Question of the Month
copyright 2000 by Alicia Rasley
Ask me anything.... about writing, that is. It's all I know.
Two new questions! Point of View and reinventing classic plots.
Want some old questions? Click here for an archive.You say you're a purist on point of view– one viewpoint per scene. That's awfully limited. Is there some advantage I don't see to the purist choice?
uestion:
Anna
nswer:
Here's my reason for using this limited choice (mine is generally 1 viewpoint per chapter, sometimes 1 per scene) for all my books (and this book I'm writing in first-person! I can't even change if I want to!)--
You get to know your character's experience of reality, and so does your reader, because you stay long enough in one viewpoint through an experience that we can see the entire reaction, from outside in.
Let's say that Mike, my hero, is keeping a secret about his past. Okay, let's say the secret is, he and her big brother-- no! I won't tell you. <G> Suffice to say he's got a secret, and she doesn't know it, and if she did, it would radically change the way she felt about him.
So we're in Sarah's viewpoint. She and Mike are working together building a playground for the local park, one of those elaborate wooden structures. She's asked him about his life, and he's responded smoothly, but without quite the level of spontaneity and enthusiasm she usually gets when guys talk about high school and their starring role on the football team. That is, he answers
questions but doesn't volunteer information.She wouldn't think this was so odd, but in turn, he's very curious about HER past, encouraging her to talk at length about her huge and crazy family. She thinks maybe she's found the guy for her-- because face it, most men are allergic to your family!
Btw, "deep-immersion point of view" allows you to write sort of in the character's own voice, so that you could write--
Sarah wondered, briefly, intoxicatingly, if this was the man for her. He seemed genuinely fascinated by her family tales, intrigued by the complexity of the interrelationship of 12 siblings, and even attracted to the boisterousness of it all. And that was unusual. Face it, most men were allergic to family. "Family" meant multitudes of meetings, meant going home with her for Thanksgiving, meant... commitment. But Mike-- he didn't seem allergic at all. Maybe, she thought suddenly, I should invite him to the barbecue tomorrow.
Anyway, we're still completely in her head. She invites him. They go to her parents' house for the barbecue. She watches, pleased, as he "does the pretty" with her family and charms them all. But then he asks her where Bill is. Bill is her eldest brother-- in prison.
She supposes she's mentioned him, but of course, since he's the family disgrace she didn't say much about him, and is amazed that Mike remembered that one name out of her 8 brothers and noticed he wasn't there. She doesn't really want to say he's in prison, so she stammers out that he's got a job in an adjacent state. Where, Mike asks. She tells him she doesn't know, and decides maybe
it's time they go check the burgers on the grill. A few moments later, she sees Mike with another of her brothers, and they're having a good time, and she goes up to join the group and hears Mike ask very casually, so don't you have another brother? Bill, I think? Sarah told me about him.She's... surprised. A bit dismayed. She hears Tom awkwardly handle it-- oh, yeah, Bill. Well, he couldn't make it today. He's.. he's on a vacation trip abroad. She freezes. Mike says something like, "Oh, really. Does he
travel a lot abroad? Did he always travel? Like even back in high school and college?" Again, probing too deeply in that casual way... why does he care? About Bill in particular?She hears Tom stammering some answer, and knows she has to act-- She ought to ask him why he cares... but she's afraid maybe she's making too much of it. Maybe she just intrigued him with all her tales of her nutty brothers, and this is the only one missing, so... but no. She knows there's something else behind his questions, but ... if she asks him, it might break the fragile new accord of their relationship. But if she doesn't-- oh, heck, she's making way too much of this. It's no big deal. Mike is just a friendly, curious guy-- but suddenly, looking at his eyes as he scans the crowd, she thinks-- he's not really like that. Not deep down. Deep down, he's isolated. Not full of bonhomie, but... alone.
Okay, so we've gone through this whole scene with Sarah, and we know what Sarah knows. And we also perhaps know a tiny bit more, because... well, we know she's in a novel, and she doesn't. <G> We know that Mike MUST have a secret that concerns Bill. We might even sense that he's sought Sarah out because of this secret. But we don't know what the secret is. We just know he's deceiving her, and he's using her, and that he's not that friendly fella he's presenting himself to be, and we're with her... suspecting the worst, and hoping for the best. But we're enjoying the experience of gradually coming to suspect him a lot more than she is. :)
Now what would have happened to that experience if, after she thinks, oh, it's so nice that Mike is interested in my family-- I'm going to invite him to the barbecue, and does so, we switch to Mike's pov and channel this--
Mike smiled inwardly. He'd gotten what he'd been working for all week-- information about her family, and an invitation to meet them. Of course, he didn't have the information he needed-- her brother Bill's location and more importantly, the location of the jewels Bill had stolen and buried-- but he'd get that. With Sarah's unwitting help, he'd get that.
What would happen is we'd know way too soon, before we could experience that gradual dawning of suspicion, all about why Mike is suspicious. We wouldn't get the full "Sarah" treatment, and we wouldn't be as deeply identified with what she's going through. We'd have another experience-- maybe "Sarah, can't you see he and Bill were partners? That he wants to find Bill and maybe kill him? Why can't you see that?" -- which might or might not be fun... but it would distance us from Sarah, because we're not feeling what she's feeling anymore.
We have far more perspective than she does.Does this mean we don't get Mike's POV? Not at all. Now that we've had this pivotal awakening of suspicion from her perspective, it's probably time to switch to Mike's. Because... well, now she knows something HE doesn't, and something that maybe we want to see him discover-- that she suspects him. She's not just the naive and willing mark she was at the beginning of that last scene. Now that we're primed to suspect him, we're ready to see how long it takes him to figure out that the playing field has a few more ruts in it.
Now it's his turn. So we take the next big event from his perspective. Or, in the "Entry-exit" technique, having entered this event from her pov, we exit on his-- he feels her gaze, turns to look at her, and sees something vanish from her eyes-- what? She comes up and smiles and takes his arm and leads him to the table of food, and all is well, and he thinks, well, here's another chance to ask about Bill, and does so, and ... something's changed. What? She's... farther away somehow. Hmmm. He's suddenly on alert. But then he tells himself that
Sarah is a sweet, naive girl, sheltered by her 8 big brothers, and she really couldn't be regarding him in a calculating manner every time she thinks he's not looking....To me, this is great fun. And it really can only be done if we stay in one pont of view for long enough that we can actually experience the event through that one character. That's just the consideration that matters to me.
I do think there are good reasons to use multiple viewpoints within a scene, but with the kinds of books I write, those reasons usually aren't enough to give up this advantage. But I think that's because I've trained myself to think of this unfolding of reality and experience, and am kind of obsessive about "information control". I am not trying to say there's anything wrong with other choices, but this is something right about this choice. :)
Alicia
My daughter was given the assignment to re-write and re-illustrate her favorite childhood storybook as another children's book. The students are going to have their books bound as real books and then they will be reading their stories to a local third grade class. The book she is using as a guide (and truly was her favorite book) is Amy The Dancing Bear by Carly Simon, Doubleday, October 1989. Do you happen to have any advice for her?
Tracy
Hi-- that's a traditional way to start new stories, to take the old ones and revamp them. But you need to do something different, give a new perspective, something that makes the reader glad to read this new version rather than just re-reading the old one.I'm not familiar with the Carly Simon book, but think about how you can take the plot and situation and try something new. For example, a different protagonist (main character) makes all the difference in the world. Remember that book about the Three Pigs, told from the point of view of the wolf? That was a new way of looking at an old story. Imagine Cinderella with one of the stepsisters as the heroine!
You can also take the story and put it in another time and place to show how the same basic events will vary with a new setting. James Joyce took The Odyssey, the Greek epic, and put it into 1908 Dublin (I think it was 1908!) rather than in the Mediterranean Sea. Recently a filmmaker took Jane Austen's book Emma (set in England in about 1805) and set it in Beverly Hills 90210-- and it was brilliant. The events are very much the same (she tries to fix her friends' lives, and she falls in love with the wrong boy, and the right boy is the one next door), but because she's in a modern day high school, there's a whole new perspective on what it means to be a do-gooder and meddler and matchmaker.
Or you can change the actions of the main character. The Drew Barrymore movie Ever After was Cinderella with a stronger heroine, one who takes actions on her own rather than waiting to be rescued.
Those are just a few ways of transforming an old tale into something new-- and it's a great old tradition! As they said about Shakespeare, you have to know where to steal your plots. :)
Best of luck--
Alicia
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