Point-of-View: Our Inner Control Freak

It would be nice to be able to say there is a rational explanation for everything, then be done with the matter, confidant that all the many things you cannot explain will continue to take place or not take place in complete innocence of or disregard for the rational explanation. A rational explanation is a sort of neural spreadsheet, plotting out the orderly progression of forces that result in a particular behavior. Water will boil if heated to two hundred twelve Fahrenheit degrees. If it does not, we may assume the water is somewhat above sea level or that the liquid may not be significantly water but rather water mixed with something else. In the open universe, water does not need to "know" this information in order to boil, it will boil at 212 because, as the taxi driver explained to Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, relative to ducks in ponds during the winter, "it's their nature."

Point of view enters the picture with the introduction of rational behavior. Thus does our control freak nature want to take command of the universe; we see the reason for the sun rising in the east and setting in the west and thus does the sun, our sun, as if by permission from us, continue to rise in the east and set in the west.

Story reassures us because there are progressions of facts that appear to explain the behavior of things--us included--on this planet. We lurch through our days, sometimes painfully aware of how much we take for granted, other times painfully aware of how much we do not know about the way things work in this universe. Sometimes, when story has too many ambiguities in it, we snarl the snarl of disapproval because we are already aware of how beyond our control things are. Other times, such as the times when you happen to be reading such eighteenth- and nineteenth century works as Ivanhoe, you are aware of the causal elements being packed in by the author and related as much by the author as by the characters. In its way, such managed reading, which is to say reading that has not evolved beyond its time, makes us impatient because it reminds us of our parents and elders and other teachers, intrusively reminding us of things they wanted us to know.

We become impatient in such cases because we have already, we think, learned these lessons and do not want to hear them repeated to us in a voice other than our own or, if we are truly curious, through the voices of characters who are, after all, creations of authors whose voices we have come subjectively to admire.

Is it fair to suggest that the truths and working descriptions we internalize best are those freighted in our own voice or in voices we have come to respect on a peer level?

You think so.

Says Who?

point of view--the character or characters in a story through whose eyes and other senses the reader learns and intuits the dramatic action; the teller of the tale; the biased, human filter through which the dramatic information is transmitted.

The writer achieves a significant part of willing suspension of belief from the reader when dramatic forces cause the reader to forget that the story is emerging directly from the writer and that, in fact, the story is pure artifice. This WSOB is well achieved by artful introduction of one or more characters who are telling the story, ASAP. As in:

"My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip."

The first sentence would actually fit as a Twitter entry. The second sentence pretty well nails the character and his point of view in place, where it remains, a resoundingly successful example of a writer assuming a persona and that individual's traits and experiences in order to relate the details of his encounters variously with his snarky sister, her jewel of a man-for-husband, with an escaped convict, a cantankerous old lady, and a spoiled-if-beguiling young woman named Estella. So gifted a public speaker was Pip's creator that he could have chosen to tell the story of Great Expectations in his own voice. You could profit from asking yourself why he did not, then consider your answer.

There is often some practical reason for a particular character or set of characters having been chosen to narrate a story, sometimes as simplistic as Ahab's case in his selection to be narrator of Moby-Dick; he was the only one who survived the events of the novel. Mr. Stephens was chosen to narrate The Remains of the Day because of his resume as head butler, but also because of his not getting 'it," which is to say because of his naivete. Thus was the writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, constrained to keep Stevens's naivete in mind at all times and to constantly be aware of the need to render it plausibly.

Who is telling your story, and why?

Benjy Compson was chosen to narrate a portion of The Sound and the Fury because the wiring of his intellectual and reasoning processes were some degrees away from the intellectual and emotional outlook of other POV characters. No doubt about it, at some point during his writing of the story, William Faulkner recalled the Shakespearean line from Macbeth"...it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing." But Faulkner new the need to have larger fish to fry than the mere perception of Benjy as an idiot; Faulkner wished the reader to compare Benjy's vision of reality with that of the other characters in the novel. Benjy is then by no means a case of a writer thinking, Aha, I'll tell a story from the point of view of an idiot. The novel is a complex comparison of attitudes, sensitivities, and behavior in which Benjy emerges as an ironic symbol of the most admirable sort.

Once again, why have you selected a particular person or combination of persons to relate your narrative? What effect will your choice have on the other characters? What effect will your choice have on the reader?

Monday-morning quarterbacking, instant replay, and perspective

retrospect--looking back at a moment or era in time; a point of view containing information or knowledge of the consequences of past action; a narrative or personal attitude arrived at after the fact; Monday-morning quarterbacking.

A significant use of retrospect comes when the details of a novel or story are filtered through one or more characters giving historical versions of a story, allowing them to reflect attitudes or subtexts of regret, pleasure, or moral superiority over past events. This use of retrospect becomes one of the writer's first major decisions, coming right after who or whom the narrator(s) will be. The issue now becomes at what rate of awareness to set the story; is it meant to seem as though it is taking place in the immediate present or at some remove, after all the issues and permutations have been sorted out. Thus the necessary decision, was the narrator naive, reliable, or unreliable then? And,indeed, is the point of view is retrospective, has the narrator remained naive, reliable, or unreliable?

Huckleberry Finn was told from the narrative eye of a young boy. One of the few anomalies is the likelihood of his being literate enough to have composed any narrative in the first place. His honesty and pragmatism quickly override any tendency to suspend belief. His approach to all matters seems appropriate for a street- and country-wise person of his age, a pragmatism that makes him all the more likable and seemingly truthful. Certainly he is in touch with his emotions. Would Huck have been more convincing in his depiction if events if he'd picked up the Conklin fountain pen ( the one with which Mr. Twain began the first draft) in his forties or fifties to reflect back on the events? Most likely not--even more likely, the story would not have been so resonant. It needed, in fact, to be told as it was, as though it were happening to a twelve-year-old boy in the immediate now. As readers, we "forgive" him his literary abilities as we jump directly into his explanation of the device by which he came into being in the first place, "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer..."

Twain uses in the opening sentences a stunning device that actually paved the way for Primo Levi and his frequent trespasses into postmodernism. "...but that aint no matter," Huck assures us, and indeed it isn't, thanks directly to that street-smarts honesty. In the second sentence, Huck tells us, "That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly-- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before." By the first paragraph, we're in, willing at that early point to trust Huck's retrospective account of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Shortly after the retrospective account begins, Huck tells of Aunt Polly's sister, Miss Watson, "took a set at me now with a spelling-book." Thus between Miss Watson and the soon-to-appear Tom Sawyer is Huck put on a collision course with literature. Mostly Huck's street smarts win out and mostly we are left with the precious relic of him at the age where he lit out for the territory ahead because Aunt Polly and Miss Watson wanted to civilize him, and he couldn't stand it.

The focus from immediate present to retrospective shifts one hundred eighty degrees as the unnamed narrator of Daphne DuMaurier's unforgettable Rebecca addresses us as directly as Huck did: "Last I dreamt I went to Manderly again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gatge leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me." We now know exactly where we stand in regard to the framework of time, and we have as yet no reason (nor will we have any) to doubt the reliability of the narrator. True enough, she is in at the payoff, telling us, "...it was my lack of poise that made such a bad impression on people like Mrs. Danvers. What must I have seemed like [to Mrs. Danvers] after Rebecca...?" This retrospective assessment makes her all the more believable a narrator. Unlike Huck, who wants to light out for the territory ahead, this individual is sitting on the veranda with her loved one. "I fix my dark glasses, reach for my bag of knitting. And before us, long as the skein of wool I wind, stretches the vista of our afternoon."

In law and in writing, the perspective of timing and intent are everything. Scenario One: Bill goes to the neighborhood pub to collect a bet from Fred, who denies having made the bet in the first place. The two get into a scuffle in which Fred, alas, does not emerge alive. Scenario Two: Bill takes his gun with him as he goes to the neighborhood pub, intending to teach Fred a lesson if Fred decides once again to renege on a bet.

Worst case in Scenario One would be justifiable homicide. In Scenario Two, worst case is murder.

The differences between retrospective and present time perspectives are significant, just as significant, as Mark Twain reminds us, as "The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

Butting in Line

intrusive author--an anomaly in narrative where the author intrudes on text, upstaging one or more characters; dramatic equivalents of footnotes being wrenched into the text; muddying the waters of narrative voice by allowing the author to appear in scenes with characters.

Unless there is some contextual or stylistic reason for the author or authorial spokesperson to appear in a story as, say, the Stage manager does in Thornton Wilder's Our Town, or in a deliberate and managed backstory, as in Junot Diaz's opening chapter to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the message is clear: author stay out. Delegate messages and devices to characters. Spend time considering what things you want to bring on stage, then spend more time considering ways to dramatize those messages. NB: dramatize means provide for readers to infer.

Writers such as Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, D.H. Lawrence, C. S. Lewis, George Sand, and William Makepeace Thackeray, although wildly diverse in their political and social attitudes, have remarkable and distinctive voices, enhanced to a degree but adumbrated to a greater degree by their incessant asides and obsessive commentary on what their characters happen to be doing at a given moment.

Writers such as Elmore Leonard, Louise Erdrich, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Tobias Woff, Christopher Moore,and Joyce Carol Oates do not steal scenes or upstage; they become prisms through which their trained and vivid imaginations cast a spectrum of color in which the beam of Reality is refracted. The reader is allowed to discern, to see without being yanked by lapel or shirtwaist, argued into compliance.

Hint: You have a favored author who is booked into a local venue to speak on his or her approach to storytelling. You have purchased a ticket for the event, arrive early to secure a strategic seat, and now await your anticipated pleasure, only to discover that there are immediate, disagreeable complications. Your author is to be introduced by a local literary wannabe who is by no means your favorite person. The program begins with this wannabe immediately confirming many of your reasons for disliking him; he spends a good ten minutes explaining how anomalous it is for him to appear on the same stage with your favored author, then lurches through another ten minutes of describing how his own work fails to rise to the level of tonight's guest, then perhaps another ten minutes of descriptive apercu of the favored author's work. The introduction is now well on its way into an hour's duration, during the course of which you see the favored author, perhaps sipping nervously from a bottle of San Pelegrino, beginning to look as uncomfortable as you feel. Will you ever get to hear your favorite author?

This is the feeling the reader will have brought along with the nourishment of grudge if in your stories the author appears to intrude. There are, however, novels and short stories told as if from the author's point of view, example Heart of Darkness, in which the character Marlowe could be argued to be Joseph Conrad's spokesperson. These are done with great deliberation and are not meant to be considered as authorial intrusion. The opening chapters of James Michener's Hawaii and Centenial are unabashedly (and successfully) told from the authorial point of view. The opening chapter of Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is seen through the authorial point of view, or perhaps not, perhaps it is through the character Yunior, or perhaps Yunior is Diaz' spokesperson. In neither case, the Conrad nor the Diaz, does the reader feel the frustration of being lectured to at the expense of the story, waiting to be read.

goes without saying--a frequent comment left in the margin of a manuscript by a skilled content editor; a matter or issue already made obvious by story points; a response so obvious that it does not have to be explained.

"If you come any closer, I will shoot," she said menacingly.

The place to cure GWS responses is on the manuscrupt, before it is sent out into the world.


over the top--an expression meant to imply an action or concept that has been overloaded with theme, symbolism, and perhaps even verbally excessive; activity done to the extent that the reader will resent its detail; a dramatic beat performed as if on steroids.

Thinking it Over, Family Matters

retrospect--a vision of a character, place, or situation from a later point in time; a revisit to a person, place, or situation with the implicit promise that at the very least the reader will learn something not known before, and possibly one or more characters will similarly profit.

Returning to a past event is a springboard to an emotional revelation; a character who revisits a situation will now have awareness to see what had not been visible before, to understand the implications of responses or treatment not understandable before. In such retrospect it is possible for a character to recognize lost opportunities or behavior that will cause time-released humiliation.


family--a group of characters related by blood and/or adoption, conventionally considered a mother, father, and one or more children, but easily taking grandparents into the equation or, in contemporary times, a single mother and her children, a single father and his children; a potentially diverse group involving one or both spouses having remarried, bringing step-children into the family equation; a parental pairing of a gay couple with children from a previous heterosexual marriage; a parental paring of a gay couple with adopted or artificially inseminated children.

By their very individual nature, families may be supportive, neglectful, abusive, eccentric; they supply energy through direct action or backstory that has direct influence on all who live within their borders. Families are believed by some to have procreation as their primary goal, followed by the raising of young to the point of their own independence. This view is dramatic in itself since there are substantial numbers who see the function of family as entirely different.

Family gatherings, whether to celebrate holidays, indulge such rituals as funerals, weddings, and anniversaries, are frequent sources of story, suggesting that plots are not necessary; there is already ample story within every family.

Interior Monologue

interior monologue--the soliloquy/conversation a character has while engaged in a dramatic narrative; relevant sensory and thought process from which readers may adduce and deduce a character's intent, motivation and, if necessary, doubt; a supplement to narrative from any point-of-view character, simultaneously advancing story and developing the reader's familiarity with the narrator.

Unless the design of a story allows or calls for the intervention of authorial comment, all narrative is seen as originating with the point-of-view character. Thus "John was waiting at the mailbox for at least a half hour before the mailman arrived," while yet simple narrative,becomes translated by the reader to extend beyond mere stage directions, spilling over to reflect John's eagerness to get what he anticipates will be included in today's delivery. To add an intensifier of interior monologue to the narrative, the writer might render, "Was today the day it would arrive, John wondered." And to nail it all down with dialogue, John might well greet the mailman with the spoken observation, "You're running late today."

Interior monologue is thought process; in order to be successfully dramatic, it must be made to seem action based. The best way to accomplish this step is to tie the can of consequence to the tail of the thought. Would she ever get here, he wondered. Would she recognize him after all this time?

A handy tip for the writer: Consider all narrative as originating from the particular character of point-of-view focus, using his or her vocabulary, biases, blind spots, range of sensory awareness. If that character is a particularly thoughtful person, the door is open for that character to think consequence-related thoughts. Would this work? Would she truly see the intended affection in his gift of daisies, or would she turn out to draw the line at roses? The hell with it. He liked daisies. If she couldn't see the beauty in them, what future was there in a relationship with her?


pace--the momentum with which a story progresses; the cadence in which dramatic beats appear for the characters and readers to respond.

Remember, dramatic writing is the result of characters reacting to stimuli. Even a character on stage alone is responding to past events, making plans for future ones--perhaps even by playing a waiting or delaying game. Stories that move at too slow a pace will make the reader impatient for something to happen. Stories that move too quickly take on a jerky, frenetic quality that turns moments of potential poignancy or suspense into farce. Comedy is tragedy sped up.


one character on stage alone--a condition where a single character reviews past relevant dramatic events prior to making a choice; a moment where one character waits for one or more associates; a dramatic cross-roads where a character lays out plans for a future event as a means of foreshadowing the event and its consequences.

Characters in film, TV, or stage dramas have recourse to the device of voice-over, in which the audience can hear them "thinking" aloud. The danger here is that the thoughts will seem to be reader feeder (See), "thought" for the convenience of the audience, undercutting the realism of more literary work in which characters do not do favors for the audience so much as they are propelled by their own agendas.

A film, TV, or stage actor is often an exquisitely tuned instrument, able to convey feelings and impressions with mere gestures, inflections of posture; characters are not necessarily so well-tuned and must be nudged, even prodded by the weight of events. A character left alone for too long has only one way out--in thought, which leads to one of the great cliches of written story: "She began to wonder how it had all begun, how she'd let herself get into this mess..."

One of the safer ways for a character to be alone comes when the character is somewhere he or she should not be, a situation enhanced by the accelerated risk of discovery. "What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here."

Shakespeare addressed the problem by keeping his soliloquies short, bringing them in at about thirty seconds, when another character came on stage. In arguably one of his most famous soliloquies, Hamlet is considering a serious act with a serious consequence, his friends Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern on stage at a distance all the while.The inner committee, comprised of representatives who claim to be legitimatge aspects of your personhood, often reminds you of a publisher's editorial committee, looking for excuses to reject, wanting to keep losses down, willing to gamble on established projects from established producers rather more than being willing to take chances.

Yes, they are that way; it is a necessary condition. You are thus freequently whipsawed by your committee, all for being of an anarchistic nature, your goal being to keep at your composing until you have learned at least one tangible thing.

Four

multiple point of view--a narrative design by which the details of a story are seen and reacted to by more than one observer; a pattern of the same dramatic event or subsequent events seen from the perspective of numerous witnesses. For a longer work (novel,novella, novelette) multiple point of view may be the most felicitous, allowing the writer to include widely differing variations on the theme, extending tension and suspense through the mere fact of the various narrators having differing opinions about the events the reader has seen and of the characters' opinions of what they mean. A significant advantage to the multiple approach is the potential for various of the narrators to be unreliable or naive, the reader being left to discover the results.

One of the oldest extant versions of multiple point of view, the so-called Rashomon Stories, relates an incident as seen from the point of view of several of the participants and close witnesses, complete with a trial presided over by judges bent on getting at the truth and including the summons of one of the witnesses (who had subsequently died) from the spirit world to testify. A splendid, more modern version of the multiple point of view as a source of fresh perspective may be found in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.

Although multiple point of view is most commonly presented with a number of narrators represented by the use of the pronouns he or she, there is no convention or edict against using the pronoun I or, indeed, mixing the she, I, he. The major concern associated with the use of multiple view is that the reader always be able to identify the immediate narrator. Wilkie Collins has provided a substantial role model for this in The Moonstone, in which the differing points of view each get a separate chapter.


Point of time--the moment when any given moment of the story is taking place. It is represented by verb tenses. The preterit or immediate past tense is conventionally represented as now. “John woke up early this morning” is used to convey to the reader, Here is John, waking up now. If we want to suggest that John has already been up for a while, we’d introduce the auxiliary verb had and say, “John had been up earlier than usual this morning.” Using the “had” form indicates action completed in the past. The so-called present-tense form of narrative renders action through the lens of the “now” of all characters, thus “John gets up early this morning,” used to convey, Here is John, waking up now. Using the present-tense approach, you’d indicate past action with the direct past tense. “John got up early, remembering he has to be at work before the Boss, but even so, he has to rush to get ready.”

All point of view filters (persons) may be rendered in the present tense now or the conventional past tense now.

Whatever verb tense the author chooses, the contemporary narrative convention requires more than fifty percent to take place in the now; upwards of forty percent (backstory, past influences, memories) may take place in the past.

reliable narrator--a story teller who can largely be trusted to render a fair version of the events within a story, possibly extending to judgments about the behavior of other characters and the implications of their actions as well as his own. The reliable narrator is one for whom the reader is most likely to be concerned. The danger for the writer who has decided on the most reliable of his narrators is to then kick the unreliable or naive narrators with adjectives, adverbs, and verbs portraying them in the glare of a biased spotlight.

naive narrator--inexperienced, innocent, or impaired filters through which dramatic accounts are revealed. Their naivete often has no effect on their being likable to the reader. The presence of a naive narrator is often a signal of ironic intent on the part of the author; in the case of Don Quixote, the naivete and irony are declarations of satiric intent; in the cases of Huckleberry Finn in the eponymous novel, or Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, their naivete about slavery leads each character to a moral evaluation of that practice and an opportunity to change--an opportunity each takes. Sam, the naive narrator of Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country, is old enough to be sexually aware. Her growth comes from her attempts to learn more about her father,who was killed in the Viet Nam war; in so doing, she discovers things about herself, her conscience, and her country, just as Huck Finn and Scout learned to leave their inexperience and innocence behind them. Benjy Compson, in Falukner's The Sound and the Fury, cannot change or learn; his brain has limited capacity. Nevertheless, his vision of events in the novel compels the reader to make comparison between Benjy and less intellectually challenged characters in the narrative, raising significant questions for the reader to ask and comparisons for the reader to make.

The real irony with naive narration appears when the beginning or intermediate writer uses the device to pursue a story about their belief that daddy and mommy must be doing a lot of wrestling at night because of the grunts and groans that come from their room; this trope compared with the seasoned writer using the naive narrator to take on a serious moral issue that has a grip on the human condition.

For more approaches yet to the naive narrator, consider George Orwell's Animal Farm, in which the narrator refuses to accept the implications of the fable being presented; consider also the narrator of Ring Lardner's extraordinary short story, "Haircut."

Revision.2 Narrative

Back with the laundry list of questions one asks self/ms of recently completed work, the goal being to have the most dramatic, articulate work possible, related in the optimal voice.

7. Is the dialogue too conversational and chatty? The intent in rendering dialogue is to have the exchanges sound like plausible exchanges between individuals, remembering as well that dialogue prods, pokes, nudges story forward while simultaneously extending the personality of the speaker, possibly even revealing things the speaker did not intend to reveal.

8. Is the dialogue too literal, falling beyond mere literalness into reader feeder. "As you know, Fred, I have not been feeling myself lately, overcome as I am by the loss of my job, the empty-nest syndrome as my three wonderful children, Manny, Moe, and Jack, have left home to pursue their own lives, and my ongoing struggle with my addiction to gambling."

9. Does the dialogue drive the story forward? "You're either with us or you're against us?" "Yo, Macbeth; you gonna whack King Malcolm or what?"

10. Does the dialogue adequately and accurately reflect:
a--the attitude of the characters
b--the gap between what they say and what they feel
c--their biases or preferences
d--their goals
e--their familiarity, degree of intimacy
f--the social, racial, sexual, and professional coding inherent in their character
g--their inner conflicts?

11. How about attribution? Does the reader know who's talking, how the talking is being done (she said in a sing-songy chirp)?

12. Does the reader have any clue how what one character says is being received by other characters?

13. Does the dialogue unnecessarily employ adverbial support, he asked nervously?

14. Will the dialogue actually profit from adverbial support? (NB: In spite of heavy lobbying from the National Adverb Association for unrestricted use of adverbs, some adverb control is worthwhile, particularly occasionally when they are tacked on to one another.)

15. Does the dialogue feature talking heads, individuals the reader does not know, having long conversations?


A natural focus after dialogue is narrative, which is all non-dialogue dramatic momentum, thus the framework of the story, evoking the personality of the point of view carrying the narrative. (Post-it Note: Unless the narrative structure comes from the author, is should reflect being related by a designated character.)

16. Is the narrative stylistically and psychologically consistent with the point of view?

17. Does it become heavy-handed and obtrusive?

18. Does it lapse into being overly descriptive?

19. Are there places where it becomes redundant?

20. Does it make appropriate summary of complex events (best exemplified in mystery fiction when a detective sums up the alibi/suspect scorecard)?

21. Does is artfully embed information?

22. Does the narrative produce the mainstays of drama, suspense or tension?

Having thoroughly debriefed the manuscript in terms of what in the story is said and what is told, we may proceed to usher into the revision interrogation the individuals who do the talking and telling--the characters.

Who Tells the Story and Why?

There is always an opening for a transformational ingredient to appear in a story, edging it on its way to a state of memorable rather than simple entertaining. One of the more transformative of such ingredients is to be found in the narrative voice or voices used in relating the story. As an extreme illustration, consider Snow White being presented through the point of view of all seven of the dwarfs. Not only would such a presentation be a form of anarchy against the simplistic children's romance, it would open the door to the mischief of attitude and agenda, undermining the sugary Disney foundation, replacing it with new levels of potential interest.

Thus must agenda be a factor when deciding who or whom the narrative voice(s) is/are. Who has been acted upon in the telling or by the very act of telling? Who has come to see what the reader already sees or, conversely, persists in not seeing what has begun to grow apparent to the reader? Mr. Stevens, the prism through whom The Remains of the Day is witnessed, comes to mind here, serving not only as a splendid butler but as well a splendid example.

Because of our predilections, we tend to favor a first-person point of view, a third-person point of view, a multiple point of view, in which we delegate to characters the information, intent, and limitations we apply to our characters. It would be difficult, for instance, to see anything but a subtext of irony in a story about a group of professional basketball players told from the point of view of a midget or dwarf. Indeed, such an approach may bring down the disapproval of individuals under the height of four six as well as the scorn of individuals who are, say, six four.

But wait, before we go digressing off on that meme of the narrow cusp between irony, humor, and bad taste/judgment, let us consider the two remaining points of view, the omniscient and the authorial. The rich-as-linzer-torte William Trevor owns the former, using it with equal facility in short story and novel. To understand the effects and techniques that inhere in his work, you need only read one short story--any of his copious stories--or one novel. The irony is that you won't be able to stop at one of either. A number of authors use the authorial point of view, Don DeLillo coming to mind and as well Ha Jin, not to forget Cormac McCarthy; these authors tell you the story, constantly infusing the attitudes and agendas of their characters into their work, allowing you excruciatingly pellucid views of the characters but never entirely relinquishing the stage to the characters. This position does not come from the author's distrust of characters nor an abundant need to control the audience, rather to guide the reader through events and logic dear to the author's heart, places where the author is finally able to become vulnerable enough to let agenda slip through the cracks.

Let's get one important issue straight: all characters lie. They lie to themselves, they lie to other characters, and they most certainly lie to you. That is a given; it needs no defense.

Another important issue to lay on the table: all characters have agendas. All of them. The sooner you find out what these agendas are, the sooner you will be able to decide how many bricks of your story you will trust them with. Perhaps a full load? Perhaps a half load or quarter? Up to you.

It has often been argued that the major trait of authorial voice is identified in agenda. (If it has not been argued, then it should be.) Some authors are likely to find their voice as a result of something executed in nonfiction, the complex package of attitude and intent mingling in an essay, which is after all an examination of a subject to allow the author know how the author feels and thinks about the subject. We now bring to the table an opponent of the author's thesis and voice, admirably attired in impeccable logic, a better speaking voice than the author, and perhaps even a bit more intelligence than the author. Having evolved that antagonist, we now fictionalize the protagonist, he or she who speaks the author's belief system. Then we select a point of view and turn them loose within a confined area, an arena if you will.

All too easy to say it is Fred's story; I'm going to rearrange the furniture and select the other characters to suit Fred. The why of this is attached to the too easy part of the equation. Easy went out with all the stuff we do not ourselves wish to write. Easy is the same as saying oh science fiction? I can do that? Oh, fantasy. I can do that. The essence of the story is the arena within the smithy of the writer's soul, where ease and rest and device are not allowed through the front door. This essence is found in the exhilarating and curious mixture of fun, awe, despair, curiosity, and envy. Not fair that after all these thousands of hours I have spent practicing my craft, a less practiced writer should come along and seem to be having so much fun while at the same time covering such a large canvas. If such is the case, so be it; that contributes to the agenda. And not to worry if it does; on revision, you'll soon recognize it for the complaining it is, remove it, and get on with the fun at hand.

Lest this seem an argument of art for art's sake, allow me the opportunity to disagree. It is no such thing. It is agenda for agenda's sake, fun for fun's sake, risk for risk's sake.

Most of us who have some experience with writing have also some past experience with jumping off of things, things that were there in other guises but seen by us as things to be jumped off. In my case, the things were garages. Why would you want to jump off my garage, an outraged woman asked me when I was seven. Because, I replied, it invited me.

Point of view often extends an invitation. We need to keep alert to make sure we accept the correct one.

The N Word

Narrative is as slippery a word as a politician's promise at a fund raiser. Often used as a synonym for story, it is more associated with fiction than nonfiction, is sometimes used as a sly dig to suggest that a reporter or scholar is indulging more in story telling than in research or reportage. Speaking of a writer's narrative voice implies fiction--how that writer tells a story--or fiction morphed into myth or legend rather than straightforward accounting of event.

Sometimes when leading up to a revelation that the material under discussion is not yet a fully developed story, I'll use the word narrative, by which I mean a progression of events, before springing the trap door of what elements could morph this narrative into a full-fledged story. Treating the student like an author in such cases produces positive results in the sense of allowing the student to believe he'd known that all along. Treating an author like a student usually brings forth some form of stubbornness, which does no good at all for the story.

Narrative is some selected personality, apprehended in the act of relating dramatic events; it has a perspective, a point of view, an attitude, all of which should be manifest as the reader reads. Narrative may be you as author provided you have taken some steps to articulate what your perspective and agenda may be. In other words, there is no way of avoiding the responsibility of taking some side or stand. Neutrality is at best a Platonic ideal, but in drama it is an albatross the weight of which quickly makes itself felt as the need for explanation and fair presentation standards emerge. And they surely will.

Look at it this way, narrative is the macrocosm, the universe of the story, however brief or expansive, expressed in some pattern selected to produce the senses of tension, risk, and consequence. Suspense is very much the glue holding dramatic events together. When the time comes for greater specificity, switch to dialogue.

Some historical eras produced politically charged concepts of narrative that did for narrative what corsets and bustles did for women at various times or skin-tight pants did for men at other times--they caused constraint, certainly made sitting and standing more a discomfort than before. In one dramatic example, narrative was thought to need more realistic detail, a thought that resulted in entire laundry lists of clothing, medicines, nostrums, and utensil invading the orderly progression of story across the pages. Other times required of characters that their inner consciousness be brought to account, bringing forth paragraph after paragraph of internal monologue. English majors, who should by no know better, have their heads filled with these details and some in their midst are even able to recite the names of the various theories--modern, post-modern, Marxist, neo-Marxist, Feminist, et alia--some even to the point of being accorded merit raises in pay.

Applying the razor of William of Occam to the matter, narrative is a vehicle by which story is advanced to effect a dramatic result. The result is variously called closure, ending, resolution, and prismatic spread. But don't be fooled by definitions that state or imply such conditions as should or ought. Out on the street, narrative is the stuff that carries story without dropping the reader.

What's the Point: POV in Fiction

The function of point of view is to establish which character
or characters the author has chosen to relay the dramatic information
contained in a story and to suggest or imply attitudes of one or more
characters to these events. It is a narrative lens through which a story is
seen; the agendas and sensitivities of one or more narrators thorough
which the story appears to emerge.

The reader is more comfortable knowing whose version of events is being
presented. The reader wants to know who the teller is (or are), followed by
whose story it is.

Point of view also helps us feel more closely immersed in the
dramatic action, contributing to the suspension of disbelief necessary for
the reader to become fully invested in the narrative. Thus, relevant point of view questions for writers and readers:
Who is telling the story?
Why did the author choose that person or persons?
What effect does this particular point of view serve?

Point of focus is the time frame in which the narrative is set. A
retrospective focus is one in which a character is relating events that took
place at an earlier time, which allows that character the perspective of
learning from the consequences, learning from what was done and what
was not done. Barnaby, for example, is relating an event that happened to
him in his early twenties, describing it as though he were seeing the event
from the distance and experience of fifty-odd years. A present-time focus
renders the dramatic action at the moment it actually took place. The
intent of this focus is to give the reader the sense of the action as it is
taking place right now.

Point of time is the moment when any given moment of the story is taking
place. It is represented by verb tenses. The preterit or immediate past
tense is conventionally represented as now. “John woke up early this
morning” is used to convey to the reader, Here is John, waking up now. If
we want to suggest that John has already been up for a while, we’d
introduce the auxiliary verb had and say, “John had been up earlier than
usual this morning.” Using the “had” form indicates action completed in
the past. The so-called present-tense form of narrative renders action
through the lens of the “now” of all characters, thus “John gets up early
this morning,” used to convey, Here is John, waking up now. Using the
present-tense approach, you’d indicate past action with the direct past
tense. “John got up early, remembering he has to be at work before the
Boss, but even so, he has to rush to get ready.”

All point of view filters (persons) may be rendered in the present tense
now or the conventional past tense now.

Whatever verb tense you choose, the contemporary narrative
convention requires more than fifty percent to take place in the now;
upwards of forty percent (backstory, past influences, memories) may take
place in the past.

First person point of view is a narrative condition in which one individual
in a cast of characters tells the story, using the pronoun I to distinguish
him/or herself from the author or any other character. From the very
opening line of Moby-Dick, the first person narrator establishes himself as
such an individual. “Call me Ishmael,” he says, then goes on to tell us why
he signed aboard the Pequod as a seaman. The strength of this narrative
tactic is demonstrated when readers buy into this method of accounting for
the dramatic action and motivation as a means of suspending their
disbelief that the fact of the dramatic events actually took place.

One disadvantage of this point of view: The reader may find reason to
consider the I-narrator naïve or untrustworthy, accordingly doubting the
accuracy of the events reported. This could cause the reader to patronize
the naïveté, dislike the narrator, or abandon any interest in what happens
to the narrator.

Another disadvantage of first person point of view: the narrator must be
present in every scene or have a plausible reason for knowing what took
place during his absence.

Second person point of view is a narrative condition in which the author
addresses the audience directly, using the pronoun you, as though
suggesting that the reader has merged personality with a major character
in the narrative. The result of this merger makes the narrative seem as
though the energy of the story is being directed at a character instead of
the conventional forms, which make the dramatic energy seem to be
coming from a specific character.

This is a less formal condition than the impersonal-sounding “one,” as in
“one works to the best of one’s abilities” as opposed to “You work to the
best of your abilities.” Although it works equally well with the
conventional past tense=immediate present arrangement and the
sometimes useful present tense=immediate moment narrative format, the
second person point of view is more difficult to control than any other
point of view. One reason for this is because of the way it appears to violate
a dramatic taboo of speaking directly to the audience/reader; another
reason for the difficulty is because writers are often discouraged from
experimenting with the format and readers are not used to encountering
it.

Third person point of view is a narrative condition in which the pronoun
he or she becomes the principal focus; one character is seen experiencing
the dramatic events as they occur, then relating them. This same
individual brings into each scene memories, biases, and side effects that
are relevant to the developing story. This individual must appear in each
scene in the narrative or have plausible access to the events that occurred
in his absence.

Multiple point of view is a narrative condition arising when the author
selects two or more characters from the cast and allows each of these to be
the filter of dramatic events. Although it is common for a particular
character to have the point of view for at least a chapter before
relinquishing the stage to another, it is also feasible to switch point of view
from one scene to another.

The longer the narrative, the more useful the multiple approach becomes,
allowing the reader to see how two or more characters respond to the same
event.

Short stories are not conventionally related in the multiple point of view,
the omniscient seeming a better choice if such an approach is wanted.
Omniscient point of view is a narrative condition where the author shifts
the filtering and experiential focus from one character to another (and
possibly back again) within the same scene or chapter. Although effective,
it is difficult to control and may cause the reader some confusion in
identifying which characters in a narrative are the primary characters.

The omniscient point of view is the literary equivalent of a mixed-doubles
tennis match. In whose territory will the ball land? How effective will the
return be? Was there a particular reason why the ball was directed at this
player?

The epistolary or letter-writing point of view is a narrative condition
where much or all of a story is related through an exchange of letters,
email, telephone answering machine messages and similar electronic
format. This form dates back to the eighteenth century but can still find
contemporary energy, allowing the author to use as many points of view as
necessary to present the desired dramatic picture.

Examples of Point of View

First Person Point of View (I as narrator):
Example # 1: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made
by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which
he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen
anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the
widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary,
and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true
book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

"Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money
that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand
dollars apiece -- all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled
up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched
us a dollar a day apiece all the year round -- more than a body could tell
what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed
she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time,
considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways;
and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and
my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he
hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might
join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she
called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She
put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and
sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again.
The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you
got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the
widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though
there warn't really anything the matter with them, -- that is, nothing only
everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different;
things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go
better.

"After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the
Bullrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by
she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I
didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people."

Example # 2: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
"My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my
infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit
than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his
tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith.
As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness
of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs),
my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived
from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an
odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From
the character and turn of the inscription, `Also Georgiana Wife of the
Above,' I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and
sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which
were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the
memory of five little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get a living,
exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief I
religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with
their hands in their trousers- pockets, and had never taken them out in
this state of existence.

"Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river
wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression
of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable
raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that
this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that
Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were
dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and
Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that
the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes
and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the
marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the
distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that
the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry,
was Pip.

“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from
among the graves at the side of the church porch. “Keep still, you little
devil, or I'll cut your throat!”

Example # 3 (present tense): Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood.
"Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If
you can bend space, you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and
could move faster than light you could move backward in time and exist in
two places at once.

"It was my brother Stephen who told me that, when he wore his
raveling maroon sweater to study in and spent a lot of time standing on is
head so that the blood would rush down into his brain and nourish it. I
didn’t understand what he meant, but maybe he didn’t explain it very well.
He was already moving away from the imprecision of words.
But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you
could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid of top of another.
You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes
this comes to surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes
away."

Example # 4: (major action seen by ancillary character) The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some
advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just
remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages
that you've had."

He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually
communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great
deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments,
a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also
made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind
is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it
appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I
was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the
secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were
unsought--frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile
levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate
revelation was quivering on the horizon--for the intimate revelations
of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are
usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving
judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of
missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested,
and I snobbishly repeat a sense of the fundamental decencies is
parceled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission
that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet
marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on.
When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the
world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I
wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the
human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was
exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I
have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of
successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some
heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related
to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten
thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that
flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the
"creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic
readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it
is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right
at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the
wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the
abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middlewestern
city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan
and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch,
but the fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the
wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him--with
special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in
Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a
century after my father, and a little later I participated in that
delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the
counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being
the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the
ragged edge of the universe--so I decided to go east and learn the bond
business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it
could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it
over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said,
"Why--ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance
me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I
thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

Second Person Point of View (You as narrator)
Example # 5 Bright Lights, Big City by Jay Macinerney
"You are not the type of guy who would be at a place like this at this
time in the morning. But here you are and you cannot say that the terrain
is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a
nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either
Heartbreak or Lizard Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip
into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then
again, it might not. A small voice inside you insists that this epidemic lack
of clarity is a result of too much of that already. The night has already
turned on the imperceptible pivot where two a.m. changes to six a.m. You
know this moment has come and gone, but you are not yet willing to
concede that you have crossed the line beyond which all is gratuitous
damage and the palsy of unraveled nerve endings. Somewhere back there,
you could have cut your losses, but you rode past that moment on a comet
trail of white powder and now you are trying to hang on to the rush."

Example # 6 If on a Winter’s Night, a Traveler by Italo Calvino

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a
winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought.
Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the tv is always on in
the next room. Tell the others right away, “No, I don’t want to watch TV!”
Raise your voice—they won’t hear you otherwise. “I’m reading. I don’t
want to be disturbed!” Maybe they haven’t heard you, with all that racket;
speak louder, yell: “I’m beginning to read Italo Calvino’s new novel!” Or if
you prefer, don’t say anything; just hope they’ll leave you alone.
Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up
or lying flat. Flat on your back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy
chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. In the
hammock, if you have a hammock. On top of your bed, of course, or in the
bed. You can even stand on your hands, head down, in the yoga position.
With the book upside down, naturally.
Of course the ideal position for reading is something you can never
find. In the old days, they used to read standing up, at a lectern. People
were accustomed to standing on their feet, without moving. They rested
like that when they were tired of horseback riding. Nobody ever thought of
reading on horseback; and yet now, the idea of sitting in the saddle, the
book propped against the horse’s mane, or maybe tied to the horse’s ear
with a special harness, seems attractive…

Example # 7 Winnie the Pooh, by A. A. Milne
Chapter One
Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on
the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is as far as he knows the
only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is
another way if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.
And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t. Anyhow, here he is at the
bottom and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie the Pooh.
When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, “But
I thought he was a boy?”
“So did I,” said Christopher Robin.
“Then you can’t call him Winnie?”
“I don’t.”
“But you said—“
“He’s Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don’t you know what ther means?”
“Ah, yes; now I do,” I said quickly, and I hope you do, too, because it
is all the explanation you’re going to get.

Example # 8 Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins
Four P.M.
The day the stock market falls out of bed and breaks its back is the
worst day of your life. Or so you think. It isn’t the worst day of your life,
but you think it is. And when you give voice to that thought, it is with
conviction and a minimum of rhetorical embellishment.

“This is the worst day of my life,” you say as you drop a salted
peanut into your double martini—on better days you drink white wine—and
watch it sink. It spirals downward more slowly, more gracefully than your
plunging fortunes, the pretty little gin bubbles that gather around the
peanut a marked contrast to the lumps and burrs and stinging things that
are attaching themselves to your heart.

It has been approximately three hours since the market has slid off
the roof and the shocked, and at times, hysteric roar that had filled the
Bull & Bear earlier in the afternoon is starting to give way to a slightly
dimmer din of survival strategies and cynical jokes. You share neither in
the desperate ploys nor the false mirth. You hold your prematurely
graying head in your hands and repeat, “This is the worst day of my life.”
“Come on kid,” says Phil Craddock. “The market’ll be back.”
“Maybe the market will be back. But I won’t. I’ve left my clients so
far under water, they’re going to need gills to breathe.” You gulp a fireball
of martini. “Posner knows it, too. He passed me in the hall right after the
bell and asked me if I didn’t think nursing was a noble vocation.”

Third Person Point of View (He or She as narrator)
Example # 8 Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell
Ree Dolly stood at the break of day on her cold front steps and
smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the
creek. The carcasses hung pale of flesh with a fatty gleam from low limbs
of saplings in the side yards. Three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling
rank on the far creekside and each had two or more skinned torsos
dangling by rope from sagged limbs, venison left to weather for two nights
and tree days so the early blossoming of decay might round the flavor,
sweeten that meat to the bone.

Snow clouds had replaced the horizon, capped the valley darkly, and
chafing wind blew so the hung meat twirled from jigging branches. Ree,
brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood barearmed
in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks
reddening as if smacked and smacked again. She stood tall in combat
boots, scarce at the waist but plenty through the arms and shoulders, body
made for loping after needs. She smelled the frosty wet in the looming
clouds, thought of her shadowed kitchen and lean cupboard, looked at the
scant woodpile, shuddered. The coming weather meant wash hung outside
would freeze into planks, so she’d have to stretch clothesline across the
kitchen and above the woodstove, and the puny stack of wood split for the
potbelly would not last long enough to dry much except Mom’s underthings
and maybe a few T-shirts for the boys. Ree knew there was no gas for the
chain saw, so she’d be swinging the ax out back while winter blew into the
valley and fell around her.

Example # 9: Stoner by John Williams
William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in
the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height
of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted
an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death
in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few
students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his
courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a
medieval manuscript to the University library. Tis manuscript may still be
fund in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: “Presented to
the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner,
Department of English. By his colleagues.”

An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly
who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a
casual question. Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem
when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a
reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is
merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with
which they can identify themselves or their careers.

He was born in 1891 on a small farm in central Missouri near the
village of Booneville, some forty miles from Columbia, the home of the
University. Though his parents were young at the time of is birth—his
father twenty-five, his mother barely twenty—Stoner thought of them,
even when he was a boy, as old. At thirty, his father looked fifty; stooped
by labor, he gazed without hope at the arid patch of land that sustained the
family from one year to the next. His mother regarded her life patiently,
as if it were a long moment she had to endure. Her eyes were pale ad
blurred, and the tiny wrinkles around them were enhanced by thin graying
hair worn straight over her head and caught in a bun at the back.

Example # 10: Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
CHAPTER I
Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and
pugnaciously drunk. He leaned against the bar of the Old Home
Sample Room, the most gilded and urbane saloon in Cato, Missouri,
and requested the bartender to join him in "The Good Old Summer
Time," the waltz of the day.

Blowing on a glass, polishing it and glancing at Elmer through its
flashing rotundity, the bartender remarked that he wasn't much of a
hand at this here singing business. But he smiled. No bartender
could have done other than smile on Elmer, so inspired and full of
gallantry and hell-raising was he, and so dominating was his beefy
grin.

"All right, old socks," agreed Elmer. "Me and my room-mate'll show
you some singing as is singing! Meet roommate. Jim Lefferts.
Bes' roommate in world. Wouldn't live with him if wasn't! Bes'
quarterback in Milwest. Meet roommate."

The bartender again met Mr. Lefferts, with protestations of
distinguished pleasure.

Elmer and Jim Lefferts retired to a table to nourish the long,
rich, chocolate strains suitable to drunken melody. Actually, they
sang very well. Jim had a resolute tenor, and as to Elmer Gantry,
even more than his bulk, his thick black hair, his venturesome
black eyes, you remembered that arousing barytone. He was born to
be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said
it sonorously. He could make "Good morning" seem profound as Kant,
welcoming as a brass band, and uplifting as a cathedral organ.

Multiple Point of View (multiple I, multiple he or she, combinations of
I and he or she, possibly even omniscient anonymous)
Examples of multiple point of view novels:
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
A Return to Earth by Jim Harrison
Love Invents Us by Nicole Kraus
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

Omniscient Point of View (the “Fly-on-the-Wall”)
Example # 11: “Boys,” a short story by Rick Moody

BOYS ENTER THE HOUSE, boys enter the house. Boys, and with them the
ideas of boys (ideas leaden, reductive, inflexible), enter the house. Boys,
two of them, wound into hospital packaging, boys with infant-pattern
baldness, slung in the arms of parents, boys dreaming of breasts, enter the
house. Twin boys, kettles on the boil, boys in hideous vinyl knapsacks that
young couples from Edison, NJ., wear on their shirt fronts, knapsacks
coated with baby saliva and staphylococcus and milk vomit, enter the
house. Two boys, one striking the other with a rubberized hot dog, enter
the house. Two boys, one of them striking the other with a willow
switch about the head and shoulders, the other crying, enter the house.
Boys enter the house speaking nonsense. Boys enter the house calling for
mother. On a Sunday, in May, a day one might nearly describe as perfect,
an ice cream truck comes slowly down the lane, chimes inducing
salivation, and children run after it, not long after which boys dig a hole in
the back yard and bury their younger sister's dolls two feet down, so that
she will never find these dolls and these dolls will rot in hell, after which
boys enter the house. Boys, trailing after their father like he is the Second
Goddamned Coming of Christ Goddamned Almighty, enter the house,
repair to the basement to watch baseball. Boys enter the house, site of
devastation, and repair immediately to the kitchen, where they mix lighter
fluid, vanilla pudding, drain-opening lye, balsamic vinegar, blue food
coloring, calamine lotion, cottage cheese, ants, a plastic lizard one of them
received in his Christmas stocking, tacks, leftover mashed potatoes,
Spam, frozen lima beans, and chocolate syrup in a medium-sized saucepan
and heat over a low flame until thick, afterward transferring the contents
of this saucepan into a Pyrex lasagna dish, baking the Pyrex lasagna dish
in the oven for nineteen minutes before attempting to persuade their sister
that she should eat the mixture; later they smash three family heirlooms
(the last, a glass egg, intentionally) in a two-and-a-half-hour stretch,
whereupon they are sent to their bedroom until freed, in each case thirteen
minutes after. Boys enter the house, starchy in pressed shirts and flannel
pants that itch so bad, fresh from Sunday school instruction, blond and
brown locks (respectively) plastered down but even so with a number of
cowlicks protruding at odd angles, disconsolate and humbled, uncertain if
boyish things — such as shooting at the neighbor's dog with a pump-action
BB gun and gagging the fat boy up the street with a bandanna and showing
their shriveled boy-penises to their younger sister — are exempted from
the commandment to Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all
thy soul and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself. Boys enter the
house in baseball gear (only one of the boys can hit): in their spikes, in
mismatched tube socks that smell like Stilton cheese. Boys enter the house
in soccer gear. Boys enter the house carrying skates.

Boys enter the house with lacrosse sticks, and soon after, tossing a
lacrosse ball lightly in the living room, they destroy a lamp. One boy enters
the house sporting basketball clothes, the other wearing jeans and a
sweatshirt. One boy enters the house bleeding profusely and is
taken out to get stitches, the other watches. Boys enter the house at the
end of term carrying report cards, sneak around the house like spies of
foreign nationality, looking for a place to hide the report cards for the time
being (under a toaster? in a medicine cabinet?). One boy with a black eye
enters the house, one boy without. Boys with acne enter the house and
squeeze and prod large skin blemishes in front of their sister. Boys with
acne-treatment products hidden about their persons enter the house. Boys,
standing just up the street, sneak cigarettes behind a willow in the Elys'
yard, wave smoke away from their natural fibers, hack terribly,
experience nausea, then enter the house. Boys call each other Retard,
Homo, Geek, and, later, Neckless Thug, Theater Fag, and enter the house
exchanging further epithets. Boys enter house with nose-hair clippers,
chase sister around house threatening to depilate her eyebrows. She cries.
Boys attempt to induce girls to whom they would not have spoken only
six or eight months prior to enter the house with them. Boys enter the
house with girls efflorescent and homely and attempt to induce girls to
sneak into their bedroom, as they still share a single bedroom; girls refuse.
Boys enter the house, go to separate bedrooms. Boys, with their father (an
arm around each of them), enter the house, but of the monologue
preceding and succeeding this entrance, not a syllable is preserved. Boys
enter the house having masturbated in a variety of locales. Boys enter the
house having masturbated in train-station bathrooms, in forests, in beach
houses, in football bleachers at night under the stars, in cars (under a
blanket), in the shower, backstage, on a plane, the boys masturbate
constantly, identically, three times a day in some cases, desire like a
madness upon them, at the mere sound of certain words, words that sound
like other words, interrogative reminding them of intercourse, beast
reminding them of breast, sects reminding them of sex, and so forth, the
boys are not very smart yet, and as they enter the house they feel, as
always, immense shame at the scale of this self-abusive cogitation, seeing a
classmate, seeing a billboard, seeing a fire hydrant, seeing things that
should not induce thoughts of masturbation (their sister, e.g.) and
then thinking of masturbation anyway. Boys enter the house, go to their
rooms, remove sexually explicit magazines from hidden stashes, put on
loud music, feel despair. Boys enter the house worried; they argue. The
boys are ugly, they are failures, they will never be loved, they enter the
house. Boys enter the house and kiss their mother, who feels differently
now they have outgrown her. Boys enter the house, kiss their mother, she
explains the seriousness of their sister's difficulty, her diagnosis. Boys
enter the house, having attempted to locate the spot in their yard where
the dolls were buried, eight or nine years prior, without success; they
go to their sister's room, sit by her bed. Boys enter the house and tell their
completely bald sister jokes about baldness. Boys hold either hand of their
sister, laying aside differences, having trudged grimly into the house. Boys
skip school, enter house, hold vigil. Boys enter the house after their
parents have both gone off to work, sit with their sister and with their
sister's nurse. Boys enter the house carrying cases of beer. Boys enter the
house, very worried now, didn't know more worry was possible. Boys enter
the house carrying controlled substances, neither having told the other
that he is carrying a controlled substance, though an intoxicated posture
seems appropriate under the circumstances. Boys enter the house weeping
and hear weeping around them. Boys enter the house embarrassed, silent,
anguished, keening, afflicted, angry, woeful, grief-stricken. Boys enter the
house on vacation, each clasps the hand of the other with genuine warmth,
the one wearing dark colors and having shaved a portion of his head, the
other having grown his hair out longish and wearing, uncharacteristically,
a de-dyed shirt. Boys enter the house on vacation and argue bitterly about
politics (other subjects are no longer discussed), one boy supporting the
Maoist insurgency in a certain Southeast Asian country, one believing that
to change the system you need to work inside it; one boy threatens to beat
the living shit out of the other, refuses creme brulee, though it is created by
his mother in order to keep the peace. One boy writes home and
thereby enters the house only through a mail slot: he argues that the other
boy is crypto-fascist, believing that the market can seek its own level on
questions of ethics and morals; boys enter the house on vacation and
announce future professions; boys enter the house on
vacation and change their minds about professions; boys enter the house
on vacation, and one boy brings home a sweetheart but throws a tantrum
when it is suggested that the sweetheart will have to retire on the folding
bed in the basement; the other boy, having no sweetheart, is distant and
withdrawn, preferring to talk late into the night about family members
gone from this world. Boys enter the house several weeks apart. Boys
enter the house on days of heavy rain. Boys enter the house, in different
calendar years, and upon entering, the boys seem to do nothing but
compose manifestos, for the benefit of parents; they follow their mother
around the place, having fashioned these manifestos in celebration of
brand-new independence: Mom, I like to lie in bed late into the morning
watching game shows, or, I'm never going to date anyone but artists from
now on, mad girls, dreamers, practicers of black magic, or, A
man should eat bologna, sliced meats are important, or, An American
should bowl at least once a year, but these manifestos apply only for brief
spells, after which they are reversed or discarded. Boys don't enter the
house at all, except as ghostly afterimages of younger selves,
fleeting images of sneakers dashing up a staircase; soggy towels on the
floor of the bathroom; blue jeans coiled like asps in the basin of the washing
machine; boys as an absence of boys; blissful at first, you put a thing down
on a spot, put this book down, come back later, it's still there; you buy a box
of cookies, eat three, later three are missing. Nevertheless, when boys
next enter the house, which they ultimately must do, it's a relief, even if it's
only in preparation for weddings of acquaintances from boyhood, one boy
has a beard, neatly trimmed, the other has rakish sideburns, one boy
wears a hat, the other boy thinks hats are ridiculous, one boy wears khakis
pleated at the waist, the other wears denim, but each changes into his suit
(one suit fits well, one is a little tight), as though suits are the liminary
marker of adulthood. Boys enter the house after the wedding and they are
slapping each other on the back and yelling at anyone who will listen. It's a
party! One boy enters the house, carried by friends, having been arrested
(after the wedding) for driving while intoxicated, complexion ashen; the
other boy tries to keep his mouth shut: the car is on its side in a ditch,
the car has the top half of a tree broken over its bonnet, the car has struck
another car, which has in turn struck a third, Everyone will have seen. One
boy misses his brother horribly, misses the past, misses a time worth being
nostalgic over, a time that never existed, back when they set their sister's
playhouse on fire; the other boy avoids all mention of that time;
each of them is once the boy who enters the house alone, missing the other,
each is devoted and each callous, and each plays his part on the telephone,
over the course of months. Boys enter the house with fishing gear,
according to prearranged date and time, arguing about whether to use
lures or live bait, in order to meet their father for the fishing adventure,
after which boys enter the house again, almost immediately, with live bait,
having settled the question; boys boast of having caught fish in the past,
though no fish has ever been caught: Remember when the blues were
biting? Boys enter the house carrying their father, slumped. Happens so
fast. Boys rush into the house leading EMTs to the couch in the living room
where the body lies, boys enter the house, boys enter the house, boys enter
the house. Boys hold open the threshold, awesome threshold that has
welcomed them when they haven't even been able to welcome themselves,
that threshold which welcomed them when they had to be taken in, here is
its tarnished knocker, here is its euphonious bell, here's where die boys
had to sand die door down because it never would hang right in the frame,
here are the scuff marks from when boys were on the wrong side of the
door demanding, here's where there were once milk bottles for the
milkman, here's where the newspaper always landed, here's the mail slot,
here's the light on the front step, illuminated, here's where the boys are
standing, as that beloved man is carried out. Boys, no longer boys, exit.

Example # 12: Short Story, “The Room,” by William Trevor
“Do you know why you are doing this?” he asked, and Katharine
hesitated, then shook her head, although she did know.
Nine years had almost healed a soreness, each day made a little
easier, until the balm of work was taken from her and in her scratchy
idleness the healing ceased. She was here because of that, there was no
other reason she could think of, but she didn’t say it.

“And you?” she asked instead.

He was forthcoming, or sounded so; he’d been attracted by her at a
time when he’d brought loneliness upon himself by quarrelling once too
often with the wife who had borne his children and had cared for him.
“I’m sorry about the room,” he said.

His belongings were piled up, books an cardboard boxes, suitcases
open, not yet unpacked. A word processor had not been plugged in, its
flexes trailing on the floor. Clothes on hangers cluttered the back of the
door, an anatomical study of an elephant decorated one of the walls, with
arrows indicating where certain organs were beneath the leathery skin.
This gray picture wasn’t his, he’d said when Katharine asked; it came with
the room, which was all he had been able to find in a hurry. A sink was in
the same corner as a washbasin, an electric kettle and a gas ring on a shelf,
a green plastic curtain not drawn across.

“It’s all a bit more special now that you’re here,” he said.
When she got up to put on her clothes, Katharine could tell he didn’t
want her to go. Yet he, not she, was the one who had to; she could have
stayed all afternoon. Buttoning a sleeve of her dress, she remarked that at
least she knew now what it felt like to deceive.

Example # 13: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Things They Carried
They carried P-38 can openers and heat tabs, watches and dog tags,
insect repellent, gum, cigarettes, Zippo lighters, salt tablets, compress
bandages, ponchos, Kool-Aid, two or three canteens of water, iodine
tablets, sterno, LRRP-rations, and C-rations stuffed in socks. They carried
standard fatigues, jungle fatigues, jungle boots, bush hats, flak jackets and
steel pots.

They carried the M-16, trip flares and Claymore mines,
M-60 machine guns, the M-79 grenade launcher, M-14's, CAR-15's,
Stoners, Swedish K's, 66mm LAWS, shotguns, .45 caliber pistols, silencers,
the sound of bullets, rockets, and choppers, and sometimes the sound of
silence.

They carried C-4 plastic explosives,
an assortment of hand grenades, PRC-25 radios with 25 foot whip
antennas and their heavy batteries, knives and machetes.

Some carried napalm, CBU's and large bombs; some risked their lives to
rescue others. Some escaped the fear, but dealt with the death and
damage. Some made very hard decisions, and some just tried to survive.
They carried malaria, dysentery, ringworms and leeches. They
carried the land itself as it hardened on their boots.

They carried stationery, pencils, and pictures of their loved ones -
real and imagined.

They carried love for people in the real world
and love for one another.

And sometimes they disguised that love:
"Don't mean nothin'!" They carried memories for the most part,
they carried themselves with poise and a kind of dignity. Now and then,
there were times when panic set in, and people squealed or wanted to, but
couldn't; when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their
heads and said "Dear God" and hugged the earth and fired their weapons
blindly and cringed and begged for the noise to stop
and went wild and made promises to themselves and God and their
parents, hoping not to die.

They carried the traditions of the United States military,
and memories and images of those who served before them.
They carried grief, terror, longing and their reputations.
They carried the soldier's greatest fear: the embarrassment of
dishonor.
They crawled into tunnels, walked point, and advanced under fire,
so as not to die of embarrassment.
They were afraid of dying, but too afraid to show it.
They carried the emotional baggage of men and women who might
die at any moment.
They carried the weight of the world, and the weight of every free
citizen of America.
And they carried each other.

Additional Point of View focus for further study:
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. First and last chapters are presented in
an unidentified first person, sandwiching in a third person point of view.
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Differing points of view, one to a chapter.
Aunt Julia and the Script Writer by Mario Vargas Llosa. An adroit mixture
of multiple point of view and unreliable narrator.
Betrayed by Rita Hayworth by Manuel Puig. An epic explosion of
conventional point of view, combining actual third person narrative with
segments of diaries, scrapbooks, and newspaper items, all of which
combine to produce a point of view.
Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert. An omnibus assortment of points of
view.

All That Glitters Is Not Told

Narrative, when it is not used as a generic term to suggest a story or tale as it progresses along its arc, is meant to imply the landscape or setting where a particular story takes place. It is also meant as descriptions of characters, things, physical locales, and the actions characters take or do not take, and the way these actions are performed or not performed. Narrative is anything but dialog or interior monologue. Conventional wisdom for long- and short-form fiction holds narrative as being sketchy or macrocosm; if you want the filmic equivalent of a close-up, you inject dialog, which narrows the aperture with an attendant increase in depth of field.

Current conventional wisdom has narrative undergoing its own Darwinian progression, principally from the point of view of the author to the point of view of one or more characters.

Charles Dickens, notable among others, has taken first-person point of view to a point in Great Expectations where we certainly need to look to that work for inspiration and energy. A close pal of Dickens, Wilkie Collins, gave us another milestone for the multiple point of view novel, particularly in The Moonstone. Yet another Dickens contemporary, Anthony Trollope, gave an added template for multiple point of view in The Way We Live Now. All three novels are up and running, which is to say in print after almost a hundred fifty years.

In addition to the three novels being compelling reads, they obviate the questions: Whose point of view determines the narration? Is the author's point of view relevant any more?

Taking the last question first, the only author in recent fiction who took over the narrative was Somerset Maugham. But even his use of it speaks to the fact that the author has to either assume a role in the story or assign it to one or more of the characters. To put it another way, if you want a say in your story, write yourself in as a character and give that character your lines. Otherwise you do what most skilled actors do; you butt out and create the character. (Parenthetically, most skilled actors report a greater difficulty in "getting" a character similar in temperment to themselves. This is because they can't readily separate themselves from the characters. True enough, even if you're a strict vegan, there is still a Hannibal Lecters facet within you.)

Narrative reflects the vocabulary (emotional and verbal) of the person at bat, including her degree of sophistication, inner urgencies, fears, biases. You could all do quite nicely portraying Carly Fiorina or Sarah Palin, even though you went door-to-door campaigning for Hillary. You could portray such right-wing extremists as Dan Rowan and Dick Martin even though your heart flops for Obama. You can do this because you recognize the importance of the story being embedded within the characters, individuals who will release vital information in emotional (dramatic) situations, or who will indeed create dramatic situations in order to release the information they swore they would carry to the grave with them. (Writers and actors do not in their professional lives betray people, they betray emotions. What they do in their public life is another matter.)

Narrative reflects the character at bat, the one to whom the dramatic details occur, the one who reports on them, reliably or not, to the reader. If you pick the right character, that individual will give you clues about his or her reliability, take on reality, sense of self, trusting you to get him or her down on paper "accurately."

So okay, you're now the narrator of a story about a art exhibit at a major museum. You are the major art critic for a major newspaper or art journal. You have worked your way up the ladder with slow, patient precision to the point where your opinions are respected. About a month ago, you were less than professional, having had one or two too many flutes of champagne at a museum opening. You met someone you'd been flirting with for some time, and she'd been just as interested and so, after the opening, you and she, shall we say exchanged genetic information. You don't know what possessed you to do so but you told her your secret. To the extent that you often conflate or confuse shades of green and gray and blue, you are color blind.

"I don't think I've ever slept with a color-blind man," she says.

You of course regret your indiscretion. Trying to defuse it, you say, "Truth to tell, neither have I."

She laughs and a part of you thinks it's no big deal, except that there it is, out. A color-blind art critic. Someone knows your secret. Can you trust her? Even more interesting, can you trust yourself with her because she is the only person you've told about this defect of yours.

The narrator--narrators if it's a longer story--see the events. They become prisms through which the reader sees the bent light of their reality.

When you put out a casting call for a character, one of the things you should know about that person is how observant, articulate, quick on the feet, distractable, honest that person is.