Hey Writer Person

Hey Writer Person - Perspective 🖋

Hey Writer Person,

Lets talk about POV. Point of view....the eyes through which your story is told. 

"Call me Ishmael..." (Moby Dick, First person)

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life..." (David Copperfield, First person)

"He was an old man who fished alone..." (The Old Man and the Sea, Third person)

"Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow...( Anne of Green Gables, Third Person)

There are other perspectives, but these are the two biggies. First person, and third person, and people have FEELINGS about each. I've heard writers SWEAR they would never write in anything but third person. I've seen readers shout into the internet void that if a book isn't in first person they will burn it with fire. I've seen writers claim an audience for a genre or age group will only read one perspective or the other. Its sort of like the pantsers vs the plotters. First person vs Third person, who's side are you on!?!?!?!

So, when a writer sits down to write a story, how do they know what perspective to write the story in? Do they do the perspective they like best? Do they consider the age group? The genre? Time period? 

Forget all that, Writer Person. Write in the perspective that suits the story. It took me a while to come to this. I was sure I was a first person writer. It came easy to me. Made sense to me. So, why fix it if it ain't broke?

And then I wrote a story where my good ol' first person just wasn't working. So nuts to my former way of thinking! Why box myself in!?!? 

The story was an alien book. And first person wasn't working. It wasn't just because the story was told from multiple characters' points of view. You can write very effectively in first person across multiple characters in a book. But for my alien book (a horror sci fi) first person felt too close, too intimate. The main characters were typical teens being confronted with something very scary. Experiencing those scares from inside their heads...felt too safe. Too familiar. Don't get me wrong here -- in horror, sometimes the BEST way to invoke fear and horror in a story is through the main character's immediate perspective. But it wasn't the right way for THIS story. For this story, I wanted the reader to be uncomfortable at all times. I wanted them nervous, even when the characters were going between classes or eating lunch, laughing with friends. I wanted the reader to feel that uncomfortable sense of being watched. And to me, the most effective way to get that feeling across was by writing in third person. By making the reader a participant in WATCHING these teens. By being just a bit outside of them.

But that was the feeling for THAT alien story. What about another alien story? What about a story where an astronaut is alone on a small ship, where there's a parasitic alien monster hunting through the ship's innards and we dont know when or where it will strike? To ME, that's begging for first person. That story wants the reader to feel the cold sweat seeping out our MCs pores. Wants to put the reader in the character's shoes and feel the walls closing in.

Are these alien stories YA? Or NA? Adult? Are they hard sci fi? Soft sci fi? Are they horror sci fi or sci fi action?.......Psssst.....*whispers* I dont think it matters.

Well, at least not right now. Maybe some agent or publisher will come along and say "I think this would be better in (insert ideal perspective here)". But you know what? In my experience, they dont say that if the writer clearly made a CHOICE about perspective from the beginning. They CHOSE the right perspective from jump because they thought about it. They didn't just pluck it out of thin air. 

And the other cool thing about thinking about the perspectives we choose to tell a story in, the role it plays within the story, then we can really PLAY with perspective.

Have you read a story in first person plural? "We remember what happened that day". What about second person? "You remember what happened that day". What about a book that alternates chapters between first and third? Third and second? First and second? These are choices. These are decisions that make the story the best it can be. Because the perspective SERVES the story.

What about you, Writer Person? How do you know what perspective serves your story?