Making your Writing Better (narrative viewpoint, your voice as an author) by Gary Smailes

FOR WRITERS AND EDITORS ONLY :)

One of those genuinely interesting articles about a subject that is rarely tackled for reasons oftentimes interpreted as selfish, ignorant or impotent. Some fiction geeks will thrust your sealed novice hunger of HOWs and WHATs in creative fiction or non-fiction writing in the stop-and-never-remember-to-ask-this-again dustbin. 

Gary Smailes played the same card with a different technique and conviction. He compiled this amazing and so inspiring aricle that I personally think is worth sharing here. Don't get me wrong, it's Gary Smailes, one of my best editors ever. Here we go...

As usual, I am going to illustrate one technique, or best practice, that you can apply to your future writing projects.

Today is a long one.

I’ve been working on this article for a few weeks but thought that it was an important topic worthy of the 3000+ word count.

So, today, I want to talk about narrative viewpoint.

One problem I see on a regular basis, when editing people’s novels, is a misunderstanding of viewpoint and how to best use it when writing.

You will often hear writers and teachers talking about the ‘narrative voice’ or even the writer’s ‘voice’.

These are phrases that get tossed about but rarely defined. In fact, when people talk about a writer’s voice, they often lack the correct terminology to accurately identify what is meant.

In this workshop, you’ll discover what is meant by narration and that this is linked to narrative voice and viewpoint.

You will learn about the different types of narrative viewpoint and how they can be used in your own writing.

What is narration?
The best place to start is with the concept of narration and the narrator.

Narration is the way a story is told, and the narrator is the person telling this story.

The narrator will often not be a character (though they may) and will have a ‘voice’ that is distinct from those of the characters.

When you look at a page of prose you will see that it is made up of a number of elements. The most obvious of these is the words of the characters. These are almost always shown in speech marks and will contain some element of attribution (this is when you are told who is speaking, for example, ‘he said’ is a type of attribution).

Below is the opening few lines of Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice.

The sections that are character’s words (and the attribution) have been put in bold.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

The whole of this section of prose is narration, but if you take away the character's speech, what is left is the narrator’s voice.

What is included in the narrator’s voice will be determined by the approach you take to writing, and is the subject of this guide, but there are three elements that are always included in all types of narrative voice:

- Description of characters.
- Description of locations.
- Description of actions.
There are two further elements that may or may not, depending on your approach, be included these are:

- Character’s thoughts.
- The thoughts of the narrator.
Let’s go back to our example. This is now presented with speech in bold but the narrative voice in italics.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

If you look carefully you can see that the sections that are in italics of the words of the narrator, not the characters. The narrator is telling you, the reader, something about the story that is independent from the words and actions of the characters.

This is an important concept; that words and actions are open to little interpretation, but the content of the narrative voice will vary greatly on the narrative approach taken.

How much the narrator is able to tell the reader, in fact, how much the narrator even knows is based firmly on the identity of the narrator and how they gather information about the world.

This brings us to a key element.

How the narrative (or narrator’s voice) is presented to the reader is determined by two elements:

- Narrative viewpoint - this is the perspective through which the story is told.
- Narrative voice - this is how the story is told.

So, stick with me here… the problem you probably face is that people (and by people, I mean writing teachers and some writers) often either misunderstand the difference between these terms or use them incorrectly. This results in lots of confusing information floating about.

We’ll take this logically.

Narrative Viewpoint
Let’s start with narrative viewpoint.

We’ve seen that the words written on a page of prose is narration told by the narrator. The way in which the narration is presented is the narrative viewpoint.

There are four types of narrative viewpoint, and you’ll have a working relationship with at least two of these types.

- First person.
- Second person.
- Third person.
- Alternating.
First Person
The posh way of describing first person is to say that the story is told by a participant narrator. In more simple language, the narrator and the main character are the same person.

The easiest way to identify a first person viewpoint is because the narrator will use first person pronouns (I, me, my, and mine.)

Below is the opening paragraph from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. This is written in first person viewpoint, notice the use of I and me.

‘My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons. He sent me to Emmanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years; and my father now and then sending me small sums of money, I laid them out in learning navigation, and other parts of the mathematics useful to those who intend to travel, as I always believed it would be, some time or other, my fortune to do. When I left Mr. Bates, I went down to my father, where, by the assistance of him, and my uncle John and some other relations, I got forty pounds, and a promise of thirty pounds a year, to maintain me at Leyden. There I studied physic two years and seven months, knowing it would be useful in long voyages.’

First person viewpoint comes with a number of important elements:

- The narrator is able to pass their internal thoughts to the reader.
- The narrator’s understanding of the world is limited to that of the main character. This means that they can only describe words, actions and events of which they are aware. This is called limited omniscience.
- The narrator will always have a subjective view of their world and may or may not be reliable. There are many examples of stories in which first person narrators have purposefully ‘tricked’ readers by giving incorrect information. In fact, one of the strengths of first person is that it is possible to trick readers and provide a shocking conclusion to a story. Iain Bank’s Wasp Factory is a great example of this approach.
- It is possible to tell a story from multiple first person viewpoints. In this situation, the story will alternate between the different viewpoints. This might be from one chapter to the next, though John Fowles’ The Collector, a great example of this style of writing, sees the first half of the book in one viewpoint and the second half from the viewpoint of a different character. You will find that with multiple characters, all written from a first person viewpoint, the chapter (or section) will often start with the name of the focal character.

Second Person
This is an uncommon form of storytelling and it is very rarely seen in mainstream literature. Second person viewpoint sees the reader being made a character in the story. It often uses phrases such as you, your and yours.

The most successful application of second person viewpoint has been the Choose Your Own Adventure series and similar interactive fiction. In these types of books, the reader is set as the hero and they decide on the path of the story.

Below is an example of second person viewpoint taken from Battle Books: Hasting (written by me!). The book puts the reader in command of an invading army in 1066 and lets you fight the battle. Notice the use of ‘you’.

‘The housecarl’s axe whistles through the air. You remain calm and duck at the last moment. The blade misses your head and smashes into your shoulder. Your armour deflects it, but you are stunned and unable to react. You squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the blow that will end your life...but it never comes.

You regain your senses, flicking open your eyes. The housecarl is surrounded by your knights. Their lances have speared his body. You recover quickly from the attack, but control of the battle is slipping away.’

Second person viewpoint has a limited number of uses and should probably be avoided if you are trying to write a traditional or mainstream novel. Plus, as someone who has written four books in second person, it’s hard work!

Third Person
This is, by far, one of the most common narrative viewpoints. Wikipedia describes the third person narrator as an ‘unspecified entity or uninvolved person who conveys the story and is not a character of any kind within the story’.
In other words, the narrator is separate from the story and is telling the reader what is happening.

A third person narrator will use words such as he, she, or they, but they will never refer to themselves directly, using words like I.

Here’s an example of third person in action, taken from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

Take note of the narrator using words such as he and his.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

Third person is perhaps the easiest to use of the narrative viewpoints. The narrator is, essentially, a disembodied voice that plays no part in the story. The writer is not required to ‘justify’ the presence of the narrator. This means that the focus can be solely on characters and events.

Alternating
The most common viewpoints in fiction are the first and third person viewpoints. In novels written in these viewpoints, the approach is consistent, with the complete novel sticking with the defined viewpoint.

However, over the years, some writers have experimented with mixing the viewpoints. We have seen third person mixed with first and visa versa. We have even seen novels that alternate between the two viewpoints. In addition, most novels have one narrator and some writers have tried to introduce a number of narrators.

If this approach is of interest, then check out Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace (which switches between first and third) or Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down (which has four narrators, each presented in first person).

One word of warning, creating a coherent alternating viewpoint novel is not easy. The writer faces two big problems.

The first comes in the form of the reader. In most cases, a reader will be expecting a consistent narrative, if they then discover the narrative is alternating, they may find it confusing and unsatisfactory (remember the contract we talked about last week).

The second is a technical problem, in that switching viewpoints is hard to do. If means that you are, in effect, telling a story in a number of different ways. It is very easy for the writer to lose control and produce a novel that is difficult to read.

Narrative Voice
We have seen that narrative viewpoint is the perspective from which the story is told (normally first or third person). However, how a story is told is the narrative voice.

In all stories, the narrator is potentially able to pass some, or all, of the following pieces of information:

- Words spoken by the main character (or within earshot of main character).
- Words spoken out of earshot of the main character.
- Inner thoughts of the main character.
- Inner thoughts of other characters.
- Descriptions of actions and events witnessed by the main character.
- Descriptions of actions and events NOT witnessed by the main character.
- Assessment/summary of things that are happening.

The choice of viewpoint will limit which of these elements are available to the narrator.

First Person Voice
When writing in first person, the narrator is the main character in the story. The information they are able to pass is clearly defined.

A first person narrator can pass the inner and external dialogue of the main character (since the narrator and main character are the same thing). They can also describe any event or location the main character has experienced or has gained knowledge.

The limitations of the third person narrator are also clear. They can’t pass the internal thoughts of characters other than the main character, unless they are told them directly (the main character can’t read thoughts). They can also not provide descriptions of any events or actions that the main character is not witnessing.

One final thing to consider is that the main character can provide a summary to events that have happened. For example, if the main character wanted to express that seeing the death of a beloved friend made them sad, that’s OK, since they are the thoughts of the narrator/main character.

Third Person Voice
When writing in third person, consideration must be given to the type of third person narrator you wish to adopt.

There are three types of third person narrator:
1. Omniscient.
2. Subjective.
3. Objective.

Each of these three third person narrative approaches have their own advantages and limitations. It is important that you understand these guidelines before employing the narrative voice.

Third Person Omniscient
It can be argued that third person omniscient is the most commonly used form of storytelling in novels. It is possible that you have never heard the term before, but you will certainly have read novels written in this format, with famous examples being any book by Charles Dickens, the Harry Potter series and Lord of the Rings.

In third person omniscient viewpoint, the narrator has full knowledge of everything that is going on at all times, including the thoughts of all characters. The narrator is all-knowing and all-seeing. This said, it may be the case that the writer chooses to focus on one character per scene or chapter.

One of the side effects of third person omniscient narrators is that they come across as reliable, since they have a knowledge of all things. It is not impossible, or unheard of, to create an unreliable third person omniscient narrator, but in doing so you are negating one of the narrative voice’s biggest advantages.

The disadvantage with this viewpoint is that style creates ‘distance’ between the characters and the reader. You will often find that characterization of anything but the main character is limited and readers will often feel a little disconnected with some of the characters.

Third person omniscient lends itself to stories with large sweeping narrative arcs. It's no coincidence that ‘epic’ novels with many events and characters are written from this viewpoint. In these types of novels, the difficulties of characterization are outweighed by wider narratives.

Third Person Subjective
This viewpoint is the most ‘fluid’ of the third person viewpoints. In its purest form, third person subjective sees the narrator conveying the thoughts, feelings, actions and words of just one character. However, this is not first person and the narrator will never refer to themselves as I. Instead the narrator will stick to he, she, it, and they.

A good way to think about this is when the story is written in third person but focussed solely on one character. The narrator follows that character from start to finish. The only scenes that are written out are those that feature the main character.

Ok, this is where it gets a little complicated.

The above viewpoint is sometimes also called third person limited or third person subjective limited. The reason being that the narration is limited to one character.

There is another type of third person subjective. In this the narrator conveys the thoughts, feelings, actions and words of a small number of characters, not just one. They will remain in third person but normally focus on one character per chapter (or scene). As the chapter shifts, the narrator may well shift to a different character. You can think of this as multiple main characters.

So… third person subjective focuses on a small number of characters, whilst third person subjective limited focuses on just one character.

Over the years, there has been much experimentation with these styles, with third person subjective growing in popularity during the twentieth century.

The main advantage with this approach is that it goes some way to solve the characterisation problems seen in third person omniscient. The narrator is able to focus on a limited number of characters, allowing them to be developed across the plot.

The main disadvantage is that it makes it more difficult to write large sweeping stories. A story told from a single character viewpoint has obvious limitations and will not lend itself well to a tale that has a lot happening away from that character. This can be solved, to some extent, by focusing on more than one character, but a writer must be careful not to overwhelm the reader with too many characters. In these situations, it makes sense to just write in omniscient.

Many writers consider third person subjective to be the perfect balance between first person and third person omniscient, providing many of the benefits of both, without too much compromise.

Third Person Objective
This viewpoint is the simplest to understand. The narrator tells the story without describing any character's thoughts, opinions, or feelings. They describe the events as they happen. This is a very filmic approach but can be very effective and often appeals to a very modern reader.

When writing in this style, the writer will often go to huge lengths to make the narrator as neutral as possible, with them providing no narrative summary or wider thoughts on the events or actions. This places the reader in a situation where they must ‘engage’ more fully with the story to gain a deeper understanding of what is happening.

Readers are often left to work out what is happening for themselves, allowing them to build their own narratives. This is probably the biggest advantage of this approach, in that the reader is forced to become part of the story. Effective third person objective novels can have a deep impact on the reader.

The main disadvantage of this approach comes in the form of its limitations. The writer is unable to provide backstory, thoughts and feelings to the reader via the narrator and internal thoughts of the characters. The narrator must, therefore, pass all of this information to readers via dialogue between characters (and also their actions). This will lead to dialogue heavy novels, with writers often creating scenes just to find a believable way in which backstory can be passed via speech.

Final Thoughts
It is a mistake to approach the choice of how to write a novel believing that there is a right or wrong option.

There are just different ways to write.

The type of narrative approach you take should depend on the following factors:

- Your preferred style of writing.
- The type of story you want to tell.
- Your goals for the story.
- Genre and reader expectations.

For example, if you want to tell sweeping fantasy epics, in the style of Game of Thrones, then third person omniscient should be your first port of call. However, if you want to tell a close, sensitive story about one person’s fight with mental illness, then first person might well be the way to go.

What is important is that you fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of the style of writing that is best for you and your novel. If you pick a narrative viewpoint that works for you, your novel and your reader, then you will take a huge step towards creating a story that will live with a reader long after they finish your book.