Whose story is it anyway? (Part 1)

The choice between first and third person has an impact on the way in which a story is read and often how it is constructed. But how do you decide if you want to be up-close or omniscient?

There are many paths through a story but choosing who will be your guide and how reliable they are, shapes the narrative, the style and the tone of the piece. You have the choice between first, second or third; close, limited, omniscient or unreliable. But which is best and when?

In part 1, I am exploring the first-person POV.

A first-person POV can give you a sense of immediacy, an access-all-areas-front-seat to the thoughts and feelings of you most important character but this can be limiting. For many writers, this is the most natural as it harnesses the story-teller in us all with an ‘I saw’. It is seen as the least ambiguous and most accessible POV dispensing with awkward transitions in and out of someone’s head. You have access to their stream of consciousness and can determine how deeply you want to go.

Lots of contemporary fiction uses a shifting first-person POV in alternating chapters which does give the writer the opportunity to develop ideas and situations outside of the consciousness of a single character. It also allows you to review events from multiple angles and in this way it is like an omniscient narrator but up-close. However, this too has its limitations and has to be carefully managed to ensure that you don’t undermine the individual voices.

As an alternative to a shifting first-person POV, you could consider the character and narrator as being separate. WTF? I know, I know – but head over to Emma Darwin’s brilliant blog (This Itch Of Writing: Points of View and Narrators1: Internal Narrators) where she explains it better than I ever could.

As an example (I think), from the scene in Pulp Fiction where Butch pulls up on Zed’s motorcycle.

• As a character – I pulled up and killed the engine. Calling up to her ‘Fabienne, we’ve got to go’. Nothing. ‘Fabienne! Come on honey. We’ve gotta’ go.’
• As a narrator – I pulled up and killed the engine. Calling up to her ‘Fabienne, we’ve got to go’. She was still busy trying to pack . ‘Fabienne! Come on honey. We’ve gotta’ go.’
  He can’t see that she is still packing but he knows it because he is narrating this at a later date.

I can see how this would allow you to break free of some of the singular first-person POV limitations although it feels a bit sneaky.

But is this the right POV?

1. To ensure that everything can be seen by the reader, it has to be seen by the character and often convoluted plot holes appear in an attempt to have one single POV drive the story. As long as you can credibly manage their appearance everywhere, it will work.
2. Developing all elements of a story within the knowledge of the main character can be restrictive so make sure you can feed in anything that happens ‘off-stage’ effectively through dialogue/discovery rather than through exposition.
3. It is hard to assess the reliability of our narrator as we have no means of looking outside them. The narrator in Amy Hempel’s ‘The Harvest’ tells us that she ‘leaves a lot out when she tells the truth‘ and this poses the question about how truthful any single POV can be. You will need to decide early on how truthful your main character will be.
4. Creating a consistent, believable (although not necessarily likeable) voice for each new story can be hard. For this POV to work, your character’s voice must be distinctive so dig into what makes them whole.
5. Emotionally you will only ever get ones ide of the story (unless using multiple first-person POVs) and so may need to consider how other’s emotions can be surfaced without too much telling.

And what about me?

For a very long time I have written in the first-person (present tense – which will be a completely different post) but can now see the limitations of this POV. Too many of my characters are too similar, blurring the lines for me as a writer (not to mention confusing the reader). It will take some time but I am getting more comfortable in another person’s shoes.