![]() Objective: The Reader At The Window, Peering In ![]() How intimate is the reader with the story, the setting, the characters? Once we begin to explode out the multiple modes of POV (objective, subjective, omniscient, etc.) it relates to how intimate the reader gets to be - is she kept close but privy to the confidence of only one character? Is the reader allowed to be all up in the satiny guts of every character in the room? Is the reader locked out? How much access does the reader have to the intellectual and emotional realm? Is she granted psychic narrative powers? 6. ![]() Put different, it becomes a question of intimacy. The question then becomes: is the reader here to witness what’s going on? Or experience it? Third-person asks we witness, first-person allows us to experience (and second-person really utilizes the experiential mode but, again, probably don’t do that). A first-person narrative gives one character the camera - or even goes so far as to cram the camera up their nether-cavern and into their brain and against their eyeball. A third-person narrative has the camera outside the action - maybe hovering over one character, maybe pulling back all the way to the corner. We often think of point-of-view as being the character’s perspective (and it is), but it’s also about the reader’s perspective. Witnessing Versus Experiencing: Where To Place The Camera?Ī novel has no camera because a novel is just a big brick of words, but for the sake of delicious metaphor, let’s assume that “camera” is representative of the reader’s perspective. ![]() To be honest, whenever I read a second-person narrative, I keep thinking in my head, “You are eaten by a grue.” Then I quit reading it because, y’know, grue. It probably works better in short fiction than long (as sustaining that narrative mode will be tricky and tiresome). Sure, a gifted storyteller can pull it off - and hey, sometimes fiction is about risks. In practice it often comes off totally fucking goofy. The second-person mode uses the pronoun “you.” As in, it’s telling the story from the perspective of you the reader. Ha Ha Ha, Second-Person, That’s A Good One Third-person POV is when the story is told with the pronouns “she,” “he,” “it,” “they” ( She opened the window, he peed out the window, they all got peed on by the guy peeing out the window). You already know this but it bears repeating: first-person POV is when the story is told with the pronoun “I” ( I went to the store, I like cheese, I killed a man in Reno not so much to watch him die but more because I wanted his calculator wristwatch). Your uncertainty in this regard will punish the reader, so it’s time, in Glengarry Glen Ross parlance, “to fuck or walk.” 2. One of the first questions you have to ask is, who the fuck is telling this story? Is intrepid space reporter Annie McMeteor telling it in her own voice? Is a narrator telling Annie’s story for her? Is the story told from a panoply of characters - or from a narrator attempting to tell the story by stitching together a quilt of multiple minds and voices? Is the story told by a gruff and emotionless objective character who sits fat like a fly on the wall? You can try writing your story without knowing who the narrator is, but you’d better figure it out by the end of the first paragraph or you’re going to be writing one big, barfy, confusing mess.
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