TECH: Nanowrimo Notes #4: Try another viewpoint?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Try another viewpoint?

Normally I go along with the standard writing recommendation to use third person limited -- pick a viewpoint character and stick with showing us the story from that point of view, with some dipping into their head but nobody else's. But especially for nanowrimo quotas, you might want to take another approach. Or two or three :-)

First, you might try writing the same scene using more than one style of viewpoint. Start with third person limited, then try it in third person omniscient -- including bits and pieces from everyone's point of view. Or perhaps rewrite it in third person cinematic -- no interior monologue or reflection, just external description, action, and dialogue. Just like the movies. Or shift it into first person, and see how it works in the up close and personal mode. Later you can decide which one you want to keep.

Second, you might want to do the third person limited rendition, and then do it again using a second viewpoint character. Tell it from the protagonist's point of view, then tell it from the villain's point of view. Sherlock Holmes and Watson? Try telling the same scene from the point of view of several of your major characters. Remember to make each and every one of them recognizably different. The senses, the details that they notice, what they focus on should let us know whose shoulder we are looking over even if we didn't have a name somewhere in the beginning of the scene.

Third, you might wander through some bit players, or even some variations such as pets, computers, diaries, and so forth. Every one of these can offer a different look at the story that's going on. What does the plot look like from the vacuum cleaner's perspective? Or perhaps the policeman on the corner, the newspaper reporter, the anthropologist from the Smithsonian who is studying the case? What about the historian looking back at this story 100 years from now? These may not be points of view that you want to use for the whole book, or even for an entire scene, but go ahead and play a little with narrating the story from an unusual point of view. Or maybe just a piece of the story -- what does the chase scene look like in the jumbled description of the cab driver who got suddenly yanked into the middle? Does a newspaper obituary provide the reader with some distance from the death of a character?

Fundamentally, go with your first person or third person limited baseline story. But if you're looking for a few more words and a change of pace, take that scene and run it through the viewpoint wringer. See what happens if you adopt an omniscient point of view for this scene, or make it purely cinematic. Consider shifting the point of view, and write the scene again from a different character's point of view.

Don't get rid of any of your alternatives yet. Just write them up, and count the words towards your total. Selection, editing, and revision come later -- right now, you're building up a wordy pile, aiming at getting a solid slab of work in hand to shape and prune later. So feel free to try some variations, and see what they look like. Who knows, you may decide that telling the story from the point of view of a mouse running underfoot really is the best point of view, at least as long as the cat doesn't catch 'em.

tink
(hum - about 500 words? 1,500 more to go!)