POV

Until the last handful of years when I seriously took up writing fiction, I never gave much thought to point of view. As a journalist, most of my writing has been in third-person. Whether at a news conference or witnessing events as they unfolded, I was like a fly on the wall. I observed and wrote what I heard or observed but not as a participant.

There have been exceptions, of course.

Besides the editorials I wrote for The Philadelphia Tribune (for which I won a couple of awards, thank you very much), my writing career includes a handful of first-person articles about experiences I had, including two I had at racing school. But my favorite first-person article was while I worked for United Press International. It was about an experiment at the Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia.

Using only paper, Popsicle sticks, string, glue and other materials found around the kitchen, a group of us, including an 11-year-old boy named Noah, had 15 minutes to construct something that would hold an egg and protect it from breaking when dropped from 12 feet onto some bricks. I felt particularly competitive toward Noah, though he was only one-third my age, and when I wrote the article I proudly announced to the world that I succeeded where most failed (though Noah wasn't one of them).

I have always felt most comfortable as a writer using a third-person POV. But as a reader, I generally don't care. In fact, I don't think most readers care. Or at least I don't think most readers who aren't writers actually care or even notice. So when other writers in my critique group say I sometimes switch POV when in third-person, I don't see it. I don't understand. It seems consistent throughout to me.

Then yesterday, I bell went off in my head and for the first time I got what other writers were talking about. I was reading James King's BILL WARRINGTON'S LAST CHANCE, which I have praised in the past and suggest you read. I was aware of whose head the writer in mind from chapter to chapter, and I noticed its consistency and when and why it changed.

James' writing is wonderful, descriptive and, it turns out, instructive.

I think I am going to stick with first-person narrative in my fiction for a while. It is challenging for me but also easier to keep consistent. So the next time I change POV, it will be with knowledge of forethought.

I've learned something. Thanks James.

And thanks to all of you for reading. Now go write something and don't give up.

NaNoWriMo Part III

I hadn't intended for this subject to have so many parts but this last installment is the one that most profoundly affected me as a writer.

I have been a working journalist for more than two decades. On more than one occasion -- generally when I'm walking Pluto -- I have tried to calculate in my head how many words I have written over my career as a reporter. I really haven't an idea but I'm sure it's well over a million words.

As a reporter, I have generally been an observer, not a participant. I have never been a columnist. Thus, the vast majority of the articles I have written were in third person. I can count on one hand the number of articles I have written from a first-person singular point of view.

(I need to clarify a point here. When I was an editor at The Philadelphia Tribune, I was on the editorial board and wrote editorials at least once a week for nearly four years. And the editorials were written in first person. But I was writing for the group -- and not necessarily expressing my own opinion -- and it was first-person plural, not singular.

One final word. The awards I have as a professional journalist were all for editorials. Now that is ironic!)


My point is that as a reporter and an author, I am most familiar and comfortable with writing in third. As an author (as with being a reporter) it has allowed me to be intimate with the story and the characters but still able to stand back and separate myself from the elements of the story. I could get caught up in a story but it was never MY story. I was just an observer, not a participant.


POV is the story-telling element about which members of my critique group criticize me the most. They say my POV shifts a lot. I rarely see it. To me, I am always the fly on the wall viewing the action. And I always know if the Marines are coming from around the corner to save the hero. You can't do that in first-person POV.


But in AN UNTIDY AFFAIR, I was immediately faced with the prospect of a story from a single POV, that of the novel's hero, private eye David Blaise. The entire story would be in first person.
I didn't plan for it that way. It just developed in my head that way and I couldn't get it out of my head. So, I went with in, although I knew it would be a tremendous challenge for me to write that way.


In this story, I identified with the main character more than I have with any other character I have created -- and there have been some in earlier works I have identified with a lot. I was in Blaise's head all the time. I, in essence, was him. I could no better determine the motives and actions of others in the novel than he could. Certainly not immediately. His life was very intimate to me. I felt uncertain when he was uncertain.


And, as a writer, I felt far more exposed, although I also felt that writing from that POV was limiting.


Members of the writing group who have seen the novel said it was the best they had seen of my writing. I'm not so sure of that but it was interesting and personal to me. Not sure if I will do it again. I may just retreat to the familiar. But I have mentally outlined two additional David Blaise stories, and, if I write them, they will be in first person.


Maybe I am changing. May not. But it was interesting, though not necessarily comfortable. Good thing it only took me 19 days to write it.


Thanks for reading and keep writing.