When I was 19 I wrote a novel called “A Peculiar Betrayal.” I feverishly typed it out between watches on ship, scribbled its chapters in notepads on buses and trains; I filled it with all the angst and spelling mistakes I could muster. Of the handful of literary agents I dared sent it to, two were kind enough to send back personal notes[i] alongside their standard rejection letters. Both were surprisingly encouraging, but both said the same thing: show, don’t tell. This article is my attempt, almost twenty years later, to understand what that means. (more…)
Last July my father and I decided to have a go at one of the exercises from Scott McCloud’s book Making Comics[i]. Each of us would draw a 16-frame comic, one frame at a time, emailing the other a copy of the new frame after each was done. We would then email back instructions for what would happen in the next frame. It was fun, mildly anarchic experience. In this article I am going to share my completed comic and talk about the useful things I got from the exercise as a storyteller. (more…)
Narrative Perspective or Point of View (PoV) controls how the reader interacts with the world of the story. In part one of this series of articles I talked about the balance between intimacy and clarity in first and third person. In part two I used the second person to illustrate the ways in which the reader enters into the text, and how this can be used to influence their sympathies. In this final part I’m going to briefly talk about omniscient PoV and how you decide what the reader knows. This will bring us back full circle to the question of intimacy and clarity, before I finish with a few pointers I have assembled from my reading on how to manage PoV in your story. (more…)
In part one of this series, which you can read here, I talked about the choice between First and Third Person Point of View (PoV), where First Person tends towards intimacy while Third Person can offer greater clarity. But it is far from a simple dichotomy. Choices regarding PoV and perspective are part of a nexus of alternative ways to embody the reader[i] in the text.
An easy way to demonstrate how PoV puts the reader inside the text is via the much maligned Second Person Perspective. In Second Person PoV you are the protagonist – “you said, you picked up the knife, you walked out of the room.” The following example is from a book that just about every geek of my age has read: (more…)
Point of View or Narrative Perspective is a central stylistic choice that is superficially simple but contains hidden difficulties and subtleties. In the two parts of this article I will explore the three main types of narrative mode (first (I said), second (you said) and third (he said) person perspective), how to use perspective to manage the balance between intimacy and clarity, and how small shifts in point of view can be used to position the reader. This won’t be a comprehensive overview, but I will be exploring some of the things I find interesting about the choice of narrative perspective.
First person perspective or Point of View (PoV) is written as if told by one or more of the central characters, either using “I” (first-person singular) or “we” (first person plural); “I said, I picked up the knife, we walked out of the door.” Third person PoV is written from outside of the character; “he said, she picked up the knife, they walked out the door.” But what difference does it make choosing one approach over the other? (more…)
When I was 19 I wrote a novel called “A Peculiar Betrayal.” I feverishly typed it out between watches on ship, scribbled its chapters in notepads on buses and trains; I filled it with all the angst and spelling mistakes I could muster. Of the handful of literary agents I dared sent it to, two were kind enough to send back personal notes[i] alongside their standard rejection letters. Both were surprisingly encouraging, but both said the same thing: show, don’t tell. This article is my attempt, almost twenty years later, to understand what that means. (more…)
