You can find a lot of blog entries about point of view
(POV), so I’m not going to spend time going through all that. What I’m going to talk about here is how to
use narrative voice to enhance the POV of your story.
Voice in First Person
Voice is easiest to see in first person stories. Most good first person stories will capture a
little bit of the POV character’s attitude, and convey it to the reader as they
tell the story. You get all kinds of
things, like their philosophy on life, their opinions of people, what they
think of politics, God—you name it. That’s
the whole point. You want to make your
character feel alive, and authentic.
Bring it down to the reader’s level, and make them feel like the point
of view character is their best friend.
My name is Harry Blackstone
Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. I'm a wizard. I work out
of an office in midtown Chicago. As far as I know, I'm the only openly
practicing professional wizard in the country. You can find me in the yellow pages,
under 'Wizards'. Believe it or not, I'm the only one there…
You'd be surprised how many people
call just to ask me if I'm serious. But then, if you'd seen the things I'd
seen, if you knew half of what I knew, you'd wonder how anyone could not think
I was serious.
Storm
Front
Jim Butcher
The first-person stories that really stand out for me are
the ones where I can hear the main character tell the story inside my head. When I’m done, I feel like I’ve sat and
listened to him tell me the story.
So, here’s a short exercise for you. Pick a paragraph or a page from the novel you’re
working on. Re-write the section in
first person, then spice it up with what the POV character is thinking. Make sure you capture the emotional reactions
that they feel, bring out their inner dialogue so the reader knows what their
thought processes are, then punctuate the character’s responses with attitude
and a bit of emotion.
Voice in Third Person
There are two ways you can treat voice when writing third
person. The first way is do exactly what
I described above in first person, but shift every instance of I, me, or we to
he, she, or they. And there you have
it. Here is a really good example from a
book I thoroughly enjoyed:
“Okies.” The Portuguese farmer spat
on the ground, giving the evil eye to the passing automobiles weighed down with
baskets, bushels, and crates. The cars
just kept coming up the dusty San Joaquin Valley road like some kind of Okie
wagon train. He left to make sure all his valuables were locked up and his Sears
& Roebuck single-shot 12 gauge was loaded.
The tool shed was locked and the
shotgun was in his hands when the short little farmer returned to watch.
One of the Fort Model Ts rattled to
a stop in front of the farmer’s fence.
The old farmer leaned on his shotgun and waited. His son would talk to the visitors. The boy spoke English. So did he, but not as well, just good enough
to take the Dodge truck into Merced to buy supplies, and it wasn’t like the
mangled inbred garbage dialect the Okies spoke was English anyway.
Hard
Magic
Larry Correia
Spunky little Portuguese farmer living in California during
the dust bowl. He’s got a 12 gauge
shotgun and a 12-gaugage attitude. He
doesn’t like Oakies.
See how all that just kind of brings out the story
more? The author didn’t waste time
telling how dry it was, or painting a picture of the San Joaquin Valley, or any
of that. The focus stayed on the short farmer
with the shotgun, who was making sure the drifters moved on and didn’t trespass
on his land.
Lots of attitude. I
may like the little guy or I may end up hating him. One way or another, I feel like I am really
getting to know him.
Narrator Voice
Now let’s talk about the other way to put Voice into third
person. Pretend that you’re sitting and listening
a storyteller, who is not one of the characters in the story, but is perhaps
someone who was a first-hand witness to everything that you’re about to hear. In this technique, the narrator becomes
another character within the story. The
emphasis is not so much character attitudes and inner dialogue (though you can
definitely put that in there), but to give the reader a stronger feeling of time
and place:
When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End
announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with
a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in
Hobbiton.
The
Fellowship of the Ring
J. R. R. Tolkien
Rowling is really good at this. You feel comfortable right away, and slip easily
into the story.
Harry Potter was a highly unusual
boy in many ways. For one thing, he hated the summer holidays more than any
other time of year. For another, he really wanted to do his homework but was
forced to do it in secret, in the dead of night. And he also happened to be a
wizard.
Harry
Potter, and the Prisoner of Azkaban
J. K. Rowling
The narrator can be omniscient and know everything that all
the characters are thinking, or he can have no insight whatsoever and just
comment on what the camera sees.
However, you have to be careful that the narrator doesn’t call too much
attention to himself, or the reader will get pulled out of the story.
Summary
So essentially you have two techniques. In the first technique, you focus on
attitudes, personality, and inner thought processes. Your focus is to give your
readers a strong overall impression of what your characters are like, with the
ultimate goal of giving your reader a feeling that they know your characters.
The second technique emphasizes the narrator as an
additional character. The goal is to evoke
the mood and the setting within your story, while your reader sits and watches
the action.
Let me know what you think.
I’d love to examples from stories that you’ve run across.
