POV Point Of View by Kevin Murphy, with a challenge.
I should think I learnt about Point of View at school.
Only since 2012 have I been reading particularly in order to improve my writing. That is after I had written my first novel – I just wrote it from the hip – straight out, as a fantasy of my own, so in the first person. It is in the form of Journals two years apart. In the end, I decided to intertwine the two to show what ‘I’ learnt from the first year’s experience. This all came naturally – I knew what I wanted to write and also the time line. It had no flashbacks in the writing … I fabricated the sense of flashback by intertwining the second year after all was written – forward and back in time. It was an enjoyable process and a most satisfying feeling to have sat down and simply written a book.
I wrote it in the first person and only had my own thought s and observations to go on. But I am not omniscient, so that book is flawed. I now know better from having read and watched how stories are told.
I decided to write a crime mystery for my second novel. I have a favourite model – Case Histories by Kate Atkinson – and wanted to avoid as many clichés like the start with Police arrival at a crime scene, but to have a good deal of story before the arrival.
Page 69 became ‘magical’.
For this, I decided to adopt the third person POV so used pronouns SHE/HE, HER/HIS, THEIR /THEIRS, and IT of course, as in ‘it bit me’. I also wanted to tell the reader how characters felt, so the narrator must be like a god – all-knowing – and have full access to all the thoughts and experiences of all the characters in the story. I understood that this is using the third person Omniscient.
However, because it is a mystery, and the reader must be allowed to make up their own mind from clues, the narrator does not tell the reader everything.
I did not intend to write my next book, I wanted to find out what in the end I had to research myself – I had to write the book I needed in order to tell the experiences people had of the WW2 POW camp system. As an aspiring creative writer, I needed to do this in an original way, but I am still telling a history. So I had one character writing in the first person what he found out from others – so other people’s own stories – as he found it on a timeline, with some recall of memories of his own.
The book I wanted to write next is my magnum opus, the great work I have wanted to write for forty years. It is a fictionalised story of my love life, or an autobiographical novel. But wanting to be original, I also needed an original POV. I chose to have an observer, Liam, writing about my experiences, and connecting them with his own. I tell some of my story to him as Tack in an exchange of emails. Liam has a life of his own, which, though his relationship with Tack ended just a year after they left school together, until the first email arrived decades later. So I have three different points of view: Liam’s first person; Liam and Tack have second person memories of each other so can say second person – you; both write their own first person; each writes of the other as him.
It is a rite of passage novel and I have studied that genre and seen a number of films and series. They are told from every point of view including Omniscient. I read a very recently successful author’s three books as they seemed to be telling rites of passage.
Now I am only a short way into the third and am shocked enough by the way she has decided to use her POV, that I am sharing this with you.
I read the opening and some clunking which demonstrate just how even such a great writer can struggle.
Third person POV is historically the most popular, second is the least, and variations and mixtures are being attempted by original literary aspirants. There is a another form of third person besides omniscient and it is less popular. I think because in its purest form it is the most difficult: the narrator knows nothing of what s/he is telling except what happens – it is totally objective – almost. It is called Third Person limited.
In this latest of the three books, the narrator observes situations and in the ‘show don’t tell’ rule, she calls the characters ‘the man’ or ‘the woman’ until she narrates how she and we find out what they called – during introductions and comments. Initially I found reading this was difficult, it was strange to me. It had even made me question my belief that she is the rightfully critically acclaimed literary figure, revealed in her academic background, and the very clever first two books. I loved them and they have already been made into TV series.
Therefore, I offer you a general writing challenge – to write a same short piece in different voices – this can be done with even a pure description piece. Try it – for fun and for literary impact. And when you start a new piece, make a conscious decision what point of view you will tell it from.
Here is a mnemonic to help you
POV POINT OF VIEW PRONOUNS
You can determine the point of view of a story by the pronouns
the narrator uses to describe the central character(s).
I, ME, MY YOU, YOUR SHE/HE, HER/HIS, THEIR /THEIRS
First Person Second Third
Omniscient: Knows all inc thoughts
or
Objective – Knows only what is happening
From the POV of this essay, you don’t need to know who the writer I refer to is, but you may like to know that it is Sally Rooney.
My own published books can be explored by Googling Kevan Pooler – my pen name
Retwords 