POINT OF VIEW

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POINT OF VIEW
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First Person

• First person singular is most natural
• Can be language of persona or character (not
  author). Narrator has different views from
  author.
• E.L. Doctorow a novelist is a person who can
  live in other peoples skins.
• Can explore demons (your own or the worlds) or
  angels (same).

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Narrator

• Distance of Narrator helps tell your story
• Close assumes voices
• Objective records things as they appear
• Dostoyevskis Notes from the Underground (Fiction
  Writers Workshop 103)

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First Person Multiple POV

• Use several first person narrators. Example
  Faulkners The Sound and the Fury I tried to
  tell it again, the same story through the eyes of
  another brother. That was still not it...third
  brotherstill not itmade myself the spokesman.
  It was still not complete.

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Epistolary Fiction

• Alice Walkers The Color Purple writes to God
• Visualize a person and write to her.
• Steinbeck said to find one trustworthy ear to
  talk to.
• Could be a telephone conversation.

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Pros of First Person

• Technically the least ambiguousreader accepts.
• Not science! Tells story subjectively.
• Can avoid standard English (unlike 3rd person
  that requires standard Eng.)
• May use slang, bad grammar, everyday language.
• Direct access to persons thoughts

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Cons of First Person

• Cant look outside or in other peoples heads.
• Implies speaker is alive (except in The Lovely
  Bones by Alice Sebold). So theres less suspense.
• Have to invent voice for each story.

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Third Person

• Omniscient is used infrequently in modern
  fiction. Fiction Writers Workshop 105.
• Limited
• Subjective resembles 1st person narrative but
  uses standard English
• Objectiveobserve what she is doing, but dont
  enter her head.
• Limited omniscient or flexible objective and
  subjective

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• Limited perspective author should not intrude
• Multiple (Writers Workshop 109)
• Objective or theatrical has no authors voice
  that favors any character

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2nd Person

• Author makes believe that she is talking to
  someone, describing what the person addressed is
  doing.
• The you is not the reader, that this approach
  gives that impression. See Pam Houstons How to
  Talk to a Hunter.