LESSON 2 Flashcards
Voice
Everyone likes a story filled with personality, but how do we accomplish it? Because voice is closely aligned with point of view, how we go about it depends on a story’s narrator. If the main character of your story is telling it in his own words, you’ll try to capture his personality and voice in the words and phrasing he uses. If your story is told by an unknown narrator, the mood (emotional atmosphere) and tone or attitude (humorous, somber, ironic, for example) will create the voice.
First person: The narrator is a character in the story, most often the protagonist.
Second person: This narrator is rarely used in its pure form but features a first-person character who directly addresses the reader (“If you want to hear what happened on that hot August day, you will be shocked . . . “)
Third person: The narrator, not a character in the story, knows the thoughts and feelings of one or more of the characters. However, this narrator also might merely report action and dialogue.
Past and present tense
Fiction is written in both present and past tense but not in the same time frame!
Past tense: The story is narrated after it happened. The events have ended.
Present tense: The story is narrated as though it’s taking place as we read. Using present tense can be effective for stories with action. However, it also can wear on a reader.
First Person point of view
This is narrative where the narrator uses the pronoun ‘I’ (or, in plural first person, ‘we’). The strength of first person narration is that the reader sees the story unfold from the subjective (or biased) viewpoint of a single character (or group, in the case of ‘we’). This point of view is common in novels written as fictional autobiographies.
A single first person narrator can only tell the reader what she knows, for example. The narrator can prove unreliable because they could either be delusional or wish to hide a truth they privately admit. This often only comes out when we switch to another viewpoint that gives a contrasting version of events.
Many authors use this device to surprise readers, when they reveal the narrator was distorting ‘true’ events all along.
Second Person point of view
Second person POV is rarer than first or third. In second person narration, you tell the story as though the reader is the viewpoint character, using the second person pronoun ‘you’. This creates a ‘choose your own adventure’ type of effect. Because it makes the reader the subject of the action.
Third Person Limited point of view
When the author describes events from outside a single character’s perspective, but sticks to what they know and experience. ‘Limited’ because perspective follows a single viewpoint at a time.
For example:
He thought she looked extraordinary as she passed through the archway, but she shot him a glance that had something odd about it – was it mockery? – he couldn’t be sure.
Here, we only have access to the male viewpoint character’s perspective in the scene. We can only know what another character in the scene thinks or feels by his own understanding (‘was it mockery?’).
In limited point of view, as described above, the narration sticks closely to a focal character. An entire book doesn’t necessarily have to be in a single character’s point of view in limited third person. Yet when a specific character’s viewpoint is in focus, others’ private thoughts are off limits.
Third Person Objective point of view
Also called dramatic point of view, unlike limited point of view, does not interpret characters’ thoughts and feelings for the reader.Here you simply present characters’ actions and dialogues to the reader. The narrator doesn’t explicitly tell the reader what a character thinks or feels. [You could argue, of course, that there is only limited POV, and the difference between ‘limited’ and ‘objective’ is whether the author does more telling or showing (this would be ‘objective’).]
Limiting narration to only neutral observation is useful for avoiding telling readers’ feelings more than showing them.
For example, you could write ‘the boy ran in circles, like a footballer just after his victory goal’. This conveys the character is celebrating something and is happy, without the narrator delving into his mind and telling his feelings (e.g. ‘The boy was happy he’d scored a goal’).
Third person omniscient point of view
Omniscient narration is the narrative voice where the narrator knows and sees all. Unlike objective narration, the narrator can access characters’ private thoughts and feelings. This is the POV of the narrator who, in Le Guin’s words, ‘knows the whole story, tells it because it is important, and is profoundly involved with all the characters.’
Le Guin notes that omniscient narration has fallen out of favour to an extent, with limited third person being the most common modern point of view. She attributes this to the popularity of omniscient narration in Victorian fiction. An example of its abuse is Victorian moralists’ fondness for preaching to the reader. For example:
‘…so he spent his afternoon’s in drunken reveries. But remember, dear reader, that idleness is the Devil’s plaything.’
