Unusual Points of View

Most writers are familiar with 1st and third points of view and their variations. But have you ever experimented with alternative points of view? Below are several less used points of view, what I call “unusual points of view.” Try mistreatment these once you’re blocked or you want to try thing new.

Second Person Point of View

Second person can be written as “you” singular or plural. Josip Novakovich in FICTION WRITER’S WORKSHOP says: “The author does believe he’s talking to someone, describing what the person self-addressed is doing. But the ‘you’ is not the reader, tho' sometimes it’s hard to get rid of the impression the author is addressing you directly.”

Here’s an excerpt from Italo Calvino’s 1st chapter of If on a winter night a traveler. I think it’s one of the most attractive examples of second person point of view. But if the author is not speaking to the reader…then to whom? You be the judge.

You are simply about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel ever different thought. Let the earth about you fade. Better to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell others right away, “No, I don’t want to watch TV!” Raise your voice—they won’t hear you otherwise—“I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!” . . . So here you are now, available to attack the 1st lines of the 1st page. You prepare to recognize the clear tone of the author . . .

Most stories told in second person are written in the present tense, so the reader identifies directly with the character. You’re on for the journey, being an active part of the story. I see this excerpt feeling as if the author sees me and is talking directly to me.

Like different points of view, second person has its pitfalls. One of them is keeping the reader’s attention through the whole story (in this example, an entire novel). Several readers don’t like to be told what they’re thinking and doing and saying. Sometimes this point of view has a tendency to sound too print media or like a recipe.

First Person Collective Observer Point of View (or third person plural)

In this point of view the reader follows the motions and acts of one person through a group’s viewpoint. Usually, being in the group acts as speaker but doesn’t have his/her own identity. Commonly this is reserved for small town narratives, wherever an individual lives under communal scrutiny. Schools, towns, churches, or families focus on a private secret person in conflict with the community. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” Emily is the character scrutinized by the residents of Yoknapatawpha County.

Here is an excerpt from the story which occurs after she is put in the ground and what “we” discover.

For a long patch we simply stood there, looking at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long deep sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even as the grimace of love, had cuckolded him . . . Then we detected that in the second pillow was an indentation of a head. One of us raised thing from it, leaning forward, that fast and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

Third Person Plural Observer (“They”)

Here the perceptions of a critical situation comes from a group of characters who watch the protagonist. It could be a group of boys look a immature girl undressing in her window as in: “They saw her in the window.” The excerpt from “A Rose for Emily” power as easily be written in the point of view.

First and Second Combined

This point of view is commonly used in love poetry, and seldom in fiction. In this example from “The Roaring Bull and Electra,” a short story, it’s an adult female offspring speaking to her father too ill to speak for himself.

Today the new Roaring Bull was christened, and I wanted you to be next to me as you had been, twenty years ago . . . Now you can’t speak. You can barely swallow. I used to feed you fusible ice cream and stroke your throat to get it down because I thought the taste would-be cue you of our ferry rides . . .

First and Third Combined

This point of view is used for characters with a personality dichotomy, to look at the same character from several angles. In “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story” Russell Banks does this to portray a egotistical man’s affair with a homely woman.

I felt warm by her presence and was sexy and bold, a little ambitious even.

Picture this. The man, tanned, limber . . . enters the housing behind the woman.

The switch to third person is the character taking a look at himself, the way one power want to see himself projected onscreen. The shift in point of view power be annoying to the reader, so it’s important to establish this shift pattern early in your story.

Try this exercise:

Choose one of your favorite stories and rewrite a scene from it in one of the “unusual points of view.” You power want to try editing one of the excerpts above. In your exercise show the innovational passage, then your changed point of view (or points of view). You get extra brownie points if you write a scene from scratch. This is a challenging exercise, but it as well shows you don’t have to be limited by variations of 1st and third person.

Let go, breathe deep, and have fun with it!

 2004 Rita Marie Helen adams keller

About The Author

Rita Marie Helen adams keller has written and publicised many stories, articles, and essays. Her 1st novel, Living in the City, was free Sep 2002 by Booklocker.com, Inc. She supported the Irrational motive Scribendi Creative Writing Workshop (www.cacoethes-scribendi.com) in 1999.

This article was denote on Gregorian calendar month 12, 2004