Glad to see you continue with this POV theme because it is one of my favorite aspects of creative writing, whether fiction or non-fiction. Even though my work is written in third person past tense as per popular genre fiction conventions, when authors dare to bust out of this POV box, it's pretty neat and really adds energy to the readers experience, IMO.
Wolf Hall is my favorite all-time novel precisely because Mantel turned the third person convention on its head by using it in the present tense. It is astounding how immediate the writing is. How the reader actually "becomes" Thomas Cromwell; moreso than with first person. I've always thought immediacy of character experience for the reader is the pinnacle of storytelling and she nailed it.
Thank you for your mention in today's post. Great discussion.
Bearing in mind I’m focused on personal improvement/business change as my column. I’ve had some helpful tips from Alison Acheson about the use of “voice”. Specifically aiming at some 4th wall to audience commentary with humour. I’d be interested in any thoughts on the relationship between voice & person. Ie 1st, 2nd, 3rd… & how it could work.
In my experience, it's simpler to convey a character's 'voice' in 1st person. Every sentence can be laden with it. 3rd person is more challenging, but also capable of more subtlety. It's a blend of the author's voice and the character's, and you can drift in and out of each of them.
Personal improvement/self-help/instructional stuff often goes into 2nd person, because it's directly addressing the reader. Makes sense, although it's easy to slip into being prescriptive, I find. Or making assumptions about the reader.
Very helpful. It's hard to move from screenwriting to fiction writing. POV and verb tense change in fiction (well, you have a choice in fiction while you don't usually have on in screenwriting). I've gone back to your stories to get a feel for something modern as I'm working on my serial. Thank you!
Thanks for the shout out here. With fiction, I do tend to write in first or third. I don't have an exact formula - I think it just depends on how well I hear the voice / how detached I want the narration to be. Both have merits. But either way, I think varying voices is more important than which POV you choose.
Ursula K. Le Guin's book, Steering the Craft, has a few chapters about POV that have given me confidence to experiment with different POV. Mostly I write in 3rd person (limited), but have recently added 1st person and 3rd person (objective).
Fascinating, Simon. As an untrained writer of non-fiction, this reminds me of using third-person narrative in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, to create psychological distance.
Fascinating topic! I love meta & admire writers who do weird things with POV but for my own stories, I usually stay in one POV & that's usually first or third person, past or present tense. I like how first person & present tense have gotten more popular in fantasy & sci-fi. My stories usually go into individual characters & personalities quite a lot so I enjoy using very immediate POVs that take us into their heads.
I'll never forget one short story I read where about 3/4s in, the author suddenly addressed the reader directly & tried to get them to stop reading the story, otherwise something terrible would happen to the protagonist. There were some blank pages... then the terrible thing happened. Wouldn't it have happened if I had stopped reading? (Admittedly, this would work much better in a video game. Or an interactive story with multiple endings. But it was still super jarring in a good way!)
Oh, that's fun! The game Bioshock tried a similar thing, and was very clever - but also only half-successful. As a commentary on player agency it was fascinating, but it fell victim to its own criticisms. For my money, Spec Ops: The Line was more successful: highly unreliable narrator, deliberate absence of agency at key moments and a surprisingly effective anti-war message within a war game.
Oh, that sounds great too! Also considering that the topic of war that makes it viable, even expected to introduce some hard lessons. (What's war & death if not an absence of agency etc.)
Fascinating. I'm on draft 2 of my first novel, which has two parts - First one is written in 1st person present tense (by the protagonist) and the second part is 3rd person past tense, from the POV of multiple characters including the protagonist. It seems to be working. Do you know of other writers who have used this approach? What are your thoughts about it? Thanks.
Glad to see you continue with this POV theme because it is one of my favorite aspects of creative writing, whether fiction or non-fiction. Even though my work is written in third person past tense as per popular genre fiction conventions, when authors dare to bust out of this POV box, it's pretty neat and really adds energy to the readers experience, IMO.
Wolf Hall is my favorite all-time novel precisely because Mantel turned the third person convention on its head by using it in the present tense. It is astounding how immediate the writing is. How the reader actually "becomes" Thomas Cromwell; moreso than with first person. I've always thought immediacy of character experience for the reader is the pinnacle of storytelling and she nailed it.
Thank you for your mention in today's post. Great discussion.
Bearing in mind I’m focused on personal improvement/business change as my column. I’ve had some helpful tips from Alison Acheson about the use of “voice”. Specifically aiming at some 4th wall to audience commentary with humour. I’d be interested in any thoughts on the relationship between voice & person. Ie 1st, 2nd, 3rd… & how it could work.
In my experience, it's simpler to convey a character's 'voice' in 1st person. Every sentence can be laden with it. 3rd person is more challenging, but also capable of more subtlety. It's a blend of the author's voice and the character's, and you can drift in and out of each of them.
Personal improvement/self-help/instructional stuff often goes into 2nd person, because it's directly addressing the reader. Makes sense, although it's easy to slip into being prescriptive, I find. Or making assumptions about the reader.
Thanks. Stuff to think about
Very helpful. It's hard to move from screenwriting to fiction writing. POV and verb tense change in fiction (well, you have a choice in fiction while you don't usually have on in screenwriting). I've gone back to your stories to get a feel for something modern as I'm working on my serial. Thank you!
Thanks for the shout out here. With fiction, I do tend to write in first or third. I don't have an exact formula - I think it just depends on how well I hear the voice / how detached I want the narration to be. Both have merits. But either way, I think varying voices is more important than which POV you choose.
Ursula K. Le Guin's book, Steering the Craft, has a few chapters about POV that have given me confidence to experiment with different POV. Mostly I write in 3rd person (limited), but have recently added 1st person and 3rd person (objective).
Fascinating, Simon. As an untrained writer of non-fiction, this reminds me of using third-person narrative in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, to create psychological distance.
Fascinating topic! I love meta & admire writers who do weird things with POV but for my own stories, I usually stay in one POV & that's usually first or third person, past or present tense. I like how first person & present tense have gotten more popular in fantasy & sci-fi. My stories usually go into individual characters & personalities quite a lot so I enjoy using very immediate POVs that take us into their heads.
I'll never forget one short story I read where about 3/4s in, the author suddenly addressed the reader directly & tried to get them to stop reading the story, otherwise something terrible would happen to the protagonist. There were some blank pages... then the terrible thing happened. Wouldn't it have happened if I had stopped reading? (Admittedly, this would work much better in a video game. Or an interactive story with multiple endings. But it was still super jarring in a good way!)
Oh, that's fun! The game Bioshock tried a similar thing, and was very clever - but also only half-successful. As a commentary on player agency it was fascinating, but it fell victim to its own criticisms. For my money, Spec Ops: The Line was more successful: highly unreliable narrator, deliberate absence of agency at key moments and a surprisingly effective anti-war message within a war game.
Oh, that sounds great too! Also considering that the topic of war that makes it viable, even expected to introduce some hard lessons. (What's war & death if not an absence of agency etc.)
Therapeutic voice
I first ran across the switch from omniscient to first person in *From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler*
Fascinating. I'm on draft 2 of my first novel, which has two parts - First one is written in 1st person present tense (by the protagonist) and the second part is 3rd person past tense, from the POV of multiple characters including the protagonist. It seems to be working. Do you know of other writers who have used this approach? What are your thoughts about it? Thanks.