My online writing course recently looked at point of view and the effect that this can have on a story.
The simple choice is often between first person and third person. The first person narration is fairly self-explanatory, indicated by the use of ‘I’. You write from the perspective of one character all the way through, seeing all the action from their point of view. First person narrators are usually regarded as unreliable because of this – they can’t know everything so the reader’s view is skewed.
Examples of books with first person narrators that I found on my shelves are Notes on Scandal by Zoe Heller, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham and Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides takes a slightly different angle to this approach, using the collective ‘We’ of a group of boys to tell the story of the Lisbon girls, like a Greek chorus.
Third person is referring to the characters as he, she, they, etc. There is a bit of distance with this narration but there are so many variations in here. Is your narrator omniscient or do they only know the thoughts of one particular character? It has a significant effect on a piece.
Or of course, you could go for second person narration – you did this, you did that – implying that the reader is in the story. It’s a rarer form and I can’t recall reading anything lengthy like this. I found this list of books written in the second person. I had heard of Bright Lights Big City mentioned in this light before and I think it might be fun to read one of these.
I was never been a big expert on discussions of style so it’s been interesting to get back into the mechanics of writing.
The exercise for this topic was to write about an incident from our lives in the first person and the same incident from another point of view. For my second piece, I went for second person. You can read wee excerpts below.
I could not have reached them alone. It was twelve feet up the tree in my neighbour’s garden.
Thankfully Lawrence was off work today – he was the one who gave us the bees in the first place. He shakes the branch and I wait underneath with the sheet spread out on the grass.
I am trying to look upwards but the hood makes it hard. The bees are falling.
I am showered by them. They are everywhere, on me, on the grass, on the sheet, in the air, all over my body and head and I try not to shriek at the shock of it all. Try not to panic in this near horror scene. Don’t want to let Lawrence see my fear, must remember what I’m meant to be doing. And don’t forget they are calm in the swarm. I am not stung.
You are waiting for Lawrence to shake the branch that has a swarm of bees on it – your swarm of bees because you failed to stop them swarming again. This is your second swarm in two days. Their staging post is a tree in your neighbour’s garden, because it is always your neighbour’s garden. You saw them leave and saw them land on a branch, twelve feet from the ground. You could not reach them, even by ladder.
You watch as Lawrence shakes the branch and the bees fall towards you. And then there are bees everywhere. They pelt you like hail and you try not to panic, but there are thousands of them, all over you, on the sheet, in the air, everywhere. You fight the panic to complete the mission, folding the corners of the sheet over whatever is there and put it in a cardboard box.
I wrote so much more in the first person – somehow it flowed much easier once I got going, though there were a few paragraphs that headed off into tangents along the way. I thought it would be fun to try second person as I’ve never done it before. It also headed in odd directions and I find it interesting that the voice I found seems a bit critical at times. I definitely felt like I was being told off and if that voice remained, I think writing a longer piece would be incredibly hard work
Which point of view do you prefer? Can you recommend a book with an interesting narrator? I’d love to hear in the comments.
Jane Candlish 
Informative
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