Monday, 14 February 2011

A Different Perspective

In real life, people often experience the same event in profoundly different ways - eyewitness accounts of an identical situation can vary wildly for a number of reasons -- it can be that people bring their own preconceptions to what they are witnessing, or simply to do with where they are physically standing in relation to what is happening.

This phenomenon is something that you can make productive use of in your writing, particularly in detective fiction where a number of discrepant versions of a crime can help manipulate the reader's suspicions. It can also be a great way of throwing light on character and expectation.

To test this out, try writing the same scene twice, from the differing perspectives of the two people involved in it and see if you can put the inconsistencies that emerge to creative use: Why did John see something that Jane missed? Was Jane distracted and if so by what? Was she being wilfully blind?  Was John so caught up in his own agenda that he didn't fully comprehend where Jane was coming from? You can tease the situation out to comic or even tragic effect.  Have a go -- it will certainly give you something to work with

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