I think one of the most
important questions a writer faces when starting a novel is to decide from
whose point of view the story will be told. It comes down to choosing between
first person and third person narration and there are advantages and
difficulties with both approaches.
With first person narration
you get an intensity and an immediacy because you are in the head of your
character and see through his or her eyes. You can express the emotions of the
character directly. The downside is that you can’t see events where your
protagonist is not present or know what other characters are doing when they
are out of shot as it were. Whereas if you opt for third person narration you
are like an eagle looking down on your characters as they go about their
business. You are omniscient and have much greater freedom to describe events.
But… there is less close up intensity and the voice is less personal.
I have written three novels
and wanted to explore how I approached this question of Point of View in each one.
My first novel THE LIE OF YOU is about
one very determined woman, Heja, who is trying to destroy another woman, Kathy, in both her
professional and personal life. I wrote this in the first person but from the
point of view of the two women characters. In alternating
chapters you hear the voices of Heja and Kathy. My aim was to get into their
heads and tell their story as truly as I could.
They are very different women. Kathy is smart
but suffers from self-doubt about her ability to carry off her new job as
Editor of a magazine. She likes food, cooking and sex, can be messy and needs
warmth from her friends and lovers. Her tone of voice is warm and emotional.
In contrast Heja
is from Finland and she had been the face of Finnish TV News. She is beautiful,
clever and cold and is always in control. We see her self-control in
the way she wears her hair, in how she dresses and in her minimalist loft flat
with its view of the Thames. And in her sentences too which are shorter
and more staccato than Kathy’s.
The advantage of telling the story from two
first person points of view was that I was able to use the intensity of first
person narration but because I switched between two characters I was also able
to show different aspects of the unfolding drama.
My second
novel AFTER THE STORM is about two couples who set off together in a 37 foot boat after knowing each
other less than 24 hours to sail to a paradise island in the Caribbean Sea. But
like most paradises it has a very dark side.
As I had four
main characters and they were all important I decided I would have to tell the
story in the third person, the eagle’s point of view. In order to make it more
personal I would write individual scenes from the point of view of different
characters. This is called Third Person Intimate I’m told.
My task was to create four
distinctive characters each with their own fears, desires and secrets to put in
the exotic setting. Anna is an English speech therapist who is scared of much
in the physical world but is brave about emotional crises. Her partner Rob has a strong Robinson Crusoe fantasy and would love to find his own
personal wilderness. The American couple Owen and Kim are less straightforward and you sense they are escaping from something. There is a frisson of sexual attraction between the
two couples and they all have secrets. It is when they reach the
island that these secrets will emerge and challenge the four of them to the
limit.
Because I had chosen to
write in the third person I had much greater freedom to describe the setting
and the scenes. This meant I could roam wherever I needed to go, sometimes with
just one of the characters. I was not tied to one controlling consciousness as
you are in first person narration. I felt that there was less intensity of
voice because of this. The book is a slow burner and it takes longer for you to
get to know the characters because you are not seeing the world through their
eyes all the time. However I felt it was the right choice for the story I
wanted to tell.
In my latest novel WOMAN OFTHE HOUR I have returned to first person point of view. We see the drama
unfolding through the eyes of my main character Liz Lyon. She is 41 years old
and divorced with a fourteen year old daughter. She’s a respected but
stressed-out TV producer and a guilty single mother.
Many books depict women’s
home and emotional lives. I’ve seen much less fiction about a woman struggling
with the pressures of work and I wanted to explore that in this book. I wanted to show the whole woman: work-Liz, calm, controlled, soothing
egos and managing a difficult boss and home-Liz who is far more emotional and
reveals her real thoughts and feelings. So often at work Liz has to bite her
tongue or censor what she says. It is what her job as Head of Features
requires. At home Liz can let rip. And she fears that she is a better mother to
her team than to her daughter Flo precisely because Flo presses her buttons.
First person point of view
allows you to show the gap between a person’s inner voice and their outer
behaviour. Liz Lyon is someone who often can’t say what she means when she’s at
work because she has to manage a lot of huge egos. WOMAN OF THE HOUR is also
about power struggles at the workplace and in Liz Lyon I wanted to write a
strong female character who also has her weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
Looking back at my three novels I
think the
approach I am most comfortable with is first person point of view as I like to really
feel my way into the experiences of my main character.
My novels are published by Head of Zeus.
This piece first appeared on the Just Write website.
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