Story Perspectives and Narratives
How do we identify the perspective of a story and how is it different to the narrative of your story? Today we'll talk about point of views, what they mean and how to use them.
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When you first plan for your story, a thought you might have is who is telling the story--whose lens are we following? It’s important to have an idea of what perspective and narrative you’ll be writing in and understand the handful of perspectives there are before completely diving into your story.
What is a Perspective?: A perspective is how the characters are viewed and how the story is processed. You can use perspective in all types of narratives and points of view to let your consumer define the attitude and personality of your narrator, and how your narrator perceives what is going on.
Perspective and narrative (POVs) are different, but they are often compared to each other and help to find the voice of your story. A perspective of your story is different from how your story is told.
What is a Point of View/Narrative?: This focuses on the type of narration you use in the story. It focuses on the who factor of your story. There are three main points of view and a handful of sub-narratives that can be used
The First Person POV: How you identify the first person POV is the language using ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘we’ in the narrative. This narrative is from the perspective of your main characters (usually). They are telling the story to throw their eyes and it’s their voice that comes to throw. This point of view might be recounting the past as things play out.
Not all first-person narratives are in the protagonist's voice, but it is often the most common.
Types of First-Person Narratives:
The Protagonist: They are the main character in the story. The Protagonist shares the events shown in their eyes as it happens to them, they also give their thoughts and comments on these events.
A Secondary Character: This character might not have the events of the story be directly about them, but they can often relate and give their own experiences within the context of the events of the story. This character will usually have some type of familiar relationship with the protagonist.
The Observer: This narrator is a witness to the events and actions of your story, however, they are limited or has no direct participation regarding the events of the story. This type of narrator is closely related to a third person limited but they make the choice of using personal pronouns such as ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘myself,’ to add their own voice into the story.
The Unreliable Narrator: Some may believe that this type of narrator would be a part of a third-person narration but because this narrator cannot be trusted, it’s most likely told by another person. Their ideas of events are often skewed and incorrect.
The Second Person POV: This POV is not a very common one. This one can be very tricky to pull off as it uses language such as ‘you’, ‘your’, and ‘yourself’. The narrator of the story is you/the consumer. Although tricky, it can be pulled off. We can see this type of narration in reader insert fanfictions and even choosing your own adventure books as well.
The Third Person POV: This POV is very flexible than the first and second person POVs. Third person can give both the author and the consumer more of a global view of the events and actions of the story. But, keep in mind, that similarly to the first person, it can be limited to just following one person. The language used to identify this POV usually uses the character names, ‘she/him’ pronouns, ‘they’ pronouns, and others like it.
Types of Third-Person Narratives:
Third Person Limited: This narrator only follows one person throughout the story, only knowing one character's thoughts and feelings throughout the events of the story.
Third Person Multiple: This narrator can follow many characters throughout the events and actions of your story, switching between the character's individual storylines or even perspectives.
Third-Person Omniscient: They are the all-knowing narrator of your story. They know everything and everyone. They know everything about the world inside your story and how it works. Nothing is hidden from them or off limits. They are the all-knowing God, as you will.
Using Perspectives in Your Story: Now that we have an understanding of what perspectives are, what types of POVs can be explored, and their sub-narratives, now we ask ourselves; how do we put perspectives into our story? Our overall goal is to make a more realistic dynamic in your world-building and between the characters you’ve created.
A writing exercise that can be beneficial to use is to write one scene with different voices attached to it. Look into the eyes of each character you have written and express the same events from their perspective. You want to understand how all your characters think, feel, and believe about the scene you have written and what with their own set of experiences and backstories. Ask yourself; how does each character tell the story of the same events? How do they remember it? How do they feel about this? With this, play around with the point of view as well, because remember perspective and narrative are different but go together. Try out telling the story in the second person narration, or the first person narration throw the lens of an unreliable narrator. Trying things out with different characters expands your knowledge of perspectives and makes interesting narratives out of them.
~Vocabulary~
Perspective: a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.
Narrative: a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.
Attitude: a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person's behavior.
Personality: the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character.
Voice: express (something) in words.
Witness: a person who sees an event, typically a crime or accident, take place.
Limited: restricted in size, amount, or extent; few, small, or short.
Participation: the action of taking part in something.
Pronouns: a word that can function by itself as a noun phrase and that refers either to the participants in the discourse (e.g., I, you ) or to someone or something mentioned elsewhere in the discourse (e.g., she, it, this ).
Skewed: make biased or distorted in a way that is regarded as inaccurate, unfair, or misleading.
Fanfictions: fiction written by a fan of, and featuring characters from, a particular TV series, movie, etc.
Flexible: able to be easily modified to respond to altered circumstances or conditions.
Realistic: representing familiar things in a way that is accurate or true to life.
World-building: the process of developing a detailed and plausible fictional world for a novel or story, especially in science fiction, fantasy, and video games:
Beneficial: favorable or advantageous; resulting in good.
Scene: a sequence of continuous action in a play, movie, opera, or book. OR the place where an incident in real life or fiction occurs or occurred.