Who is telling the story you are writing? It’s an important choice because it dictates what kind of information the narrator knows, and it reveals the window through which you must tell your story to your readers.

Will your story be told in the first person? For instance:

I had a little lamb, who followed me to school one day. I didn’t have time to take my lamb back home and I thought I could just tie him up between the hedges until recess. Most of the other kids tried to help me keep it a secret from the teachers, but I knew that if Jack Pratt found out, he would try to get me in trouble.

Perhaps you’ll tell it in the second person:

You have a little lamb, who followed you to school. You think to tie the lamb up between the hedges until you can take it back home at recess. You see your classmate Jack Pratt sizing things up. You know he’s going to make trouble.

Or maybe you will tell the story in the third person limited where the narrator can tell the story only through one character’s eyes:

Mary had a little lamb, who followed her to school one day. Embarrassed, she tried to hide the lamb between the hedges, but the smirk on Jack’s face told her that her secret wasn’t going to stay secret for long.

There’s another choice. You can tell the story in the third person omniscient. This way the narrator can see from more than one character’s point of view:

 The day that Mary’s lamb came to school is a day that everyone in town remembers clearly, but with very different opinions on the matter. For Mary, the incident has always been a source of great embarrassment. She maintains that she had no knowledge that the lamb was following her, but only her mother and her teacher believe her to be innocent.

You can also choose to tell the story from two or more characters’ points of view. In section one you can tell the event as Mary sees it, in another section the way the lamb sees it and in a third the way Jack sees things:

Chapter One: “It was amazing to discover my lamb had followed me to school,” Mary told her classmates, “I know that if my lamb could talk she’d say how much she wants to learn to read and write.”…

Chapter Two: Truth be told, I was just kind of on autopilot. I wasn’t really thinking about it. I regretted following her as soon as I saw the door to the brick building. I didn’t want to go inside. I didn’t….

Chapter Three: The day that Mary’s lamb came to school I was already in trouble with my dad. He was missing three dollars from his wallet and he figured I’d taken them. He told me that he’d punish me in the evening when he came home from work. I needed something special for myself, something to make me feel better, and getting Mary in trouble seemed like the perfect thing and it was….

If you’ve done the exercises in the previous articles this month, you have already adopted a point of view. It really isn’t possible to write without one. However, understanding more about the choices you have in points of view and experimenting with them will lead to understanding which of them will ultimately provide the most opportunity for you in developing your story. And it will help you remain consistent in writing from the point of view you choose. Even if you are convinced that you want to write in the first person, doing point of view exercises can help you realize more about your characters.

If you are writing personal essays or memoir, experimenting with various points of view in exercises will help you realize more about your situations and your perceptions and you can then figure out how to evoke these characteristics using the point of view you have adopted. Also, though in memoir, we expect the “I” to tell the story, we can accomplish interesting results employing second or third person.

Samples of the Different Points of View
In most first-person stories, like The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the “I” readers believe the speaker who guides them through the world of the story:

One day last summer my friend Rahim Khan called from Pakistan. He asked me to come see him. Standing in the kitchen with the receiver to my ear, I knew it wasn’t just Rahim Khan on the line. It was my past of unatoned sins.

In some first-person stories, the narrator seems unreliable, as in “Bigfoot Stole My Wife” by Ron Carlson. This story’s speaker addresses us from his home in a rural setting:

So, in a way it was my fault. But what could I have done? Bigfoot steals your wife. I mean: even if you’re home, it’s going to be a mess. He’s big and not well trained.

When I came home it was about eleven-thirty. The lights were on, which really wasn’t anything new, but in the ordinary mess of the place, there was a little difference, signs of a struggle. There was a spilled Dr. Pepper on the counter and the fridge was open. But there was something else, something that made me sick. The smell. The smell of Bigfoot. It was hideous. It was . . . the guy is not clean.

We are drawn into the story without believing the speaker’s interpretation of events is accurate. Although he believes it is true, we don’t think he is right.

Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” is in the second person:

Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off.

The use of the implied “you” in the story creates a sense of poignancy and urgency to escape narrow thinking. Kincaid’s story evokes the way that the speaker is held prisoner by the cultural opinions of others, and we get a glimpse into the impact on girls of such a way of thinking passed vehemently and without reconsideration from generation to generation. This second person form is thought by writers to be tricky because the “you” command is off putting, but in skillful hands and in short works it is often compelling.

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea is an example of the use of a limited third person narrator who can see through the eyes of one character and tell us the character’s attitudes, values and needs:

Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him feel too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt.

Seeing the world from the perspective of the old man makes us feel close to him though we remain at a distance looking into his life being described by someone else.

Jane Austen’s novels, such as Pride and Prejudice, use the third person omniscient point of view to have us become acquainted “objectively” with many characters. This omniscient narrator knows what all the characters think, feel and want:

He addressed himself to Miss Bennet, with a polite congratulation; Mr. Hurst also made her a slight bow, and said he was “very glad;” but diffuseness and warmth remained for Bingley’s salutation. He was full of joy and attention. The first half-hour was spent in piling up the fire, lest she should suffer from the change of room; and she removed at his desire to the other side of the fireplace, that she might be further from the door. He then sat down by her, and talked scarcely to anyone else. Elizabeth, at work in the opposite corner, saw it all with great delight.

When tea was over, Mr. Hurst reminded his sister-in-law of the card-table–but in vain. She had obtained private intelligence that Mr. Darcy did not wish for cards; and Mr. Hurst soon found even his open petition rejected. She assured him that no one intended to play, and the silence of the whole party on the subject seemed to justify her. Mr. Hurst had therefore nothing to do, but to stretch himself on one of the sofas and go to sleep. Darcy took up a book; Miss Bingley did the same; and Mrs. Hurst, principally occupied in playing with her bracelets and rings, joined now and then in her brother’s conversation with Miss Bennet.

Multiple points of view are used less frequently but can be intriguing when the characters have very different knowledge or perceptions. An example of using multiple points of view is Audrey Nifffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, in which the author uses alternating first-person narrations to tell the story of a couple in which the husband has a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably. Here Clare goes to meet her future husband, whom she has already spent much time with, but Henry, in his lifeline, has not yet met Clare.

Clare: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble. I sign the Visitor’s Log: Claire Abshire, 11:15 10-26-91. I have never been in the Newberry Library before, and now that I’ve gotten past the dark foreboding entrance I am excited.

Later in the same chapter, the point of view moves to Claire’s husband:

Henry: It’s a routine day in October, sunny and crisp. I’m at work in a small windowless humidity-controlled room on the fourth floor of the Newberry, cataloging a collection of marbled papers that has recently been donated.”

Multiple points of view can also be used in chapters or sections written in the third person limited instead of the first person.

Your Turn
Choose a scene you already wrote or think of a moment of conflict that will happen in a story or memoir you could write.

1. Start the exercise by writing through the protagonist’s eyes in first person.
2. Next, try telling the same event in the second person as a series of commands the protagonist is asking readers to imagine following in retracing his or her actions in the event.
3. Then write the same scene in third person limited.
4. Try the third person omniscient approach with an impartial narrator telling about everyone involved.
5. Then try multiple points of view in which different characters in the scene alternate telling the story either in first person or third person limited.

You might find it challenging to create points of view that really feel different, and you might also find it challenging to stick to the points of view you are experimenting with, but that’s part of learning this aspect of fiction writing. The differences can be subtle but mastering point of view creates the right texture for your stories. The use of dialog can help you out here. When you write dialog into your paragraphs think about whether you are writing inner thoughts and if the narrator you have chosen is privy to those thoughts. Think about whether the words in the dialog are ones the narrator would have said in the point of view you are adopting or would have heard.

Here’s an example from the story I’ve by now high-jacked from Syd Field’s student, the one about the daughter who takes her mother home from the mental hospital refusing to follow the doctors’ treatment suggestions:

First person
I took Mama home that very day. I couldn’t stand to think of her naked and wandering the halls after shock treatment like the patient I’d seen wandering the halls before the doctors could close the door to their office. They tried to tell me that the patient had taken her clothes off herself because her skin tingled and she was uncomfortable. Whatever. I believed then that I could offer my mom better help at home. I thought I’d learn about vitamin supplements and nutritious food. I thought together we could beat her depression. I felt certain about that.

Second person
You look past the doctors’ open office door and you see a naked middle-aged woman screaming in the hallway. You see she’s wearing only her glasses and they’re askew from the way she’s flailing her arms.

“She’s taken off her clothes herself; the staff didn’t do that,” they tell you. “She’s trying to keep her sensitive skin from bothering her too much.” You can’t believe what you are hearing. You bolt for the waiting room, grab your mother’s coat and then her arm. You hope she can run at least half as fast as you remember when she was running five miles a day. You hope there’s a cab at the clinic doors. You hope she’ll like the guest bed in your apartment, remember the quilt she’d given you when you went to college. You experience a rush of adrenalin you hope will stay with you for months.

Third person limited
Sally sat in the doctors’ office at a small conference table. The two doctors who had been treating her mother for the last six days sat next to one another. With their blue eyes and white coats, they reminded her of albino rabbits she had kept as a child. She wanted to bolt right then, right out the door facing her. What were they going to recommend that she would listen to anyway? She rehearsed her departing lines as they spoke about shock treatment having come a long way in the last five years. And then she heard a sudden scream from the hallway. A woman stood outside the office door, completely naked, arms flailing, glasses askew on her face. That was enough. Sally grabbed her purse and ran toward the waiting area where her mother sat. She was not going to let her mother stay under these doctors’ care one moment longer.

Third person omniscient
Sally was already seated at the round conference table when Dr. Hemmer and Dr. Preen entered the alcove off the waiting room. The two were forced to take seats facing the wall while Sally could see out into the hallway. The doctors didn’t like this arrangement; they didn’t feel in control. And for good reason. Sally was already thinking of her departure. She would get up, primly bid them, “Good afternoon,” and run to her mother, who sat a few yards away in a grey and pink upholstered waiting room chair. Before she got her chance, however, the three of them heard a scream from the hall. Sally saw the naked woman, arms flailing and glasses askew, before the doctors could swivel their heads in her direction and offer their excuses.

Multiple Points of View: First Person
Sally: I am not staying in this place one more second. But I’m afraid Mama isn’t going to be able to walk with me out to the entrance and I don’t want to ask for a wheel chair. I’m afraid they won’t bring one to me. I’m afraid they’ll do everything in their power to make us feel weak, to make us feel we have to stay here.

Mother: Depression hurts. That’s what the ads say. It does. It’s a killer. I can’t lift my legs an inch or two from the floor before they ache. I can’t stand the rubbing of my slacks against my skin. What do they give you in here anyway makes everything hurt more?

****

I have learned from the passages I wrote that each point of view encourages me to visualize the scene I am writing a little differently. In the end, I must choose a point of view that will help me serve the story I want to tell. Since I think I want to tell a story about how this young woman accepts the caregiver responsibility but will not listen to authority and has to find out whether this was a good or a bad idea, I will most likely choose the third person limited or first person point of view. But I know that I will stop frequently to play with points of view to see what else I can learn about my character and the situation before writing in the point of view I’ve adopted for the story.

****

Re-read each of the scenes you wrote. Which point of view seems to tell the story in the most appealing and engaging way to you? Write more from that point of view.

Next week, we’ll consider some of what goes into building strong characters.