Who’s Talking Now?
As we dig into Chapter 7 of Steering the Craft (Le Guin), I want to know: Who’s your favorite fictional narrator?
Maybe you can answer very quickly with Nick Carroway (The Great Gatsby) or Jane Eyre or Death (The Book Thief). Maybe it’s not so simple to say because you love The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) or Pride and Prejudice (Austen) and those narrators are not given names. Perhaps a better question, then, might be: What do you think is a good example of fictional narration?
Because there is no “one size fits all” way to tell a story, and different POVs lend themselves to different storytelling abilities. And this—considering the various points of view—is what Le Guin wants us to think about in Chapter 7. Choosing how you narrate and the voice you tell your story in is incredibly important, and “writers often find that a story they want to tell ‘sticks’ and won’t go right until they find the right person to tell it” (74-75).
So, let’s get into it and talk about the particulars of POV.
To start, there are only so many POVs we have at our disposal and they are:
First Person — the viewpoint character is “I” and readers are only allowed to know what “I” feels, perceives, thinks, remembers, etc.
Limited Third Person — the viewpoint character is “he” or “she” and the scope is similar to First Person; again, readers only get to know what the “he” or “she” can sense and know. While this is a limitation, “that limitation concentrates the voice and gives apparent authenticity” (64).
Involved Author/Omniscient Author — there is no single character as the focal telling point, and anyone’s thoughts or feelings can be fair game to the narrator. They know all. They see all. In the Victorian era especially, this was the preferred POV, and “it’s not only the oldest and most widely used storytelling voice, it’s also the most versatile, flexible, and complex of the points of view,” which can make it a tricky one to manage (66).
Detached Author/Fly-on-the-Wall — again, no single character is the viewpoint. The narrator is not involved in the plot and can only report on what they’re observing as an outside perspective. Character’s inner-thoughts and values can’t be relayed, only implied.
Observer-Narrator, First Person — this is the Nick Carroway of the group: able to be in the story yet not a chief player in the plot events. Whatever’s happening is not about them.
Observer-Narrator, Third Person — same deal as #5, just with the change in the “I” versus “he/she.” One thing to note is that “the reader is usually safe in assuming that this viewpoint character is fairly reliable, or at least transparent, both in first and third person” (69).
I know going over the POV options is fairly elementary stuff for writers, so let’s think, for a moment, about them since they’ve been freshly laid out. What I want you to think about are things like,
Which POV do you find you prefer to write?
Which POV do you prefer to read?
Which POV is trickiest to you?
Which POV can you simply not stand?
There’s nothing wrong with having preferences just as there’s nothing wrong with noticing that, hey, maybe you’ve never given one of these a shot. Even if you don’t write an entire book from a new-to-you perspective, it can be a great exercise to develop your skills to practice all of them. But I’m getting ahead of myself; Le Guin’s exercise for us today will give you the space to attempt!
With options for POV, though, Le Guin wants to caution us to be prudent and mindful in making sure that we’re consistent in what we choose. Flopping around from one POV to the next can be jarring to readers, jerking “the reader around, bouncing in and out of incompatible identifications, confusing emotion, garbling the story” (70). So, it’s not that you can’t make a shift; you simply must have reason to and be entirely in control of it.
We, as writers crafting in this day and age, have so much room to maneuver around our stories. In the previous chapter—Chapter 6. Verbs: Person and Tense—Le Guin gave some background to how the use of first person in fiction was normalized and how, for some time, there were much stricter conventions accepted for fiction. We have more freedom in how we present our stories than our literary ancestors, which I find fascinating. Because it’s not something that crosses my mind until someone reminds me that stories weren’t always told in the many ways they are now. Because I take it for granted that a first person narration won’t surprise contemporary readers. Isn’t that interesting?
Another interesting thing I’m turning over (back to Chapter 7 now) is, when it comes to reliability, Le Guin poses that “our shifty age favors ‘unreliable narrators’ who—deliberately or innocently—misrepresent facts” and I’m not sure I agree with her (62).
Do we live in a particularly shifty age, or has the age-old human duplicity simply taken on different forms? And do we favor unreliable narrators, or are unreliable narrators being played around with more, are being employed in interesting ways by authors that’s snagged the attention of a lot of readers? Could the unreliable narrator trope just be trendy right now?
I’m asking a fair amount of questions, and I have no concrete answers. It just gave me pause, when I read that claim, and I had to include it in this post to perhaps get some opinions from whomever may read this and have some thoughts.
As I’m thinking about it right now, I can’t decide one way or another whether or not I’d like a reliable narrator or an unreliable one. What I know I like is a good story. That’s what I like and want, and I will hang out with whatever narrator can tell me one. Weigh in on this one for me, if you feel strongly either way!
And, now, onto the exercise Le Guin prepared for us. It’ll take you longer than those in the past, only because she wants to give us space to try out each of the POVs we have at our disposal.
EXERCISE SEVEN: POINTS OF VIEW
Instructions: Think up a situation for a narrative sketch of 200-300 words. It can be anything you like but should involve several people doing something. (Several means more than two. More than three will be useful.) It doesn’t have to be a big, important event, though it can be; but something should happen, even if only a cart tangle at the supermarket, a wrangle around the table concerning the family division of labor, or a minor street accident.
Please use little or no dialogue in these POV exercises. While the characters talk, their voices cover the POV, and so you’re not exploring that voice, which is the point of the exercise.
Part One: Two Voices
First: Tell your little story from a single POV, that of a participant in the event—an old man, a child, a cat, whatever you like. Use limited third person.
Second: Retell the story from the POV of one of the other people involved in it. Again, use limited third person.
Part Two: Detached Narrator
Tell the same story using the detached author or “fly on the wall” POV.
Part Three: Observer-Narrator
If there wasn’t a character in the original version who was there but was not a participant, only an onlooker, add such a character now. Tell the same story in that character’s voice, in first or third person.
Part Four: Involved Author
Tell the same or a new story using the involved-author POV. This may require you to expand the whole thing, up to two or three pages, 1000 words or so. You may find you need to give it a context, find out what led up to it, or follow it further. The detached author takes up as little room as possible, but the involved author needs a fair amount of time and space to move around in.
I know this is a more drawn-out exercise, so feel free to take your time with it, if you need. And then I’ll meet you back here next week for Chapter 8!