One of the problems with talking about writing is that the terminology isn’t standardized. Even when everybody agrees what something is called, the same word gets used to mean other things, which can lead to confusion.
Take the term “viewpoint.” It can mean either the person through whose eyes the story is told, as in “Who is the viewpoint character? Whose viewpoint is this from?”, or it can mean the way the story is told, as in “Which viewpoint are you using – omniscient or first-person?”
Most of the time, it is clear which meaning is intended, but I had a long conversation once with someone about the importance of choosing the right viewpoint, which turned out in the end to have been completely at cross-purposes – he meant the importance of picking the right character; I meant the importance of picking the right way of telling the story. I’ve had similar conversations over the years with quite a few people who were “having trouble with viewpoint,” who turned out to be looking at which character to pick when the problem was with which way to tell the story (or vice versa). It doesn’t help that you can talk about each thing in much the same way, or that they vary independently of each other.
For instance, you could tell “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” from the point of view of Snow White, or from the point of view of one of the seven dwarfs, and the story ought to be a little different depending on who the viewpoint character is. To take one obvious matter: the dwarfs weren’t there when Snow White lived in the palace, so the writer who is using their viewpoint can’t show the palace directly. That whole part of the story has to be told to them by this strange woman they find sleeping in their house. You can also tell the story in first-person or third-person, and the story also ought to be a little different depending on which you choose…but it can be Snow White’s first-person, or the dwarf’s first person (and each of the dwarfs should have a slightly different take on the story, too).
Writers have been playing around with viewpoint forever. Showing the same events from the viewpoint of two completely different people, for instance, or telling the same story in camera-eye third-person and then in first-person or omniscient (to show all the things that got left out the first time around). Or using different viewpoint types in conjunction with different viewpoint characters in a multiple-viewpoint novel, to make the differences between scenes and characters more textured and distinct.
Viewpoint looks as if it ought to be easy to play around with. After all, it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between first-person and third-person, or between Snow White and Grumpy the Dwarf. It’s trickier than it seems, though, especially if one type of viewpoint or one sort of character tends to come more easily to a particular writer than others. I wrote my entire first novel in a horrible sloppy-omniscient semi-multiple-viewpoint viewpoint. Realizing there was something wrong (I didn’t have any of the terminology I needed at that point), I decided to stick with the inside of one character’s head for my second novel (tight-third-person, essentially).
It turned out to be one of the two most difficult things I ever made myself do. I learned a lot from doing it, and I am very, very glad I did – tight-third-person became one of my favorite viewpoints – but it was terribly hard. On the other hand, it got me addicted to experimenting with different ways of handling viewpoint, which I think did a lot for my writing skills.
Thank you for posting about this. There’s a novel I am just starting on, and viewpoint (as in first- versus third-person) is going to be really important. I’ll plan to experiment with it as I go!
I seem to have two natural viewpoints – a somewhat distant and ironic omniscient, which gets tangibly more emotionally engaged and partial as the story gathers momentum; and what is probably its flipside, an intensely engaged first person which tends to get more philosophical, discursive, and reflective as it goes along, and starts thinking twice about some of the things it’s seen.
It was incredibly difficult to even begin to address the problems with either of these, let alone to detect the correspondence, until I’d seen and participated in some good discussions about these. Yes, many of these discussions started with one of your posts. 🙂
I do true tight third very rarely, and then it’s very different – notably, it’s usually much terser, and somewhat more action-oriented.
lisa – I’m not quite sure what you mean – is this multiple-viewpoint, with some characters in first-person and others in third, or are you planning on testing out some key scenes by writing them both ways before you decide which one to settle on? Or are you doing something completely different that I haven’t even thought of yet? 🙂
Gray – I found it possible to learn at least some things about viewpoint without having any vocabulary or clear conscious awareness of what I was doing (beyond “messing around with my work”), but it has certainly been every so much easier to figure things out and experiment more deliberately (and get results faster!) since I learned the terms for what I was doing and started talking and thinking about them more analytically. This seems to be one of those things where mileage varies a good deal, however.
I just did some revisions on something written in an camera-eye kind of limited omniscient. I’m now anxiously waiting for my husband to read it, and tell me if it actually works or not.
Writing it was easier than I expected. I just sat down behind the camera and wrote, instead of sitting down beside and/or inside a character and writing. It didn’t feel like I was doing anything new, strange and different.
Doing revisions was harder. They kept coming out as tight third, and I wouldn’t even notice until I was re-reading, and then I’d go “whoops!” and have to re-write the re-writes all over again. 🙁
I wonder if anyone could say your post three times fast without stumbling? 🙂
However, it is very helpful! I never even knew that the character or view you are telling the story would also be view point, as well as first person/second person/omniscient view/ect… Thanks!
Thank you! I’ve been working hard on point of view, lately. It is tricky. Until recently I had never delineated in my mind between a modern omniscient and a more personal third person POV and surprise, surprise I muddled them in my writing too. I love the 7 dwarfs as an example. All the best!
Annie – Welcome aboard! I did my first novel in a muddled omniscient, and didn’t really even start to understand tight/subjective/personal/whatever third-person until much later. I’ll do a post on the varieties of third person in a bit, but I don’t like to do too much in a row on the same topic unless it’s a special occasion.