All writing is done from someone's viewpoint. This is most obvious in stories that are told in the first person: "It was cold the day I shot my best friend..."
Other stories are told in third person, but are obviously being seen from a particular character's perspective: "Jane couldn't remember the last time she'd kissed a man." Obviously, that sentence shows we're sitting inside Jane's head, even if the words are written in the third person. I once heard this approach called "using a sigma character" and that phrase has stuck with me (even though I've never heard the expression since).
Common viewpoints:
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Some pieces (especially long stories and novels) may be told through multiple sigma characters. For example, The Lord of the Rings is told through the viewpoints of the various hobbits in the story, switching back and forth between hobbits to cover all the action. A single sigma character is used throughout a unified block of text (i.e. throughout a chapter or a distinct section within a chapter). When you reach a new chapter or section, you can change to a new sigma character...but it's almost always a mistake to change sigma characters when you aren't at an obvious break in the text. If, for example, you switch viewpoint characters in the middle of a paragraph, the effect is typically clumsy and confusing.
A few stories are not told from the viewpoint of any character in the story. For example, the famous "third person omniscient" type of story is told by a godlike being who can see into everyone's mind as well as seeing into the past and the future. This doesn't mean there's no viewpoint character—the persona telling the story is as much a character as anyone who's actually in the story. As an example, consider anything by Terry Pratchett: the viewpoint character is Pratchett himself, tossing off jokes, footnotes, and side remarks as he tells the story. In other words, Pratchett creates a persona for himself and narrates the story from that persona's viewpoint.
You may have learned all this viewpoint stuff in Grade 10 English. If so, you probably said, "So what? Why does viewpoint matter? Why can't I just write however I want and forget about artsy-fartsy literary terminology?"
The answer is that viewpoint is essential in winning the reader's confidence and sympathy. Readers experience everything in the story through the perceptions of the viewpoint character(s). A reader's relationship to the viewpoint character(s) is the primary factor determining the reader's relationship to the story as a whole.
If, for example, the readers are bored by a viewpoint character (VPC), they'll find the whole story boring. They won't want to "hang out" with the character; they don't care what the character experiences. On the other hand, if the readers are sympathetic toward a VPC (or, in the case of villains like Darth Vader or Hannibal Lector, if the readers get a kick out of the character, even if the character isn't conventionally likable), the readers will be favorably disposed to the story as a whole.
The #1 most common mistake of beginning writers is screwing up the viewpoint. Here's an example:
Beth watched the second-hand on the office clock work its way up to the 12. That made it a full hour now; she'd give Jeff another five minutes, then she'd call him herself. Yes. Definitely. In five minutes she'd call. She brushed a strand of her fiery red hair away from her piercing green eyes and tried not to look at the clock again.
What part of this is wrong? To me, the phrases "fiery red hair" and "piercing green eyes" are glaring authorial intrusions. The first few sentences give us Beth's point of view; in fact, we're inside her head. Beth's attention is focused on the clock and the call she's waiting for. She's definitely not thinking about the color of her hair or her eyes. (When I brush my hair from my eyes, I don't suddenly think, "Oh hey, my hair and my eyes are brown.")
| Just out of interest, take five books at random off your shelf and see if they actually describe the viewpoint character in the first three pages. I did this myself and found that three of the books had no description at all, one cleverly worked in a single phrase (“a disreputable man in his early thirties” spoken by a constable who was arresting the VPC), and one was written in the first person, with the narrator stating that the two middle fingers on both her hands were the same length. No other details. Personal descriptions aren’t as common as you might think. |
Therefore, the sample paragraph starts off in Beth's viewpoint—in fact, it's trying to make the reader feel the same emotions Beth is feeling—but suddenly, the author jams in some stuff that takes you right out of Beth's head. The spell is broken. You're jarred out of the mood as you stop identifying with Beth and see her from the outside.
Authors usually make this kind of mistake when they think too much. Instead of just putting themselves in Beth's place and telling what Beth sees, they start worrying that they should do more. "Oooo, I'm talking about this woman but I haven't described her yet. Readers probably want to know what she looks like." So the author decides to "help" the readers by subtly sneaking in some details.
Don't. Just don't.
Whenever you screw up the viewpoint, you jerk the reader out of the story. Some readers will be conscious of this; others will simply lift their eyes from the page, not knowing why they suddenly don't have much urge to read the next sentence.
Here's the bottom line: if you present a consistent viewpoint, the story feels professional; if you
mess up the viewpoint, the story feels amateurish. If the viewpoint character is engaging, readers will be engaged by
the story; if the viewpoint is tepid, you've got a real uphill climb.
| I'm not saying your VPCs must be flamboyant or unusual. Of course, they can be...but they can also be normal joes or janes. The point is that they are a reader's gateway into the story—the eyes through which the reader sees—and you must present characters in such a way that a reader is willing to go along for the ride. |
Copyright © 2001, James Alan Gardner