It's All About Perspective

Hi everyone, Winnie Griggs here. Today I'd like to discuss Perspective from three different angles.

A lot of folks think of POV and Perspective as inter-changeable, but while they are related there are some key differences. POV refers to the type of narrator you’ve chosen to tell your story, the vantage point from which your reader will experience your story.  It’s a technical choice you make based on whether you want to tell an up close and personal first-hand account, an omniscient narrative or something in between. 

Perspective, on the other hand, is about how your characters view, process and filter the actions, environment and sensory details they encounter. It takes into account your character’s education, experience, upbringing, beliefs, attitudes and goals. Because the sum of a person’s experiences and beliefs will inform how they view the world and react to whatever they are faced with.

There’s a quote I like from Dr. Wayne Dyer, who was an author and speaker in the field of self-development. You may have heard before:
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Of course, Dr. Dyer, was referring to one individual adjusting their focus to see things in a different light. But it can apply equally well to the writer who wants to present either a deeper characterization of an individual character or slant a scene or description a certain way.

CHARACTER PERSPECTIVE

To nail your character’s perspective, you first need to make certain you understand their backstory, the events, environment, occupation, relationships, experiences and ambitions that shaped him into who he is in the today of your story.

Let me try to illustrate.

If a young child, a woman who just learned her cancer is in remission, and a CEO who’s late for a meeting all got caught in a rainstorm, their reactions and observations would all be different. The child might gleefully seek out puddles to splash in, the woman might smile and view it as a blessed sign of renewal, and the CEO would likely grumble at the inconvenience.

But it goes even deeper than that. Perspective should play a role in word choice, in what details are mentioned and which are ignored, and it will determine the attitude with which those details are viewed. 

Let’s discuss a few examples to illustrate what I mean

In the area of word choice:
Let’s say you have a seamstress who suddenly comes upon something that frightens her. She might think in terms of fear stitching its way up her spine or about her nerves unraveling. But if you put a sailor in the same situation, he might think in terms of being pulled under, drowning or swimming in shark infested waters.
Or suppose we have a young child and an adult both describing a puppy. The adult would probably use words like rambunctious, house-trained (or not!), kid-friendly, purebred, rescue. But your child wouldn’t be thinking in those terms – or at least he shouldn’t be. Instead he would use words such as wiggly, furry, or say the puppy like to gives wet kisses.
If in both of these instances you use generic terms for the emotion of fear or the description of the puppy, you are not only missing the opportunity to add color to your story, but also failing to deepen your characterization

In the area of details:
Let’s say you have a group of friends walking into a museum lobby – we’ll call them Tim, Sue and Leo. Tim has been there a number of times so he doesn’t look around or pay attention to any of the teaser exhibits. Instead he goes right to the ticket counter to pay the entry fee. What he notices is how talkative the ticket agent is, what the discount options are, what flyers are on the counter.
Sue, on the other hand, has never been to this museum before and what she notices when she walks in are the elegant architecture of the lobby, the plush benches and beautiful tapestries and the stunning patterns in the tile floor.
Then we come to Leo who hasn’t been here before either, but he was dragged along and doesn’t really want to be there. What he notices are the long lines and the high price of the tickets.

In the area of attitude and values:
Going back to our example of the three friends at the museum. Let’s say Tim is an artist in his own right and has a deep appreciation for art in all its forms and is eager to share that appreciation with others. If we are viewing the museum through his eyes we will get a very positive, immersive impression.  

As for Sue, she really only has a surface appreciation for art, doesn’t understand any pieces that aren’t literal and really just wants to impress Tim, who’s her boyfriend. If we are viewing the exhibits through her eyes we’ll get a very different impression, one of vague confusion and eagerness to see the beauty that’s just beyond her understanding. 
And of course, there’s our reluctant friend Leo. He grudgingly trails behind his two friends.  He considers the exhibits lame and he’s on to Sue’s pretense so what we’ll get from him is a very cynical view of his surroundings.

Hopefully you can see how, by digging deep into who your characters are you’ve enriched your story and added layers of texture for your reader to enjoy.

In the end, you want to highlight the variety in your individual characters. You need to get out of their way and allow them to reveal themselves through word and thought in a way that is true to who they are.

AUTHOR PERSPECTIVE

There is another kind of perspective that impacts your writing and it’s based on what slips into our stories based on the author’s perspective.  Because your own values, beliefs, experiences can’t help but color your work to some degree. It’ll show up in the subtext, in the way we dive deep into or avoid certain topics - your ideas of justice and morality and spirituality all influence how we portray our characters in our stories.

We’ve all read ‘agenda stories’, stories where the author had a point they are trying make and they are using the story as a vehicle to deliver the agenda. It is like being preached at and if it is very heavy handed it will quickly cause the reader to put the book aside in favor of another, more entertaining read.

But even if we don’t have an agenda or want to hammer home a social, political or moral issue of some kind, author perception can still creep into our work.  As writers we need to be conscious of this and try to minimize this author intrusion in your work so that we can be true to our characters and the story we are trying to tell.

READER PERSPECTIVE

And there is yet another level of perception that impacts your story, and this is one you as the writer have absolutely no control of – that of reader perceptions. Each reader will bring the sum of his or her own experiences into the reading experience. If your story contains elements of violence, abuse, injustice, infidelity, etc., you are going to be touching on sensitive areas for your readers who have experienced some of those things. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go there, just that you need to be aware it will have that impact.

But even something you thought of as quite innocuous when you wrote it might very well strike a nerve with some of your readers. Something as simple as a scene set at an outing to the circus could set off alarm bells in your reader simply because she had a very frightening experience at a circus when she was a child.

As I said you really have no control over this, but it is just something for you to be aware of.

So what do you think? Have you ever looked at perspective from all its various angles in either your writing or reading? Is there something I've left out here or that you disagree with? Let's discuss!