Antagonists Point of View

Yesterday I was rewriting the first chapter (how many hundred times is it now?) trying to control point of view (POV) better, as prescribed by Dr Jarrold. I decided to start with the Michael Riley’s POV, an unsympathetic, eccentric, deceptive character.

This morning I decided that this is never going to work, for two reasons.

1. The reader wants to identify with an empathetic character.
2. He assumes that the opening character is the protagonist, or at least a sympathetic person.
3. Meeting a weird person to start with will put readers off.

So I will write it again today, taking Danny Kissov’s POV. I’ve done it this way before but this time I will make him much more well-balanced. Before he was far too single-minded.

 

Point of View

Geoff van Nelder also raises the question of whether the narrator should intervene or whether a character should have sole ownership of POV.

I’ve tried to write scenes using the character’s voice as narrator. The inspiration for doing this was James Joyces’ ambition for the novelist to be “refined out of existince” and let the characters tell their own story.

But I’ve found it doesn’t work for me. The POV character might use different names for other characters (Mummy, my darling etc) which are not appropriate for the narration. They also may also use inappropriate language. I’ve switched back to having a narrative voice, and indeed I’ve done work to develop that voice so the reader recognises when the narrator is speaking.

This is not just because of technical problems with character-as-narrator. In the story I’m writing (a multi-volume epic) the reader needs to know she is in safe and competent hands. She needs to trust that the writer is a professional who can get her safely and enjoyably through a long journey of several volumes. So it’s worth developing a narrator’s voice. However I don’t want to speak directly to the reader. The narrator should not be a character in the story but a sort of invisible guide, making sure that everything works but letting the characters’ voices come through.

So my technique is to use nature as the narrator. So we see things from the POV of the Sun, wind, birds, plants etc. These things have an anthropomorphic essence. This technique is fully integrated with the future of the plot. One final thought about POV.

Geoff in his critique says:

I think you have to be careful with your POV usages in this novel. You are head hopping and if it happens too much the reader cannot build a relationship with a main character.

In general I agree with him. A scene or whole chapter should be from a single character’s POV. If a chapter is broken across different POVs then I signal this by leaving a large gap and omitting to indent the first line.I stick to this rule except in the second scene in the first chapter. Here I am introducing three characters at once. I therefore deliberately allow POV to move from one to another in order quickly to introduce the inner lives of these characters. I am trying to establish inter-personal rivalry between two of them and felt this was an effective way to do it. However I’m willing to be convinced there’s a better way.

 

Changing the POV

The Point of View (POV) is one of the main things you need to decide about every scene. The POV is one of the characters and we see the scene through her eyes alone. If she cannot see something then the reader shouldn’t see it either, according to some authors. I don’t stick to this strict approach but do usually have a POV character.

I’m working on chapter 37 today, where the characters first enter the Main Building, and I’m changing the POV from Francisco to Maria. It’s an interesting exercise because it makes you rethink the whole scene, the events, the use of language. It might be worthwhile to re-assign the POV in every scene, as an exercise in improving writing.