The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view

“The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.” ― Brooks Atkinson
CHOOSING THE POINT OF VIEW 

for your protagonist.
By Peter la Trobe

Let's think about one of the questions that writers – particularly relatively inexperienced writers – often forget to ask themselves: 

Have I chosen the right point of view? 

Perhaps I should rephrase that. Have I chosen the best possible point of view to bring my story to life?

Of course, you can’t write a story without having a point of view , even if you have never thought about it before.  There it is, right in the very first sentence of your manuscript: 

‘As Jane woke up, all the events of last night rushed back to mind’. 

That’s a third-person point of view – your reader is a fly on the wall – a parrot on the shoulder, perhaps - watching somebody called Jane wake up. But there’s more too. The reader isn’t just watching the action, they’re participating  – they are sharing the character’s thoughts. They know something significant happened last night.

‘As I woke up, all the events of last night rushed back to mind.’ 

That’s the same sentence from a first-person point of view. The story is being told by the main character, the protagonist. This time the reader is getting a first-hand account. They will read on in order to let the protagonist tell them what did happen last night. But, did you notice – we don’t yet know if the ‘I’ telling the story is male or female, or if that’s important, and we certainly don’t know the narrator’s name.

You can already see that the point of view you choose is going to influence the way in which you can develop your story. First person point of view often gives a sense of immediacy – as a reader you are encountering the twists and turns of events with the protagonist.  But sometimes less experienced writers find writing as though it is their own experience inhibits them. 

If the ‘I’ in your story is a Soviet spy, an axe murderer, or a trapeze artist it’s not impossible - although it is unlikely - that you’re writing from personal experience. But if the protagonist is involved in something closer to home – the child of an alcoholic, perhaps, or the victim of a scam, witness to a bad motorway accident – then the friends or relatives who will almost certainly be your early audience and critics might begin to wonder. You’re the writer, you’re in charge, you can change that: make the protagonist imaginary – if you’re a blue-eyed girl tell the story as a brown-eyed boy. Ok, that’s an obvious exaggeration, but I’m sure you get the point.

You may discover, once you escape the idea that a first person story is a narration of your own experiences, that you can take readers on explorations of wildly imaginative, exotic worlds and adventures that are given extra reality because the story is being told by somebody who’s been there.  A mer-person perhaps, an extra-terrestrial, an animal. 

The only thing you have to remember is if you choose to tell the story from a first-person point of view, you must not tell the reader about the other characters’ thoughts: after all,  you, the writer, cannot possibly know what the people around you are thinking. 

Let’s go back to the third-person point of view – you know, where we were watching Jane waking up and could tell what she was thinking. The advantage for the writer is that you can, if you wish, depict every shade of your protagonist’s emotions and reactions. The only difficulty with that is to avoid switching points of view. Such interruptions momentarily snap the reader out of the imaginary world the author has created, whilst they work out what’s happened.  

You need to pick your point of view carefully. They all have advantages.

Here’s a thought to finish on: take the first paragraph of your story, and see how it reads if you change the point of view. You could be surprised: sometimes seeing your story from a different angle makes it sparkle. 

That’s it, for. I hope you’ve found this helpful. What’s the best point of view? The one that helps you bring your story to life.

Thanks for reading. ‘bye for now.

Come and meet our witty...

Peter la Trobe

My life has been spent writing. Contributor, then editor of the school mag; later, as an advertising agency copywriter, I worked on ad campaigns promoting cars, pharmaceuticals, food products, electronics - and much else besides. It’s not all glamour. Somebody has to write the instruction manual – you know, the one piece of literature nobody reads. If it helps to pay the mortgage, I’ll write it. But, if you did read it, you’d be able to follow it. No incomprehensible technical guff. That’s the sort of writer I am. A qualified Public Relations practioner, I specialised in marketing strategies for retail organisations. As a free-lance journalist I covered retail and industrial developments for a leading group of local newspapers. Like I said, writing is not all glamour. My work has appeared in a number of anthologies. And a collection of my short stories, under the title ‘I Killed and Angel’, is still out there. I’ve been a member of Harlow Writers Workshop for several years, and I’m currently studying for a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing with the Open College of the Arts, part of the University of the Creative Arts.

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