POINT OF VIEW AND TENSE

There are two decisions to make at the outset of writing a piece of fiction – which tense you are going to be writing in, and from which or whose point of view is the story to be told.

 

Pick and choose, experiment, have fun. But the watchword here is consistency. Once you have chosen a tense and a point of view, be consistent.

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Here are a few pointers on Points of View, or POV, as it is commonly known:

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FIRST PERSON

  • No separation between the character’s thoughts/feelings and the reader

  • Limited to the one character – the protagonist – and can only write what that character experiences.

 

Example:

‘I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.’

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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FIRST PERSON novels:

Great Expectations, Dickens; Jane Eyre, C.Bronte; Huckleberry Finn, Twain; Fight Club, Palahniuk

 

 

MULTIPLE FIRST PERSON

  • Using a combination of first person accounts

  • Accounts can either be about a single incident, or relating the unfolding story

  • A single convincing viewpoint can be difficult to pull off, multiple viewpoints even harder

  • This viewpoint entails the reader having to read between the lines to gauge the relationships between the characters and the unfolding story

 

Example:

The narrative structure of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins:

Page 1-130 – Walter Hartright

Page 131 – 165 – Vincent Gilmore

Page 166-344 – Marian Halcombe

Page 345-405 – Frederick Farlie

Page 406-411 – Esther Pinhorn

Page 412 – Alfred Goodricke/Jane Gould

Page 413-536 – Walter Hartright

Page 537-549 – Mrs Catherick

Page 550-608 – Walter Hartright

Page 609-623 – Count Fosco

Page 624-639 – Walter Hartright

 

 

MULTIPLE FIRST PERSON novels:

The Moonstone, Collins; The Woman in White, Collins; Dracula, Stoker.

 

 

 

FIRST PERSON PERIPHERAL

  • A single viewpoint, but from someone other than the protagonist.

  • As for FIRST PERSON, the viewpoint is limited to the consciousness of the single character’s viewpoint. Being a secondary character, it is possible he will miss much of the action

 

Example:

‘In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.’

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

FIRST PERSON PERIPHERAL novels:

The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey

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NOTE:

ALL FIRST PERSON NARRATORS ARE UNRELIABLE, SO DON’T FORGET TO HAVE A BIT OF FUN WITH THEM, EH :)

 

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THIRD PERSON LIMITED

  • Still limited to a single character's experience, as in FIRST PERSON, but picture the camera following the character instead of seeing through his eyes

  • Narrative voice tells of experience rather than using the character's voice.

  • Pretty much all that changes are the pronouns - 'He/she' etc. instead of 'I'

 

Example:

‘If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

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Some people thought he was cracked and for a time he himself had doubted that he was all there. But now, though he still behaved oddly, he felt confident, cheerful, clairvoyant, and strong. He had fallen under a spell and was writing letters to everyone under the sun.’

Herzog by Saul Bellow

 

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THIRD PERSON LIMITED novels:

Herzog, Bellow; The Harry Potter books, Rowling; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn

 

 

 

THIRD PERSON MULTIPLE

  • A combination of THIRD PERSON LIMITED characters

  • Each character must be easily distinguishable from each other

  • Each character must take turns – often achieved through alternate chapters or other such devices

  • Tricky to get balance of character space on the page right

 

Example:

In Acts of Faith by Erich Segal, characters have alternate chapters

In Ulysses, the characters are intertwined

In Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, characters are titled

 

THIRD PERSON MULTIPLE books

Acts of Faith, Segal; Ulysses, Joyce; Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Rivers

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THIRD PERSON OMNISCIENT

  • The narrator is all powerful – he sees all and knows all – past, present, and future

  • Warning: Beware of Headhopping – jumping from one character to another too quickly, without due consideration. Calm down. Don’t let the power go to your head.

  • If not careful, the THIRD PERSON OMNISCIENT can sound a little pompous.

  • Risks being impersonal

 

Example:

‘If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.’

Middlemarch  by George Eliot

 

THIRD PERSON OMNISCIENT books:

Middlemarch, Eliot; Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut; Lord of the Rings, Tolkein

 

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THIRD PERSON OBJECTIVE

  • A THIRD PERSON point of view that remains OUTSIDE of the character

  • The narrator is restricted to using only dialogue and action to tell the story

  • The narrator has no views on the story he is telling, or any of the characters or their actions

  • Can feel very much like reading a script

 

Example:

The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

‘They look like white elephants,’ she said.


‘I’ve never seen one,’ the man drank his beer.


‘No, you wouldn’t have.’


‘I might have,’ the man said. ‘Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.’

Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway

 

THIRD PERSON OBJECTIVE books:

Hills Like White Elephants, Hemingway; The Maltese Falcon, Hammett

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NOTES ON POINT OF VIEW

Each Point of View has their pros and their cons, mostly separated by degrees of intimacy. For example, a  First Person POV allows the reader access to the deepest, darkest thoughts and feelings of the main character. But that is all. The writer too is restricted by only having access to the depths of a single character.

 

But what depths!

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Each Point of View outside of First Person, right the way up to Third Person Objective or Omniscient loses a little more access to the depths of a character, but in turn allows the writer, and the reader, access to whole worlds.

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Try to imagine POV as a movie camera. In Third Person, the camera is watching the action from the OUTSIDE - sometimes just on the shoulder, as in Third Person Limited, and sometimes way up high in the sky looking down on the world below, as in Third Person Omniscient.

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In First Person, the main character is the camera.

 

TENSE

Once you have your point of view established, the other major decision to make at the outset of your fiction is to decide which tense will be best to tell your story. In terms of fiction, generally speaking, the two options are the past tense and the present tense. Both of these tenses can be combined with each point of view to create the first major building block for telling your story. Try different combinations. See which suits.

 

A useful exercise is to write your first paragraph in one tense, then try writing the exact same paragraph from a different tense. For instance, try writing something in third person then re-write the same passage in first person, or vice versa. If you are still unsure as to which point of view to use, do the same exercise using different points of view It is always illuminating.

 

As always, the main thing . . . lighten up and have fun with it 😊