Ghost Writing?

I went to visit my father's grave yesterday. He is buried in a churchyard at the foot of the Cotswold escarpment, in a place that is haunted by memories: of my dad, of my son's childhood which was spent in the village, of life as it used to be and is no longer, yet each time I visit it feels as if it is I who am the ghost. I seem to slip into the uncanny space that exists between the worlds of then and now. When I wander up to the graveyard, or stand at the bottom of our old driveway gazing hungrily up at the house, I feel as if I am the spectre outside the window, the exorcised, the banished.

The reason I'm sharing this with you, the creative writing reason, is because I think it touches on perspective and what you can do with it when you are writing fiction. Received wisdom is that the dead haunt the living, but when I go back to my old "haunts", that isn't my experience at all, for me the reverse is true. I think you might be able to apply this to your own work: when you are tackling point of view within the structure of your narrative, see what happens when you approach it from a different viewpoint. For example, if A is the heroine of your story, try telling it from the perspective of B, or C. To put it even more simply, when you are working creatively begin with the obvious and then do the opposite.

An Alphabet of Better Writing - # F

F is for...First Person

Should writing in the first person be your first port of call? All of us experience life in the first person -- obviously -- so in many ways the logical point from which to tell a story should be just that, the first person, or "I".

You'd think so, wouldn't you?  But it isn't quite as easy as that. There a few pitfalls associated with going down this route -- mainly that it is easy to sound gauche.  I think often people assume that the intimacy afforded by writing as "I" can be a substitute for fully realised characterisation.  You need to inhabit every nook and cranny of the character you are creating; your chief tools for bringing them to life will be their thoughts and actions and words, everything has to originate from the character themselves.  You won't be able to view them from the outside, so will be denied useful additions such as what other people think about them (unless this is conveyed to them in speech). This means you have to work harder and in a more concentrated way.

Not only is it easy to skimp on characterisation, assuming that just by using the first person it is automatically done for you, there are structural challenges to contend with too. An omniscient narrator telling the story from the point of view of "he" or "she" can describe events from any point of view, flitting from hero to heroine to bit part player, so that each one has their moment in the spotlight and the plot can be related in a flexible and  varied way.  The first person narrative doesn't have that luxury, you are confined to a single viewpoint.  This can raise all sorts of issues - how does your heroine describe something unless she is there when it happens,  or it is described to her, (but here you risk losing immediacy). There may be moments in the plot which actively demand that she isn't present - then what?

The first person is (weirdly) both liberating and constraining to use.  If you are writing a character-based, reflective book, then the opportunity to go ever deeper into somebody's psyche is probably hard to resist.  If you are writing a pacy action thriller, then you might find that the flexibility of the third person is easier to handle.  Either way, don't underestimate the difficulty of writing as "I" - it isn't a short cut to anywhere at all, if anything it makes you go the long way round.

I haven't shared a door with you for ages, so here's a particularly beautiful one to make up for it ...

My Viewpoint On Point of View

I took this picture of my shed from the house, from the outside looking in (note the progress -- windows!  walls!)  It's a particular perspective: it gives me a sense of location and proportion; I've got a great idea of how my little bolthole relates to all the other buildings and the landscape beyond.  I can glimpse some of the interior-- the beginnings of a stud wall, the suggestion of a window, but it's a bit murky and I can't see much.

In writing terms, this is a little bit like working in the third person, from the point of view of he/she, rather than I/me.  There's an externalised feel to it.  Although the third person doesn't reveal too much of the inner psyche of other characters because sometimes it lacks the intense feeling of intimacy that a first person narrative can evoke, it is incredibly flexible: you have a universal viewpoint, all seeing, all knowing, which enables you to follow the progress of one character for a time and then change courses and focus on another, rather than being confined to one narrator.

This means that at any given moment you can swing round and reveal an entirely different vista...

What's the Point - of View?

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, over the summer I started a sideline in giving fresh life to old household objects - new lamps for old, if you like -- and as I was sitting in the gallery yesterday, it occurred to me that you can do the same thing with fiction.  It's not just that hoary old chestnut that there are only seven basic plots and that everything anyone writes is a rehash of one of those, I was thinking of something more inventive and creative than that.  Sir Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a dazzling example of the kind of thing I mean.  He  reworks Hamlet so that the drama unfolds from the point of view of two of the most minor characters and I wonder if the same exercise could be applied to other classics or fables.

I'm not advocating literary laziness, I'm suggesting that you dig a little deeper into the narrative of a story that interests you and see what effect it would have on the dynamics if it were told from the viewpoint of a bit part player.  It's a way of making yourself really think about the importance and effect of point of view.

Pride and Prejudice as narrated by Mr Collins, anybody?

Where Do I Stand?

Almost the first thing you have to decide when you are starting to work on a story, is where the narrator stands in relation to the narrative.  It sounds complicated, but actually what it means is working out how the story will be told.  One option is to use the third person (he /she), relating events from the all-knowing point of view of the author, who sees with equal clarity into the heart of every single character -- this is the classic approach, and probably the most straightforward. Using the omniscient third person, you can eavesdrop on the most private thoughts of the hero and heroine and you don't have to explain how you know what is going on at any moment in any given situation - you just tell it like it is.  That is its great advantage; its main drawback is that forming an intimate, personal relationship with the central character can sometimes be hard to achieve.

This is why many writers opt for the first person narrative, where the story is told from the point of view of "I".  This creates the impression for the reader that they are actually inhabiting the psyche of the protagonist, getting under their skin, and it makes it much easier for them to bond.  The fiendish difficulty presented by this kind of storytelling is that the narrator - I - can only describe what he or she has  actually witnessed themselves -- everything else required for the development of the plot has to be overheard / reported / surmised, which has obvious limitations.

To explore which approach might be most comfortable for you, write a paragraph in the third person on the theme of, say, infidelity, then rewrite it in the first person, so that you can compare and contrast the challenges and benefits of each and see which works best for you and your story.

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