Point of View

1. Introduction to Point of View: Hi everyone and welcome to this course on point of view in your writing. Choosing a point of view is actually one of the most important decisions you will make when you are crafting your narratives. Well, of course, character and plot are important and plot as this story that you are relating to your reader's point of view is the lens through which you will relate it. It's how you will tell that story. Think of it this way. Every story that you tell has a lens through which we are looking. When I read your story or anyone's story, It's like I'm putting on a pair of spectacles and here, up there that I'm watching and looking at, That's the plot. But I'm seeing it through the pair of spectacles that you've given me. And this is true of every story. This is true of nonfiction. Everyone looks at a plot, at a story, at an anecdote through a lens. So the question for you as a rider is, what is the lens through which I want my reader to experience this story? If I'm reading a story about a family marooned on an island, that's going to be a very different story if I tell it from the perspective of a 54 year old father responsible for his family, or the perspective of the three-year-old daughter. Same story, same essential events for which you will choose those that go into your plot. But going to be told to completely different, just because you've picked a different lens through which to tell it. When we're writing, we often think about the relationship that we want the reader to establish with the character, which is of course totally important. But you don't want to neglect the relationship that the reader has with the narrator. And indeed the relationship of the narrator has with the character. So it's never just a point of saying, okay, it's the reader and the character, or it's the narrative of the character. It's the readers relationship with the character that you're building. Your building that relationship through the readers relationship with the narrator. And therefore, the narrator has a relationship with the reader as well. That narrator is the intermediary, which means he has a relationship with me. And the characters. Choosing a point of view is basically choosing what angle am I coming into a look at this story? And that's a very strategic decision. Because when you choose point of view, what you're doing is you have certain freedoms and then some freedoms are taken away. So you are giving yourself limitations or you're removing limitations in the ways that you tell those stories. And in doing so, this completely changes the plot and the way we know the characters. To think that you can choose a point of view irrespective of how you want me as a reader to relate to the characters or indeed the plot as you will unfold it. You can't separate those things. Choosing point of view influences those two things. So critically that when you're thinking about your narrative, you might say to yourself, well, i've, I've done my character profile because I took Barbara's building a great character course. And I've plotted everything out because they took barbs, really great dramatic plots course 12. And now I'm ready to go, but no, no, you have to know that point of view. You have to know what that lens is. To that end, we are going to be looking at numerous aspects of point of view. We will address first-person, we will address third person limited, third-person omniscient. We will slightly touch on second person. We will look at multiple perspective. First-person, we will look at the differences between subjective, an objective perspective in omniscience. Within all of these perspectives, we're going to look at what are the benefits of using these perspectives? What are the challenges or perhaps the downsides of using those perspectives we will be giving you specific to-dos are things to look out for ways to succeed with these different perspectives and indeed the things that you want to avoid. We will also talk about the concept of authorial intrusion. How, how much do you want your narrator to have his or her own character? How much do you want your narrative to actually be an element of a story or how invisible do you want them to be and what are the pluses and minuses of making that decision. Finally, we will also look at actually on the page when you're putting a woods down, what are the differences in the ways that you can demonstrate character's thoughts and actions and feelings. Do you use quotations? Do you use tags, these sorts of just down and dirty tactics? These are the questions you need to know that you can actually go about writing it and move from theory land to actual practical application, getting your story down on the paper, I hope that sounds of interest. If it does, Let's move to the next video where we will talk about the critical, critical listener or reader of your stories. 2. Identify the Critical Listener: Most of the time, when we're talking about storytelling, we're thinking about who's the author, who is the storyteller, who is the narrator. But it is just as important to think about who is your reader. By that, I do not mean that you have to go do market research and say, Well, I'm writing a sci-fi and generally speaking, I think this Demographics go into that piece. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that when you are choosing your narrator, what often happens is that an author can get into sort of a bit of a rat in trying to make that narrative come alive. One of the ways that you combat that is to actually think about what is the actual occasion of this storytelling. This is relevant whether you're writing first-person, third-person. It doesn't matter. Why is this character, if it's first-person, why is this narrative? If it's third person telling this story? And this is going to help you get a good solid voice and actually choose the things that you would indeed tell. If I'm just writing this to all and sundry and I don't have a sense of the person to whom I'm directing it. That's a lot of information that you then have to sort of narrow down, winnow out. What do I say? What don't I say? If, for example, you're telling your sister how your day went on Friday, you're going to tell that story of the events of your Friday very differently than you would a casual acquaintance. So that right there just making that decision. We haven't even talked about necessarily much about who our narrator is, but we're already getting a sense of, oh, yes, you're right. Because my sister, I'm going to be a bit more gossipy and I'm going to talk about certain things I wouldn't necessarily talk about. And I might be more honest about my thoughts about these characters that I would be if it were a casual acquaintance. Just the, just the person we're talking with tells us so much and it helps you get in the mood for the narrating that you're doing. Now. You don't have to do this. You could just plot something out to all and sundry and write your narrative. But it can be very helpful to actually sort of think about why am I telling this story? Am I telling this story just to tell it? Am I telling this story because I want you to sympathize with a certain person in a certain way. Why are you telling it? Point being that the storytelling situation matters and the more concrete you have that situation in your mind, the easier time of it, you're going to have actually writing your narrative and getting into an authorial group. You do not have to tell your readers what that storytelling situation is. Sometimes you will have stories that do this. These are often called framed stories, in which we have a storytelling situation set up and then we move into the story itself. You also might have stories that are sort of have a prologue and move in. An example of this would be Henry James turn off the screw, in which the first sort of prolog, or this group of people getting together talking about ghost stories. And then someone has this odd and interesting story to tell. And then the rest of the story moves us forward into the actual plot. So you can do that, but you don't have to. It's just for you as the writer to set up that storytelling situation. Know who you're telling the story to and why you are telling that story. 3. Ways of Revealing Information: Equally important to thinking about your storytelling situation is to think about the ways in which a narrative conveys information. Novels and short stories teach you how to read them. When I open a book, I don't necessarily know. Even from the first pages. Am I in third person limited? Or am I in third person omniscient? Is this first-person or is this multiple first-person? I don't know. I don't know until I get going. And then when I'm several chapters in, I feel like I've been taught how to read this. Okay. Several chapters. And I understand that this is Harry Potter book and this is third person limited because over the course of three chapters, I've never left. Hurry. We've always been with Harry and everything that has any sort of opinion is of Harry's. And so I understand that this is third person limited. Or Oh, I'm jumping around quite a lot in these various scenes, this must be third-person omniscient. But even within something like that, you would sit there and say, well, this is this is sort of third-person multiple. I'm not really in everyone's head, but I'm not just in one person's head. I'm in several people's heads, but I'm only in the scene by scene. We don't know these things. We learn these things as you reveal them to us. Likewise, when you're making these decisions, you're also rationing information. This is what you do as a narrative. Now again, it's different than author is not a narrator. The narrator of the story, rations inflammation an hour to notice more. And this has truly author as well, but we wanted to focus on narrative. You're rationing information. You're leaving certain things out. You're putting certain things in. We know this as readers that you're doing this. So we're going to sit there and were willing when we come to a book to accept a certain amount of that, right? I'm willing to accept this narrower term, going to trust this narrative to tell me what I need to know in the moment, which means that I have to trust you. You have to establish that bond of trust with me. Now, a reader comes to a book trusting the narrator that relationship is yours to break and the things that are going to cause you to break it. Or if you're not true to a point of view, or if you dishonor the reader with information that they feel that you should have told them and that you didn't tell them. This gets into the whole realm of reliable and unreliable narrators. So reliable narratives are ones that we understand your mode. We understand what you're doing, We believe what you're telling us. 4. First-Person: First-person perspective is one of the most common perspectives used in writing. And I definitely feel like it's in a moment and it's been in a moment for a while. It is an extremely intimate perspective, one in which you're using an eye. So you would say, I walked here, I did this the first-person. We're tracking with the character. What's key about writing in first-person is to always remember that we are not following the author. We're not following author. We are following the character. And that means that you have to know who is your character and you have to get inside of your character and you have to walk in those shoes. Because in first-person, the narrative is the protagonist. And because at narrator is talking directly to you, you're establishing an immediate, very intimate connection. We have a direct line to the person the story is about. And in this way, it pulls the reader right into the story. This intimacy is so key. It really lets us get very close to that narrative. And it lets the narrative. You very often find with first-person perspectives, the narrator can kind of let his or her guard down. And really you get very up into the narratives head. There is no seeing the world while we're looking at the protagonist. We only ever seen things through the protagonists perspective, which again, benefit intimacy, but it has limitations because the character is telling the story. This is a very limited perspective. That character cannot be up in the heads of anyone else. We never get to see the character where we'd never get to look at that character. We only ever see things through his or her eyes. What this means is that we only know what she knows. We have to guess what name is thinking with a grimace on her face. We can't be in these other places. There are probably things going on that we don't know about. And again, this is, this sounds obvious, but this is really key and this happens so often when I work with people where they would say to me, I don't know, should I should I tell people about this scene? I don't know if I should how much information I should tell people. My question isn't well, should you have this scene or not? My question is, what do you want your readers to know? How do you want your readers to feel? If you're in a suspense story? And it's a first-person perspective. And the bad guy has set up a trap for our character at the edge of the bridge and our character is walking across the bridge. Guess what? The character, and by extension, you don't know that that policy is there, which means that when you get there surprise, It's a big surprise. Now, that can be great. Is that what you want your readers to feel? Surprise, surprise there's a palsy. Then that's the perspective for you. But if what you want the readers to feel is as we watch the protagonist go over the bridge, if you want us to be biting our fingernails, going to turn around, turn around because we know that the posses, their than first-person perspective is not your bag. You don't want that one, because that's not going to let you build that suspense. So again, you want to think about how do I want to negotiate the emotional experience that I want my reader to have? Another very important factor about first-person perspective, or perspectives or biased. And this includes first-person. So again, it's not enough to just say, well, I want to tell a story about a young man. That's nice. But when you choose to tell that story through a biased point of view of Holden Caulfield who is totally opinionated and pretty darn sassy. You're telling a different story and you're going to notice different things. Holden Caulfield, personality is going to notice different things. Then pips personality and Great Expectations. Those stories are told by young men and of first-person perspective. But one is a highly anxiety teenage men. And even when pips character becomes a rather anxiety on man himself, he narrates it differently. He's a different narrator, but both are tremendously biased. And so you have to write that bias, not just into the voice of your character. You have to write it into the plot points you choose to reveal. You can't just look at point of view and say, well, my perspective is Holden Caulfield, very anxious eggs the young man. So I'm going to write with a lot of attitude, that's not good enough. What is a man or a lot of attitude going to talk about? What is he going to notice? What what moments in his day are going to stand out to him. That's going to be different than something being narrated by very humble young man who isn't XD, et cetera. So you have to think about that bias of your perspective and how that bias affects everything to include how you describe the other characters. This is where it's so key. The challenges with point of view, one of the biggest ones is just sticking with the rules of your perspective. You can make these rules for yourself, but you need to set them up and then you need to stick with it. So if you've got a first-person perspective and Holden Caulfield is describing all of these events that happen. Then you've got this other character who you think is a really sweet character and new things are really sweet person. And then you go on to describe, now I'm totally making this up and this is where out of Catcher in the Rye. But say you have a character like Holden Caulfield, very attitudinal or whatnot. Then there's this character named Mabel. You think navels really sweet and really nice. And you want the reader to know that they will actually has a tremendously good hard, she's a lovely person because you want us to see how rotten holding this to her. Or you're holding ascii character. You don't get to do that. Because if Holden Caulfield isn't going to notice here, is that then you don't get to sort of omniscient pull yourself out and tell me that about her. If you've chosen first-person limited, you've picked your rules, you can do that. If you are asked to character describes Mabel as a sweet, guess what? We might not think she's sweet. We will not know. We will only know that he thinks she is sweet. So you have to look at everything and you have to resist the temptation to go, well, I really want the reader to know that Mabel is a really sweet woman. Guess what If that's important for your reader to know in a first-person perspective, you've got a lot of scene building to do. Because now you have to set up a variety of scenes in which we see maple, which your XD character describes things that she does to such an extent that we can make that decision more or less for ourselves. In a situation like that, you might have your XD character describing her and not so delightful language. But if the facts of what she's doing, our sweet enough, we might just say, well, actually, I think they will seems really nice and I don't know why he's being so nasty and describing her physical appearance that way because she sure is being sweet to give them that money and to drive him there and then to hold his hand when he's sick. Right? We get to make those decisions for ourselves. But you've just had an add a lot of scenes and a lot of texts so that I can know that enable is sweet, which is completely fine, but that's totally affected your narrative. It's affected your plot because now you have all these plot points in it. And it's like the new story. Not bad things, but things to be aware of when you're writing first-person, every story has tension in it. And when it comes to a first-person perspective, the tension that we have is between the reader and this biased character. Because we, as readers know that we don't actually know what's happening, that we don't have an unbiased perspective. Because we're so aware of filter that we're looking at things through. It's like we're not quite trusting. I mean, you get I trust. Jane Eyre gets my trust. Pip gets my trust. But there's always a tension. And how you design your character can increase that tension with a Holden Caulfield as a character or decrease it. But that there's a tension there that can make a story interesting. Tension isn't just plot related tension isn't just what happens next. Tension, tension, tension. Tension is also my relationship with the storyteller. And so you want to think about that narratives are numerous ways they build intention and this is one of them. 5. First-Person Practical Advice: Practical tips. What are some sorts of things that you should really focus on making sure you do when you're writing in the first-person. And I would say the first thing is to really know your character. Remember you're, the, you're inhabiting this character. How do they speak? What do they have certain isn't listed. They have certain words that they used to. They have certain pronunciations or language with which they speak. What are their favorite things? You really have to know your character and know how that character manifests himself or herself on the page and bring that through in the narration, really take time to establish a unique voice. One of the things that will kill your point of view, no matter which one you choose, if all of your characters sound more or less the same. This is also true of first-person. If your first-person narrative sounds more or less like everybody else whom he or she is describing. Then they all run together and it ends up looking like a muddy story. Think about mixing colors. If you just take all the colors on the palette and mix them together, what do you get? You get a weird, ugly gray. Not fun. So you want distinct colors in your stories. You want distinct voices and distinct flavors to that end to make sure that you filter everything through your character. I know he said it before, but this is one of my top to-dos practical advice. Everything, everything, everything filtered through that lens of your character. Also, do make sure that your character is likable. This doesn't mean your character has to be a good guy. It doesn't mean that your character has to have 0 flaws. In fact, if your character had no flawless, your character would not be likable. Your character be a bit insufferable, probably. You want to make it balance. Don't make your character on flawed. That's not going to help you. Likable character is a relatable character. Every likable character is one who we see good, solid redeeming qualities in. We want that character to succeed. But we also see where there is room for improvement. And quite frankly, that's how most of us see ourselves. We would say, a lot of people would say, well, not the worst person in the world. But I have room for improvement. We want characters like that, which means it's very important pretty early on, you need to set up for us that your character is a good soul, has good things. Make me want to like your character. Even a story like Catcher in the Rye with Holden Caulfield, who I quite frankly think is absolutely frustrating and I don't like him. That's a successful book and a lot of people connect with it, especially certain people of a certain age, which is again, a book in which you're really thinking about who is this person talking to? Which brings me to my next point. Think about the narrative situation that you are telling your story and make sure you pass that out for yourself. Again, this isn't a must, but it's going to really help you. If you find that you're in a rut with the direction your story should go. If you find that you're not even sure, like, oh, what should I do for my next plot point? Or I'm just feeling like it's not going anywhere. Ask yourself if you really have that storytelling contexts to set up and if you don't, make one for yourself and see if imagining the person you're telling it to. See if that actually opens you up to be able to write. Because very often that lifts writer's block, make sure that your reader can connect with your character. This can be through shared emotion, to shout experience, through just some kind of similar understanding. There are so many ways that we can connect with the character. I don't have to be a soldier on the front lines in World War One to be able to connect with the character because we both know envy, because we both know what it feels like to miss someone you love. So think about the ways that you can establish that connection. Because your characters very often might be completely different than your readers. And so often we read things because we want a different experience. But you want to make sure that you're establishing for us some kind of connection, emotional, actual experiential, some kind of connections between your readers and your characters. When it comes to first-person, you want to make sure that you're narrating both action and dialogue. One of the challenges with first-person is not going into stream of conscious mode. Without active, intense. And I would say most of the time stream of conscious is not the way that you want to go. It does work. Sometimes James Joyce does it well. Angela's Ashes by Frank accord is another example where he ends up in a stream of conscious place at times and it does work. But most of the time stream of conscious actually isn't what you're sorting, searching for. And so you want to make sure that you're keeping a very clean, clean narration. Have action, have dialogue. Don't just sit up in your character's head. Obviously everything's in your character's head because he or she is. Telling the story, so we are up in their head. But there's a difference between that and this sort of pontificating. I'm just going off newness and it actually feeling like and then this happened, then this happened. I mean, you narrate it that way. You can be first-person. Say, I saw a walk in the door. I'm here. She said she looked down at a bag. I could tell she was looking for a keys. She didn't know I'd taken them. Right. You know, so it's action, it's done. It's moving forward. We're not just sitting there sort of theorizing. So keep it action focused. You can keep the action focused and still have it filtered through that first-person perspective. Another very practical application to tip, this comes down to the nitty-gritty of writing on the page. Avoid overusing the word eye. This can be so hard to do when you're writing in a first-person perspective. But overusing, I, I, I, I get very tiresome. It can be quite helpful when you're going through your manuscript, after you've written it, go through and highlight all of the letters I and all of the places that use that word. And then go back and see where you can reword it. So an example. I hate tickles, especially our declares. What? Because you say instead, you couldn't say pickles always seemed to get stuck in my throat. Especially odd Claire's. You see that actually the second one is more interesting. It's a more interesting sentence to say pickles seem to get stuck in my throat. So I can actually be a crutch that doesn't let you creatively word things. And if you've watched some of my other courses, you know how important I think the actual creativity with which you convey your information is. Let's look at another example. I waited not knowing what she would say. Now, another way to say this would be waiting for her to speak, felt like an eternity. Final piece of advice on writing first-person is that remember that even though you are going through the perspective of one person and that the story is indeed about that person. Your story is about that person surrounded by a lot of other characters. And that means that you're not really just telling her story. You're telling other people's stories as well. However, you still have to track in the first person character's head, which means that you don't get to know things that you did. The character doesn't know. You have to be so careful about this. You have to find ways to tell me all about. These are the characters and make these other characters alive and real and important without telling me other information about them. If I say, she sat across from me, her lips pursed as she contemplated what I said. That doesn't work. That's not first-person because you're telling me what she's doing. You're telling me she's contemplating it? I don't know that. I don t know that. Rather I would say she sat across from me, her lips pursed as though she were pondering what I'd set totally different. We just added a little as though she were, and now it works. Now we know that the narrator thinks that she's pondering is observing that she looks like she's pondering. But we don't in fact know that she is pondering. We get to bring her to life. And this person who the protagonist is talking with, we bring it to life. We bring her to live in the context of the first-person perspective. 6. Third Person Limited: The next perspective that we're going to look at is third person limited. The third person limited actually can feel quite a lot like first-person in the sense that we are staying in one character's head and we're tracking with that character. The main difference is that rather than that lens being an eye focus lens where the character is talking to us. We are observing the character's actions. We are actually looking at the character. It's just that we have access to her thoughts. So it's like she walked here, she walked there, were observing her in a way that we couldn't in first-person, but we still have access to what's going on in her head. What this means is that as the author, now you're allowed to use your own authorial voice. You couldn't do that in first-person, but now you're allowed to. The author is suddenly a character in a way that the author wasn't before. Now we have the authorial voice, but we also have the thoughts and the feelings and the emotions of the protagonist. And we stay with them, we track with the protagonist. So we're still in that limited perspective. We still don't know what other characters are thinking and what other characters are doing who are not in this immediate knowledge base of the first of the protagonist. But we have the authorial interpretation grafted over that. It's the difference between getting to see inside the character's head and actually be inside the character's head. Which means that this is actually a really great perspective for novice writers. If you are a new writer and you're trying to navigate point of view. Third person limited, which is another very, very common perspective to be written in, is probably one of the safest bets that you could start with. One thing that you lose by not being directly up in the character's head is some of that immediacy and that intimacy because I'm not as a character speaking directly to you. And that can be okay. I mean, as an author you want, you might want some distance there because again, that distance frees you up to do other things. But it is a trait that once you get away from first-person perspective, now we're into third person limited. We've removed some of that intimacy and immediacy that we did originally in first-person. Which means one of the first decisions that you want to make as an author is actually how intimate of a relationship do you want me to have with your protagonist? How much of his emotion do you want me to see? You might not want me to see very much of it, or you might want me to see a lot of it. How much of his thoughts, his feelings, his perspective. So you're going to tell me how much of your narratives actually just going to be watching him move, watching what he does, watching what he says. Because you could have a third person limited in which we're up in that character has had a great deal. This would be true of a Jane Eyre book is very much up in Jane's head. Or you could have a third person limited perspective in which there's a tremendous amount of action and dialogue. And in some ways that we're really not up in the character's head terribly much, but we slip in every so often. Or it could be that when we slip in, we only see into his feelings on certain things. The narrative you might choose as a narrative to let me know all about what Harry's thinking about school and his friends and his teachers. But we never know what, how he thinks about his mother. And I'm making this up because JK Rowling does it differently, but maybe you just choose. Okay. We're never going to know it how he thinks about his mother. That's just off limits. If you stick with that, the reader might very well pick up on that, especially his mother has a part to play in this story. It will sit there and go, why is it that I'm told this in this I know what how he thinks about all these things, but I never know what he thinks about his mother. That's an interesting choice. Your readers will notice this. That's part of the grand design of point of view. It's part of the things that will create tension and suspense in your stories. So think about those rules, makeup those rules for yourself. This is my story. This is, I am going to dip in on these things, but I'm not on these things. Think about that upfront and I really do. I caution against just like with first-person spending too much time up in a character's head. You don't let the reader really work to know the character. When you do that, you've laid so much better when you tell me exactly what your character is thinking and feeling at every given moment that I don't have to interpret that for myself. That actually removes the reader from the story. When you have actions and dialogue and I enforced as a reader to make my own judgments, my own interpretations of the character's feelings and emotions based on his or her actions and dialogue. You've included me more in the story and you've made me have to work harder as a reader. And that makes me more invested in the story to a point. So that's something to consider. Really. Bring your reader in. Don't tell your reader everything for them. Third person limited, while we've not talked about third-person omniscient yet, definitely one of the benefits of third person limited over third-person omniscient is because like first-person, we are stuck with the protagonist and we don't get to know what anyone else is thinking. This is a point of view that really does still allow you to build up quite a lot of suspense. So that's, that's one of the true benefits of this perspective. And indeed also first-person perspective. This perspective is going to be very good for character centric stories. Stories where you want me to develop an intimate relationship with the characters and where you want to focus on characters. Personal growth, where you're going to get into trouble is with the authorial voice. So like we were saying, you have an authorial voice, but that authorial voice is still predominantly the characters. In the third person, you say, aren't Claire walked in the door in a gaudy pink dress and a ridiculous hat. You, the author are not saying that that's a gaudy pink dress and a ridiculous hat. That's the character is saying that even if you write, Sandra watched out Claire walk in the door in a gaudy pink dress and a ridiculous hat. You're telling me from Sandra's perspective, you didn't say Sandra thought those things regarding but because it's third person limited, I know that it's Sandra saying that that's a gaudy scarf and a ridiculous hat. So you have an authorial voice. But that authorial voice, even though it's outside the characters, like first direct commentary perspective is still in fact still the character. So you want to make sure that you're tracking that authorial voice with the emotions, with the perspectives of your main character. 7. Literary Example: Third Person Limited: One of the truly fabulous examples of this is Henry James. What Macy knew. What makes James perspective of this absolutely just so brilliant is that Macy, and I'm not even going to reveal much plot here. There's no plot spoilers, but Macy is just a little girl in the story. But she's dealing with interpreting her parents very bad relationships. Through throughout the story, we have a young child who is interpreting very adult situations. The way James made his rules for himself was that he was going to use quite sophisticated language to do this. So the, the narrator's language is sophisticated. And yet the interpretations and opinions are all Macy's. And it's a very interesting way to read the story. And what you see when you go through it is how, how he reveals information about other characters in a way that makes easy as a young girl is too young to understand some of these mature things that are happening. So she can only observe them. And so he asked to Henry James has to kind of navigate and negotiate how the reader gets to know certain things. In the readings for this class, I have a segment of that story for you. I'm not going to read through the whole thing, but I want us to look at a brief piece of it so that you can understand some of the sophistication with which Henry James actually uses the third person limited to stunning effect. It must not be supposed that a lady ships intermissions were not qualified by demonstrations of another order. Triumphal entries and breathless pauses during which she seemed to take everything in the room from the state of the ceilings to that of her daughters boot toes. A survey that was rich in intentions. Sometimes she sat down and sometimes she searched about. But her attitude or equally in either case, the grant ere of the practical, she found so much to deploy that she left a great deal to expect and bristles. So with the calculation that she seemed to scatter remedies and pledges, her visits were as good as an outfit. Her manner, as Mr. Waxman said, as good as a pair of curtains. But she was a person addicted to extremes, sometimes barely speaking to her child and sometimes pressing this tender shoot to a bosom cut, as Mrs. Whigs had also observed, remarkably low. She was always in a fearful hurry. And the lower the bosom was cut, the more it was to be gathered. She wanted elsewhere. She usually broken alone, but sometimes circled was with her. And during all the earlier period, there was nothing on which these appearances had had so delight for the bearing. As on the way her lady ship was, as Mrs. with Wix expressed it under the spell. But she isn't under it. Macy used in thoughtful but familiar reference to exclaim after so clotted, swept away and peels have natural Laughter. Not even in the old days of the convulsed lady's head, she heard momma laughs so freely as in these moments of conjugal surrender to the gaiety of which even in little girl could see she had lost a right. A little girl who's thoughtful. This was now all happy self meditation on good omens and future fun. Let's, let's go back and just look at this. What's being described here. We have her leadership and everything that you read in that first section is observation. We actually get so much, but it really is Macy just observing triumphal entry is breathless, pauses observing the room. Her lady, what leadership commented on? The lady ships sitting down and leadership standing up. We get this image of this woman who was just like all over the place. But that's all from me, this perspective. We actually have never gone into her lady ships head. And what we're getting from this and again, this goes to the fact that Macy is too little to really understand. One lady ship has a special relationship here and likes to go with men and have a good time. And where's very low cut dresses and mazes too little to understand that the sexual nature of what's happening here. But we have we have good old Mrs. Wix and Mrs. Wilkes doesn't approve clearly upper leadership stresses, right. So, um, so again, to have with this, she comes in, she hugs her child, pressing this tender shoot this child to a bosom. Let's cut as Mrs. Whigs had observed remarkably low. This, this is a nice way of saying, Well, Mrs. Wix has said that that's a very low cut dress. And this woman mammals in a hurry. And the lower the bosom is cut on her dress, the more horrid she is so sexy or she looks that foster she wants to hug her child and get on out the door. Right. But but never says there's a sexual relationship. She just as observing the low cut bosom to her mother's readiness to leave. And then this observation will she usually came in alone, but sometimes so claude, the person She's out and about with, comes in with her. And so we get off this sense of this Lamarck going off having these relationships with men and a low cut dress. But all of that observation, and we we use James use as Mrs. Wix. And what Macy, here's Mrs. Wix say as a way to tell the reader more about what's going on. It's magnificent. It's magnificent to say, okay, Charles perspective doesn't understand, but how do I sophisticatedly bring the reader into this adult world? I know I'll do it with sophisticated language that's actually far and away beyond messy. But we accept that as a reader. That's okay. We don't read what Basie new and go a child would never talk this way. We don't do that because Henry James has made his rules and he sticks by them and we say, okay, this is just a story that's from Macy's young girl perspective, but told very beautifully and it's sophisticated language and we accept that. Again, you get to make your rules as a narrator. And Henry James just does this just so beautifully. So it's a phenomenal example. It's a wonderful book to read, a wonderful lesson in third person limited. And I recommend that in any books that you read where you really liked the perspective of you liked the experience. Go through and see how they're handling their perspectives and learn from that. In the next video, we will move on to looking at third-person omniscient. 8. Third Person Omniscient: Third person omniscient, like third person limited is going to be told in a he said, she said type of mannerisms. What makes their personal mission different is the tuber to be in a lot of different people's heads. You get to be anywhere you want. You get to go anywhere you want to see anything you want, be in anybody said you want. You have free reign, right thing in some ways, tremendously challenging and others, it is very easy to get third-person omniscient wrong. You might think that it's the easiest of the perspectives because you're like, But I can do anything. No, no, that's harder. I mean, that's harder. Limitations really help you make decisions and move forward when the world is your oyster, it can get tough. Now I have to say there's really never true total omniscience. Because again, every story is told through a perspective. So if you have a story that's about a protagonist, your story is going to mostly track with that protagonist. So that there's a way in which yes were omniscient. But in some ways we're always kind of tracking with a character which makes omniscience have a selective sharing than just a true blue experience where we just see everything. What can be so grand about omniscience is that it does in fact, opened up for your readers a variety of experiences. It allows your reader just to go so many places and see so many different things from different angles that we're not stuck and we're not limited in the same way. We're able to actually look at a situation, look at characters from a variety of perspectives. And that lets us make judgment calls that we couldn't otherwise make because we were limited by one character. It also lets you convey a large bulk of information in a much smaller period. Let's go back to that example we were talking about where you have a character who's really ASD, but you as the author wants to tell that there's other characters really sweet. And we talked about how in fact you would actually have to have numerous scenes demonstrating that sweetness here. You don't have to do that omniscient. You could in one or two sentences sum up the fact that this other character is really a sweet, good woman. And we're going to, as a reader except that because we're in an omniscient perspective. So you can just condense, condensed tremendously information that you want your reader to, to know. The challenge with omniscience can sometimes be, how do you build in suspense? Because you do know everything. So obviously you can still pull this in by what choosing what to reveal or not to reveal to a character. But those things aren't built-in for you. So in the third person limited, it's built in. You have to track with the protagonist. So you know, already because of the rules, ways you can make suspense. But when you're in a situation where you have free reign of everything, you need to figure out what the rules are for you to make suspense. So it's a lot more legwork. One of the biggest challenges people have with third person omniscient is what's called head hopping. And it's where you jump around from one person's thoughts to another person's thoughts with such rapidity that I don't ever get to settle in and really get to know a character. You want to make sure that at least with the most important characters or character in your story, that your readers builds a relationship with that character. That's not going to happen if you'll just quickly dipping in and out of what a lot of people are thinking. It also just kind of creates a sense of chaos and whiplash for the reader. So if you've got a scene in which and she felt this and she got this and cheap office and she got that. It can tend to send the reader really, what people will very often say with third person omniscient is you just, you want to get in someone's head and some stay in it for a little while and then get in someone's head and then move somewhere else after a little while. But let me sit with a character and get to know him or her before you start jumping around too much. Now, I have to say that being said, there are books that actually do in the space of a scene. Tell me what so-and-so's thinking and so and so's thinking and so on. So thinking. And it works. Again, always guidelines, never rules. It'll princess is one of these stories. There are scenes in which we sort of get a sense of what a lot of people are thinking. And it does work very well. Now the whole book isn't that way, but certain scenes in it are. And generally it's when the author is trying to really just give us a vibe and overall vibe of a situation, of a setting. She doesn't do it all the time. And because she does it limiting and because it really is often keeping in line with just a certain setting, it works. It's alright. It's okay. In a scene to tell me what numerous people are thinking. That's part of your privilege and part of why you chose omniscient. What makes it really confusing is when as you're jumping around, you are in the character's head and language instead of the narrator's. Stick to the narrator's voice as you jump around. Let's look at an example because it's hard to theoretically explain this without a solid example. Andrea, close to the icebox and side bend, sat at the kitchen table watching her. I just can't believe it. Andrea said she looked out the window and crinkled her brow. Ben wants to go to Stanford so badly. He hadn't even applied anywhere else. She worried about what he would do now. She didn't know he had submitted to Duke at the last minute. Now, these two sections, this is written at an omniscient narrator is perspective. We observe for closing the icebox, we observe a saying, I can't believe it. We observe her looking out of the window. We we even get into her head, right. Because then had wanted to go to Stanford so badly. He hadn't even applied anywhere else. But that sentence, it's interesting. The Ben had wanted to go to Stanford so badly he hadn't even applied anywhere else. That's an interesting sentence because we read that when we go, is that is Andrea thinking that at this moment, or is that just a piece of information the omniscient narrator knows? It's not attached anywhere, and that makes it interesting. We don't have to know everything, we don't have to know everything is. So we're reading that and it's not assigned anywhere. But then then we are in her head, she worried about what he would do now. Then we're told we're given some suspense. She didn't know yet submitted to Duke at the last minute. So now we know something she doesn't know. And you can still do that. You can still do that with omniscient, where their characters and we know things that they don't know. Omniscience doesn't mean we have to know everything that every character knows, but it means you've informed us of who knows what. Now let's look at this same situation in a way that doesn't work. Andrea, close to the icebox and side bend sat at the kitchen table watching her wondering what she would say. He had wanted to go to Stanford so badly. What will he do now? She thought he hadn't even applied anywhere else. I still got Duke, he thought. Now, do you see how this one it doesn't flow as well? Because here okay. We're observing Andrea close the icebox inside, then sat at the kitchen table watching her. But then it's like wondering what she would say. We're in his head. So here we are. We're watching Andrea, we're watching Andrew close the icebox and Psi. But then we're over here watching better at the kitchen table watching her, and then we're in. Okay, Ben is wondering what she's going to say. And then we have the sentence, he had wanted to go to Stanford so badly. What will he do now? She thought, wait a minute. Okay. I'm watching Andrea. That I'm watching them watching Andrea. Now there's a sentence about he'd wanted to go to Stanford so badly. And my inclination is because I'm now watching them. I want to prescribe that thought over to Ben, but then the next sentence, what will he do now? It seems to fit better with that one. So weight is Andrew thinking that of course been thinking that because now we're back over to Andrea and she's saying he hasn't even applied anywhere else. And then whoa, we're back over in Ben's head and he's thinking, I've still got Duke. Do you see how that doesn't work? The other one worked because we the narrative was sufficiently removed from all parties involved and contextualized the thoughts and experiences properly. This one feels all over the place and feels like head hopping because it's like what, what and that's where it doesn't work. 9. Third Person Omniscient Practical Advice: One of the things that will help you utilize omniscience to its best effect is to decide if you want your narrative to be subjective or objective. Objective narrator. It's going to be more like Phil. It's like a camera. And we don't go in anybody's head at all. We only watch what they do and what they say. And we might watch in one section what the protagonist does and says. And then we might jump over halfway across the world and watch what the antagonist does and says, So it is omniscient, but we just never get up in anybody's head. That's a very removed perspective because we just don't have any of those emotions. But it can also be tremendously effective. Subjective omniscience is in fact where the narrator has an opinion about what the readers are doing and we can be up in the readers heads. An example of this would be Jane Austen's Emma. If you look at many of the Jane Austen books, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, those authors have a sincere voice and they have a lot of opinions about the characters in them. And that would be a subjective omniscience. When you do subjective omniscience, you're talking about having a narrator who really is a character all of his or her own. And you really get to sort of figure out by now retire to be, even if it's an unnamed narrator, you can just sort of establish who do I want that to be and what do I want that narrative to feel? So that's one of the fun things about a third personal missions is that you really do get the opportunity to figure out who you want your storytelling to be and find that character. And even if I never know her name, having that perspective makes that character more important of the story. Now that can tend to put a barrier up in-between you and your character. Because the numerator is such character, we know we're going through such an opinionated lens that we are more removed from the character itself. And we know we're getting a biased look. In some ways, we tend to actually bond to the narrator in an interesting way because the narratives, the person actually talking with us. And while that's true of other perspective, sometimes in an objective perspective when an hour just talking with us, we don't have any sense of that. Now we're just personality or with an hour to thinks about anything. And so we're not connecting to the objective narrator, which means that for third person omniscient, it does allow us to connect more with the characters. Once you include that subjective narratives, now I'm really relating in some ways to him or her. And it's pulled me away a little bit from the characters. Let's look an example of is good objective point of view and what is not the correct way to say it would be no. Sadie cried grimacing with sadness. Now this is okay. You are this isn't okay. Objective omniscience because the grimacing with sadness that's observing her action, that that's commenting on her body language. Where we're focused on the grimace. So it feels alright. Wouldn't work so well is to say no, Satie cried feeling a wave of sadness rush through her. Because that sentence really tracks more internally to her head. And that is more of a subjective on missions In which I know what she's thinking. Omniscient stories are not generally best for character-based stories. Stories where you really want to show character development simply because it's such a removed perspective. And when we just don't get to really sit up in and rest in one person's head. They are great if you have big stories with sprawling plots and a lot of characters and we have to know they're all in different places. And it is important that we know what they're all thinking. That's when you want to use third-person omniscient thing is to be aware of potential challenges for writing in this perspective. And there are several. Don't give characters information they cannot possibly know. This is one of the most common mistakes I see made with their personal mission. Because you get into such a groove as the author and the narrative of the story with knowing everything that you start to give characters information they would not actually and could not know. Be very, very careful not to do this. Also, don't tell me ever catch your thoughts and feelings just because you can choose a few, choose a few people who you really want me to care about and focus on that. Don't tell me superfluous information. You're going to notice when you tell me what somebody observed and when you don't. So if for the first seven chapters, I've never heard what then thinks about anything and then for just some random reason, you tell me what Ben thought about the weather. I'm going to notice that. I'm gonna be like, Well, why should I care what Ben thinks about the rain, what's going on here? I haven't heard from Ben for seven chapters, one pairing from bed. Now, you want to, even though you're omniscient, be strategic about whose thoughts I know about because I'm going to get fatigue if I have to hear what everybody thinks to that end for the characters whose head you are going to be up in. Don't tell me everything they're thinking. Don't tell me every thought that they have. You need to be selective and choose the thoughts, choose the feelings that really matter. If you've ever known someone who can talk at length about his or her emotions. It might be that at some point, you don't hear it as much because you have heard what they think about everything to such an exhaustive extent that you become somewhat numb to it. That can happen with omniscience. If I hear everything your character is thinking all of the time. I'm fatigued, I'm tired and I don't want to hear from her or him anymore. So be strategic with what you choose to do and say about them and what they're thinking and feeling. In this next section, I want to take a little bit of time to talk about both multiple first-person and multiple third-person perspectives, which are also two options that you have when you're writing your narratives. 10. Multiple-Person Perspectives: I want to touch just briefly on multiple first-person perspective. It isn't used very often. But these would, this would be a novel in which you might have one chapter from one person's perspective and then another chapter from another person's perspective. And on and on we go the challenge of writing this way. It actually can be a very effective way to write and can make for something very, very interesting. Particularly if you have an event that you want your reader to see from a variety of angles. But you want me to really get to know each character. The big challenge with it is making each of those voices very distinct. So you really, in a case like that, wants to spend time sitting down with all of the main first-person people you want to work through and figure out exactly who they are, how they speak, what they think, what they feel. And then you would give each one a section in your book, a significant section in your book. That's what makes something first person multiple because his point of view is rare. It's going to be that when I, as a reader, pick up your book, I'm going to expect that it's first-person, First-person multiple. So depending on how you want to structure your story, if your plan is to have a big section one, That's all. It enables perspective and a big section two, That's all Ben's perspective, et cetera, then that's your plan. But if you plan on having multiple first-person perspectives in one section, don't wait too long before you bring in the other characters. Because otherwise, if I get a significant way through and then at random, I'm now in another person's head. That's going to be very joined to the reader. So you want to, unless you have big sections and there's the strategy of structure there. Try Generally speaking, to introduce those other characters fairly quickly so that I understand the rules of the novel. Again, the novel teachers the reader how to read it. If you set me up and I think I'm reading this first-person limited, this first-person singular book. And then suddenly there's another character you've thrown me off and I don't know the rules of the story anymore. An example that does this well, if you're interested in exploring it, is the time travelers wife. I'm not going to give you an example of it here, but I do recommend that if you're interested in exploring a multiple first-person perspective, you look to that book because that is actually one of the places where it is done to great effect. Let's talk now about multiple third person, which gets very, very, very often confused with third-person omniscient with good reason. Multiple third person means you are following more than one character around, but you're still treating each one of those characters in a third person limited rules. You're still using third person limited rules for each of those characters. Again, massively easily confused with omniscience. Generally, this works best when you have a chapter for each person. So just like the first-person can really be structured best when it's like, okay, this chapter we're focusing on Sarah's perspective, third person, omniscient. This chapter over here, we're focused on Ben's perspective third person. So you're jumping around in that way. That's generally speaking, the best way to go about it is treating each one is limited. Third-person Sarah limited. Next chapter, third person bend limited. Next step, third person Sarah limited next chapter, third person Ben limited. That's when you're into multiple perspectives. Technically it feels omniscient in some ways, but it's really not because again, you've established limited rules for each one of those characters. What that does is really lets you build relationships with both of them. Then you are judging that narrative more for yourself because you have these multiple perspectives. Practical tips for this, really our pick a scene and stick with one character before you move to the next scene, then you won't have that head hopping we were talking about with omniscience. Also limit the number of characters in your story, at least the number of characters who you're going to do this for. I would say anymore than three and it gets to be a little unwieldy. But it can work very well for two to three characters. If you're going to do this and you're going to do it scene by scene because you can also just change from one scene to the next. Makes sure that those same changes are distinct. Very often in a novelist ST changes just represented by a larger gap in between the paragraphs. But, but makes sure there's really a distinct change of scene so that it doesn't feel like we're shifting perspectives mid seen. When it comes to choosing, it is worth telling me about a character and giving a character his or her own point of view that you're going to rest in. Here are some things to think about. Don't give a character his or her own point of view. If we only see him a couple of times, if a situation is not going to actually change throughout the story, if your character is not really going to change, then there's not really much of a point and bugging me down with connecting me up in his head. If you really only put that character in the story to support or help one of your main characters. We probably don't need to be in his head. If he has nothing at stake in the plot. Here, nothing's really at stake for him. We're not gonna go, gee, I wonder what happens to Jim? Then don't bother me with his head space. And if he isn't pursuing any goals himself related to that conflict. All of these are reasons why it's really probably not appropriate for you to be in that character's head space. Like other multiples, don't introduce your characters too late. Again. Early on we're willing to accept new information and rules, but you want to set them up for us. So these are all things to think about when you're doing multiples, either first-person perspective or third-person perspective. Let's touch briefly on a second person. 11. Second Person: Second-person perspective is admittedly not my favorite. I don't really enjoy reading it. It's where you would use, uh, you, you walk here, you do this, you picked up the apples. It puts the reader in the perspective of the protagonist. Now, some people will say this makes things much more intimate because you are, you, you are connected to it. For me, I have to admit the style is so artificial that I do not connect more with a second person point of view. But some people do when some people would say that it actually does allow you to be more intimate since you are yourself the protagonist. The challenge with writing in the first, second person is going to be that while you as the reader are now the protagonist, you don't actually have any agency. You can't actually make decisions for yourself. So you're basically, it's like you're just being forced to go through things in a certain way. And that can feel alright as long as the decisions that the character makes, all the decisions that you would make. But once you start to feel like the characters are making decisions you really wouldn't make. That can be jarring and a little bit frustrating. So as an author, you really have to think about that and think about how your readers are going to feel about being put in these situations. 12. Free Indirect Style-Establish Intimacy with the Reader: The last main thing that I want us to touch on just has to do with how you're writing looks on the page. And I want us to just talk briefly about something that's called free and direct style. I know these might just seem like literary terms and whatnot. It's the content that does matter. But when you have a third person narrative and you actually want to establish a kind of immediacy and more intimacy between a reader, edit third-person perspective narrator. Free and direct style is a really great way to do that. And it has mostly to do with the way that your textbooks on the page. So let's look at some different examples of things that are not free and direct style so you can appreciate what it is when you are in third-person perspective, one way to convey what characters are thinking is through direct or quoted speech. So she stared at her sister. She's so quiet, she thought, I hope she's not angry. She twisted her napkin in her lap. Now, do you see here on this one the she's so quiet. I hope she's not angry. Those thoughts are in quotation marks and they're set off. So we totally reads, it's totally fine. It's perfectly reasonable way to do it. It's just that they're separated off by quotation marks. Anymore. This is not used. It's very old-fashioned way to do it, but it is a direct quoted way of conveying thoughts. The next way is what we would call reported or indirect speech. So let's take that same situation. She stared at her sister. She's so quiet, she thought, I hope she's not angry. She twisted her napkin in her lap. This is the most recognizable form of third-person perspective that we have. This is actually the most recognizable form of third-person perspective. Let's look at this again. She stared at her sister. She's so quiet. She thought, I hope she's not angry. She twisted her napkin and allow what we've done here is we've removed those quotation marks. And you see that when just, just removing those tags around the words makes it flow more. And in this case, we're being told she what she thought. She's so quiet. She thought it's a great way to ride. It's how most third-person perspective is written. But there is a way to create something that's more immediate. So let's look at this next example, which is the free indirect style. She stared at her sister who was tire suddenly quiet and hoped she was not angry yet. Again, she slowly twisted the napkin in her lap, pretending it was Sydney's hair. Do you see how this is somehow boast both first-person and third-person. The author seems to disappear. The story to take on the properties of the main character. It's very close to stream of conscious again. So she stared at her sister who was tire suddenly quiet and hoped she was not angry yet again, we're still getting that she started her sister. We still getting that she thinks she's quiet and we're still getting that she hopes she's not angry. But we have this tire Silly quiet. So there's an emotion there. We haven't had to say what that emotion is, but we know from she's going to sit there and say tire suddenly quiet that she's impatient, she's annoyed. She's something neat that we didn't even have to say any of that. We just got that from the adverb attached to the quiet. Then this not angry yet again, there's an impatience there. So there's a way in which we are both were still third person. But we've sorted tract into the tract into her mind. And it's created a sincere intimacy there. Let's look at another example. Then. Manically waved his arms at the taxi. So in this case, manically makes this friend indirect style. If we take it out, it becomes a pure reported thought. When we add manically, the reader kind of sets up and goes, Okay, well, wait a minute. Who's saying it's manically? Is that Ben? Are we does Ben No. He's waving manically or is that the author saying it's medically? And it's it's okay that we're like that It's okay that we kinda going who in that sentence thinks it's malloc? It gives us something just chew on. In, in some ways the word medically applies almost to both of them in this way. It makes it almost in some ways partial and opinionated, in some ways omniscient. So it's just kinda created a unique way of looking at the texts and conveying emotion. To go back to perspective. What amazing new if you go back and you look at what amazing new that is done in free and direct style. And that's part of what makes it so good. 13. Final Advice: I would just like to add that all of these things, again, these are not rules, these are guidelines, they are recommended. But there are a lot of different ways in which authors break with this. So I recommend that as you're reading, you pay attention to the perspectives and try to sort out for yourselves what are the rules of the perspectives in the books that I am reading? Because that's going to actually help you learn to make up some of your own rules to maybe track with one perspective. But as we talked about earlier in it, what, how deep do you want to be in a character and lose perspective? Do we want to see these are all things that you get to think about. And the more you pay attention to them in books that you are reading, the better off you will be. The project for this class I recommend you do to practice. This is to write a paragraph and you're going to write it first as a first-person perspective. Then you're going to rewrite it as a third person limited. Then you're going to write it a third time is a third person omniscient. This means that this scene has to have more than one character in it so that you can actually play around with this properly. But write that scene, right, that paragraph no more than I would say a page one way. Each of those three. And think about all the things that we've talked about in this course and what you will find through that exercise. You will learn a lot. It's one thing to watch a class on the theories of perspective. It is quite something else to actually have to sit down and write it. I highly recommend that you take some time to do that. I think you will learn so much doing it. Otherwise, I thank you so much for watching. I hope you're having a wonderful day and I wish you the very best of luck with your projects.