Graphic by Peg Ihinger
A few years back, I was discussing the importance of viewpoint choice with a young writer. We appeared to be in complete agreement on the subject, right up to the point where he commented that changing the viewpoint of “Snow White” to one of the dwarfs made everything different…and I realized we’d been talking about completely different things. He’d been talking about who to pick as the viewpoint character, and I’d been talking about which type of viewpoint the writer chose to write in (i.e., first, tight-third, omniscient, etc.).
He was still right, of course—who the viewpoint character is frequently changes the story enormously. But so can whether the viewpoint is first-person, second person, one of the various types of third-person (omniscient, camera-eye, tight/filtered/limited third, loose/unfiltered third). If it’s been a while since you thought about viewpoint type, or aren’t sure what some of the terminology means the way I’m using it, I have a too-long-for-a-post dissertation on viewpoint type (with examples) here: https://pcwrede.com/pcw-wp/viewpoint-basics/
What I want to talk about in this (hopefully much shorter) post is what happens when a writer makes different choices about who the viewpoint character is.
The first thing that happens when one chooses a different viewpoint character (in first-person, tight-third person, or over-the-shoulder camera-eye) is that the focus of the story shifts. In some cases, it’s a subtle shift; in others, it’s major. Some fairy-tale retellings force a complete reimagining of the story by telling it from the villain’s viewpoint (Wicked, “Maleficent”). In some cases, the original story becomes setup or background for an entirely new story about the new viewpoint character’s concerns (The Coachman Rat).
Major shifts in the primary plot are particularly common if you shift the viewpoint character in first-person and tight-third-person (especially if it’s a filtered tight-third), but omniscient narrators can also have a personality and concerns that affect what they focus on, worry about, and/or want to achieve during the story, as well as how they tell the story.
The “best choice” for viewpoint character therefore frequently depends on what drew the writer to the story in the first place. If the writer started with a plot element—a goal, like stopping a zombie apocalypse; a story type, like a quest or romance; etc.—then nine times out of ten, the best choice for viewpoint is one of the people who has a major stake in the eventual outcome of the story and who is in a position to affect that outcome.
“Major” in this case means “this is extremely important to them.” It could be because the outcome will be life-changing, because the character has a serious emotional involvement in what’s going on, or just because it’s part of a job they’re dedicated to doing (as in many police-procedural detective novels). Ability to affect the outcome is usually important in plot-centered stories. If the writer’s story is about stopping the giant meteor that’s heading for Los Angeles, the viewpoint character will probably be one of the team who is planning or executing the attempt, not the Uber driver who is just hoping to survive.
On the other hand, if the writer starts off wanting to write a character-centered story about the panic responses of ordinary people to the news that a meteor is going to hit their city next week, the Uber driver may be the perfect viewpoint (not only because they’re an ordinary person with a family, trying to figure out how to survive, but also because of the reactions the Uber driver sees from their passengers).
When the writer begins with a particular character they want to write about, that character is usually the obvious choice for viewpoint, and their concerns, worries, goals, and so on drive the development of the plot organically. Starting with the quirky Uber driver means this is probably not going to be a story about planning a mission to stop a meteor. It may not be about a meteor at all—the plot may develop from picking up an odd passenger, or it may be about scraping up the next tuition payment for the driver’s kid in college. It depends on what that character is most worried about.
Another consideration is the position and personality of the protagonist. Sherlock Holmes is a great protagonist but a terrible choice for viewpoint character. He’s impatient and a bit condescending to people who aren’t as smart as he is (and that’s every single other person in the stories, except for maybe Moriarity and Irene Adler). Worst of all, he always knows too much about what he’s deducing and how he’s deducing it. In a tight-third-person or first-person viewpoint, there would be very little suspense in any of the stories. Using Watson as the viewpoint character allows Holmes to be obnoxious but interesting and fun to watch in action. Watson’s admiration takes the edge off. Using Watson as the viewpoint also maintains the suspense until Holmes chooses to reveal his solution.
Whoever the viewpoint character is, the writer is going to have to live in their head (or have them live in the writer’s head) until the story is done. From a practical perspective, picking a viewpoint character one likes and who is fun to write can make the difference between finishing a long story in good time and struggling or even abandoning it. “Fun to write” doesn’t always mean “nice.” I know several writers whose favorite viewpoint characters are obnoxiously snarky…about all the people and things the authors are too polite to snark about in real life.
“Call that guy over there Ishmael.”
There were a few Sherlock Holmes stories where Holmes was the first-person viewpoint character – and in at least one of them, he complained about Watson’s storytelling being better than his.
My experience as a reader is that first person imposes a much greater demand on the reader liking the viewpoint character. In third person, especially if the story has multiple viewpoints, I can tolerate and even enjoy scenes from the viewpoint of a thoroughly unpleasant character, when the same scene in first person would have me dropping the book, never to return.
Aye—writing from the viewpoint of an unlikeable character is a challenge, to say the least. I have a short story where the protagonist is a borderline sociopath and mildly schizophrenic. Readers aren’t supposed to like him, but I find it hard to get them to *care* about what happens.
Remember that if your viewpoint is tight, you have to choose a character who can understand and explain everything necessary, or else clue the reader in behind his own ignorance. Down to being able to give any necessary scenery.
Having a secondary character be the viewpoint is necessary if the main character remains tragically mired in ignorance, and clarity is needed to understand the tale.
Conversely, potential viewpoint characters can know *too much*. Sometimes slowly building up what the main character knows is a good way to slowly build up what the reader knows, and a character who already knows a lot interferes with this.
I think this may be why my initial idea of doing alternating chapters from the alien ambassador’s POV and her human liaison’s POV didn’t work. She knows a bit too much, or if she doesn’t know, can find out too easily. The liaison’s information flow is more similar to the reader’s. (It has to be admitted, he is also easier to write.)
A good point. This ties in with the Holmes-Watson setup, which we also see, for instance, with Nero Wolfe. But it also applies, I think, in any fantasy tale where we want to keep the magic mysterious and arcane. We never see Gandalf as a viewpoint character: he knows too much, and he’s too familiar with what seems exotic and numinous to the hobbits. It gives rise to a very different tone than a story where the wizard(s) are the viewpoint characters; magic there ends up seeming more like science. (Which is a perfectly fine and delightful scenario too; it’s just a different effect.)
But the story becomes differentiaali, when theres the viewpoint of the villain: BothShrek Who is troll and Maleficent make parodia about fairy tales, but when Shrek is funny, Maleficent is touching. ( For especially for Wolf Lahti)