyes, I doubted I could atone for this lapse. 1st Person Present I'm bleeding, I know it but can't see. This isn't a lack of light, this obsidian darkness is something wrong with my eyes. My trembling fingers contact gashed and burned corneas. Terror surges in me. I feel down one my leg and find ragged oozing flesh instead of knee. I let out an anguished yell. Either it doesn't make noise or I've gone too deaf to hear above the high pitched ringing in my ears. This time I failed to protect them. With no legs and no eyes, I doubt I can atone for this lapse. Now, a rare oddity - putting the reader in the driver seat. 2nd Person You sense bleeding, but you can't see it. This isn't a light-less space, you've awoken to the obsidian darkness of lost sight. Your fingers tremble as you touch your face, feeling gashed and burned eyes. Terror surges in you as you probe down your leg and find ragged oozing flesh instead of a knee. As you let out an anguished yell, it either doesn't make noise, or you've gone too deaf to hear above the high pitched ringing in your ears. This time you've failed to protect them. With legs and eyes gone, how will you atone for this lapse? All of the viewpoints here get the same imagery across, each with subtle differences in word choice to fit the viewpoint. The key things here are the increasing limitations. Is the extra immersion worth the additional constraints. People frustrated with the limitations make up new standards like first person omniscient to get around the obstacles. Of course, in doing this you've defeated the purpose of the tighter viewpoint. Choose your viewpoint carefully.