From ignitedinkwriting.com:
Perspective is the lens through which you’re telling your story. Which lens you choose affects your reader’s experience and opinion of your characters. As the author, you bring your own unique world view to your story. So do your readers. However, it is your choice in main character and distance that have the greatest affect on your story’s perspective.
Protagonist Lens
Who you choose for your main character determines who your readers root for and what type of story you’re writing. The main character of Here Lies Daniel Tate by Cristin Terrill is a con man. In real life, this character would be the villain or antagonist, not the protagonist everyone wants to succeed. Because the novel is told from his perspective, readers hope he escapes instead of hoping the FBI catches him.
The flip side is also true: who you pick for your protagonist determines who your readers root against. The person or force directly opposing your main character becomes the enemy in the reader’s mind. This can be a specific person, organization, the main character themselves, or even a force of nature. I once read a short story from the perspective of a deer, which made the human hunters the villains.
Who your protagonist is also controls the tone, emotional journey, and type of story. Pick any superhero movie recently produced. If the villain were the protagonist, the story would be a tragedy because they failed. These movies are comedies (in the broadest, traditional definition) because the main characters succeed. Most horror movies would become science fiction, urban fantasy, or literary fiction if told from the monster/killer’s perspective. Your choice in protagonist controls your story’s arc.
How your protagonist views their world and situation affects the tone of your story. An upbeat, witty protagonist leads to a funny, light-hearted tale. A pessimistic, tough main character leads to a darker, gritty story. Make sure your protagonist’s perspective and personality and story’s tone are in alignment.
Point of View Lens
After you select your protagonist, you have to decide what point of view you’re going to use to deliver their story. If you choose first person or third person close, your readers will see most of your character’s inner thoughts and emotions. This gives the reader greater insight into why your character does what s/he does. If you choose omniscient or distant third, your readers will judge your characters based on their actions, not their internal motivators as much.
Point of view allows you to control how close your readers are to your characters and the release of information. If you want your protagonist to keep secrets, distant third person or omniscient are likely the best choices. If you want to show your protagonist’s inner growth or demons, first person or close third person might be the best choices.
Another way you can use point of view to control perspective is by providing multiple points of view. Instead of filtering your story through the lens of one character, use two or more to give your readers a fuller picture. In Scythe, author Neal Shusterman shows the different degrees of corruption in his novel’s organization by using two point of view characters. This also shows why the two characters remain loyal to each other despite having vastly different experiences. Using multiple points of view is an excellent way to show how people from different upbringings, cultures, places, etc. perceive the same event or situation differently.
Conflict Lens
Your choice in main character and point of view control how your reader perceives the events of your story, in particular the conflict. Usually, readers want to read about characters experiencing and being changed by the conflict. If you have a car crash, they want to experience that crash, not witness it. Make sure your point of view characters are the ones directly involved in the conflict, unless they are offering a unique perspective.
Markus Zukas’s The Book Thief is narrated by Death, but the protagonist is a young girl named Liesel. Death is the point of view character: He is the lens through which the reader perceives the story. However as the protagonist, Liesel is also a lens and her perspective is clear as well. You can use multiple lenses in your story.
Why an Editor Suggests Thinking about Your Perspective
Once you understand perspective, you can use it to your advantage. Many writers just start writing without thinking about if their main character or point of view is the best choice for the story they want to tell. That’s an okay way to start getting your idea on paper, but what happens when you’re a third of the way through and realize you made the wrong choice? Instead of risking a complete rewrite for a new perspective, pause and consider your story. Ask yourself what kind of story you want to tell, what distance you need, and who’s experiencing the conflict. Then look at your protagonist and point of view to make sure they are the best choice to Ignite Your Ink.
From standoutbooks.com:
Who is telling this story? It’s a strange question, and one that’s based on feigned ignorance, but if you give it a chance, it could do great things for how you consider perspective in your writing.
That’s because by reconsidering a basic assumption, you’ll become aware of multiple decisions you already made. Maybe that just means you’ll see how right you were and get a confidence boost, or maybe it’ll show you a way in which you could improve your book.
Character perspective
Are you sure your protagonist is the best person to tell your story, or to act as the focus for your narrator? This is an idea to which many authors pay lip service, but most would sooner abandon a project than truly consider rewriting from another character’s perspective. This is a mistake, as following a different character is often the final piece of the puzzle.
Returning to the original Star Wars trilogy, consider the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO. At least to begin with, they’re actually the focus of the story, with the viewer following them from one scene to the next. This is a longstanding artistic tradition – introducing some roving strangers in order to provide a useful perspective. They can be new to the situation, whether that be the world, the situation, or the relationships in front of them.
Many authors employ a similar device, transforming their protagonists into reader cyphers who are often less definite characters than their friends and enemies. Characters like Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker enter the world fresh, more or less knowing as little as the reader in order to give them a way into the story.
In The Quadrant Method Is The Key To Amazing Storytelling, I suggested two versions of the same story, in which a wife discovers she has been hypnotized by her husband and turns the tables. Told from the wife’s perspective, it was a serviceable story, but it really came to life when considered from the husband’s point of view. Sometimes, it’s worth reconsidering your character perspective not to make things easier, but to offer a new structure to your story.
Richard Stark’s Parker novels tend to be from the protagonist’s point of view for the first two quarters, before spending the third quarter cycling between different characters. This is often the point at which a heist has gone wrong, and the resultant chaos is represented in the reader’s experience.
Not only is this exciting, but it allows Stark to hide what his protagonist is up to. Even straightforward actions can be made exhilarating when they’re hidden. The best of Stark’s stories even include some overlap, with a new perspective shedding fresh light on an event that’s already happened. There’s something really special about watching the hero prepare to ambush a gangster and then switching to that gangster’s perspective as they fall into the trap.
Emily Brontë uses multiple narrators to similar effect in Wuthering Heights. Here, the character Lockwood attempts to piece together a reliable account of events. He’s beset on all sides by unreliable narrators – people who only saw part of the story, or were only concerned with their role in it. In fact, Lockwood himself is less than likable, and by switching characters, Brontë manages to leave him behind, divorcing the story from any single narrator and making the reader feel as if they have a special insight that no character has managed to achieve.
Changing your perspective
The aspects of perspective that I’ve described can be used in various configurations, even within a story. You can switch tense, perspective, and even point of view, but remember to do so with finesse.
Tense is the one that causes the biggest problems. Remember that tense isn’t just about when a story took place, but when a story took place in relation to when it’s being told. Slipping into past tense for a flashback makes sense, but slipping into present tense for an action scene or vision is more problematic.
Of course, it can work, but treating tense as fluid unmoors it from any sense of the reader’s timeframe. If your character suddenly darts into the present, that underlines the fact that there was never really a ‘past’ in the first place. It might be worth the risk, but it definitely deserves careful consideration.
Changes in point of view are more common, with many third-person authors throwing in the odd first-person thought to give the reader some brief insight into a character’s inner workings, e.g. ‘I don’t like this, thought Dougal’. This is a terrible habit for any number of reasons (see How To Express Your Characters’ Thoughts – With Exercises), but mainly because it once again undermines the internal consistency and logic of your choices.
The reader needs to believe that you chose the point of view of your story for a good reason. If they can see into a character’s mind once, why can’t they do it elsewhere? There’s no good answer that doesn’t rip them out of the story, so it’s better not to raise the question.
Shifting character perspective within a story offers similar pitfalls. There needs to be a good reason for the perspective to shift, it needs to feel ‘right’, or the reader will start thinking about why it really happened. Brontë uses a central narrator to have the reader accept different viewpoints – there are a lot of them, but they all come through Lockwood. Stark, on the other hand, uses the structure of the novel to make shifting characters feel natural. Portions of the book are blocked off, presented as separate areas and making it more understandable that one might behave differently from the others.
If you shift perspective frequently, you’ll need less explanation, as the reader will accept this is simply how the story works (though it might make sense to do this early, so they catch on as soon as possible).
Again, though, getting your reader to accept this kind of decision will come naturally from thinking about it yourself. Throw a different character in on a whim (or because the story demands it), and it’ll feel unnatural. Think about it beforehand, and know why you’re doing it, and you’ll make a series of subtle choices that prep the reader.
Stark, for instance, frequently includes events that can only be explained from another character’s perspective. When this eventually occurs, it closes a circuit the reader barely realized they’d begun and feels natural.
Deciding on perspective
There are no objectively right or wrong choices when discussing perspective, but whatever you do, it should be a choice. Confront yourself with an imaginary professor and ask yourself some of these odd questions. Can you give your answers with confidence? Great, then carry on. Do they unearth a little unease, or reveal that you’ve chosen something just because it was the default option? Explore your options to be sure you’ve chosen the right one.
From masterclass.com:
3 Reasons to Use Multiple Perspectives in Your Story
Most stories are told from a single perspective—whether that’s an omniscient point of view or a close third-person point of view that is tuned into your protagonist’s thoughts. But sometimes your story feels so expansive that it’s necessary to tell it from more than one character’s point of view. The technique of writing in multiple perspectives can also create twists and dramatic irony. Here are a few reasons you may want to write from multiple perspectives:
- To create complexity: Giving secondary characters opposing points of view allows you to explore your subjects, settings, and moral gray areas from a wider variety of perspectives, which sustains complexity and keeps the reader interested. Changing point of view can help your reader get to know different characters’ voices and backstories and is especially useful in stories with intersecting storylines. Just remember that all that complexity will add pages to your narrative—so it’s probably not the best choice for a short story.
- To develop suspense: In a thriller or mystery, multiple perspectives can be used to create suspense. At times, you may choose the point of view of a secondary or supporting character. This secondary character’s curiosity or confusion can guide the reader to ask the questions you want them to ask. Perhaps your main character knows something you don’t want the reader to learn yet. The secondary character doesn’t know the information, so narrating from their point of view allows you to withhold the information from the reader in a plausible way. Point of view can also be used for the opposite: to give a reader more information than the characters have. Switching points of view allows you to give your reader a fuller picture. For example, your main character doesn’t know that a killer is just outside the door, but by switching into another character’s POV, you can let the reader know something that the hero doesn’t. This tension will keep a reader on the edge of their seat.
- To reveal an unreliable narrator: If your story is told in the first-person from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, you can switch to another character’s perspective later on to reveal cracks in the first version of the story. Your reader will then see the story in a whole new way. This can help you create exciting plot twists.
5 Tips for Writing From Multiple Points of View
Switching between characters’ perspectives can be a great tool in novel writing, but it can also confuse your reader. Here are a few ways to make multiple perspectives work in your creative writing:
- Hone in on the most important character. When choosing which character will serve as your main point of view for any chapter or scene, try honing in on the person who has the most to lose or learn. Whichever character is facing the highest stakes—the one who has the most to lose in a particular scene—will be the one to follow closely because their thoughts and reactions will carry the most tension for the reader. The character who has the most to learn is often an equally good choice. Readers tend to identify with characters who are learning like they are, and through these characters, you can provide valuable information to the reader. If you have two main characters, make sure each protagonist narrates around the same number of scenes.
- Use different perspectives to build characters. Point of view is an essential tool in character development. You’re describing the world through their eyes and letting the reader know what they think and feel. You’ll need to be aware at all times what your characters’ limitations are. Review your writing frequently to scan for mistakes you might have made in giving a character information or opinions they wouldn’t normally have.
- Stick to one point of view for each scene. It’s important to note that when you establish point of view, you are creating a type of contract with the reader: that you will adhere to that point of view for the course of the scene. It’s all right to have different subplots told from different points of view throughout your novel but you should treat each point of view as an individual section or chapter. For example, if you’re narrating in a second-person point of view from your hero’s perspective and, in the middle of a scene, you suddenly switch to the third-person perspective of a different character, the disruption will jar your reader out of the story.
- Clearly define perspective shifts. Each time you change perspectives, make it abundantly clear to your reader. If your reader is busy trying to figure out which character’s head they’re in, they won’t be paying as much attention to what’s going on in the story. All that head-hopping can make your reader feel frustrated. You can make this clear to the reader by giving each character a distinct voice, repeating a character’s name, or having one character narrate from the present tense and another from the past tense. Another strategy is to give your perspective changes a regular pattern, so your reader can anticipate those shifts.
- Give each character a unique perspective and voice. Each character should have something unique to contribute to the story that only they can share. You don’t necessarily have to change the point of view, but you should give your characters individualized personalities and opinions. If your characters all have the same voice, your reader will get confused about who is speaking. Plus, characters won’t seem as real or believable.
From penandpad.com:
Some people think that you can’t shift the point of view when writing a story, but you can actually shift perspectives as much as you want, if you know how to do it. The key to shifting narrators effectively is to make sure that the change makes sense for your story, and that you are changing perspectives according to a specific method — basically, that you are in complete and competent control of the storytelling.
Chapter Changes
Perhaps the simplest way to shift point of view when writing a story is to use chapter breaks as points when you change narrators. For example, in “The Sound and the Fury,” William Faulkner opens the novel with the character Benjy telling the story, but then begins the the second section of the book from Quentin’s perspective. You don’t have to restrict yourself to moving from one first-person narrator to another. You could open the book in third-person perspective, and then have certain chapters or sections relay the story from the perspective of a specific character, depending on the needs of your story. Regardless, section breaks make clean and logical transitions for changes in point of view.
Wandering Third-Person Perspective
To use wandering third-person perspective, you begin in the limited third-person perspective of one character, and as that character interacts with another, you move the narrational observations to a point of objectivity — a space not attributed to either character, and then begin narrating from the limited perspective of the other character. For example, character X could be talking with character Y at the train station, and noticing that character Y’s makeup is much bolder than normal. You could then give details of the wind and the passing train, and trash brushing past both of their feet on the platform, and then mention how one plastic bag felt against character Y’s leg. The effect is that you’ve moved smoothly from one character’s mind to the other.
Second-Person Perspective for Emphasis
The second-person point of view can be evoked to emphasize brief statements or entire anecdotes when speaking from a standard first-person point of view. For example, your narrator could be detailing — to the reader — how it felt to catch her husband in bed with another woman, and then say “and you have no idea how much it hurts to see another woman hide under your blankets as if they were her own.” You can also use second person to place someone into more intimate contact with a story your character is telling: “I remember going in and finding them. You walk up the stairs and the ceilings are high, and any sounds swirl around and then sink down upon you, and that’s how her laughter hit me. It sank onto me from the ceiling.”
Abrupt Shifts
You could also disregard standard conventions for shifting perspective, and change narrators whenever you want. You could switch narrators from paragraph to paragraph, or sentence to sentence, to accentuate the flow and mood of your story. If your goal is to provide a confusing or chaotic reading experience, you could even shift points of view within one sentence. Whichever method you choose, however, it is important that you do it because you have chosen to, because it makes sense according to your artistic vision for the story. Otherwise, you will be perceived as less than masterful with your writing craft, which could disengage the reader from the text.
https://penandthepad.com/change-point-narrative-20211.html
From writersdigest.com:
- Differentiate the voices. The easiest way to fail at multiple perspective is to not actually have any. Don’t give characters the same sense of humor, the same vocabulary, the same sense of right and wrong. When in doubt, read the different perspectives aloud.
- Start small. Instead of trying to encompass an entire character’s persona, zoom in on a detail. A simple desire, one thought, a bite of pasta, even. It’s a lot less intimidating to start with a bite of pasta than with an entire backstory in mind. The rest will build from there, and will probably feel more authentic for it.
- Explore. If you’re writing from different perspectives, at least one of them is probably wholly different to your own. That’s not a challenge, it’s a chance to explore what it means to be someone else. A parking lot, for example, looks different to a woman walking alone in her twenties than to a woman trying to keep two toddlers from running out into traffic before she reaches the target. What would it be like to be a teenager living in a war-torn region? You probably don’t know for sure, but you have a chance to find out if you start with a small detail and then explore from there.
- Keep it personal. Just because the characters are not like you doesn’t mean they can’t have pieces of you in them. In some way, they should care about what you care about. Or maybe they have the exact opposite beliefs, or they have courage that you don’t. Whatever it is, consider the personal connection the character has with you as you move forward. If you don’t connect with the characters on a personal level, your readers probably won’t either.
- Connection. This one may not be for everybody. What I love most about books—reading or writing them—is the chance to connect to others, the idea that people have similar thoughts and experiences, even though they may not know it. Do this in your stories too. Make connections, subtle or otherwise. Make them pass by each other a minute or two apart. Have someone in common in their backstory without them being aware of it. It’s the beauty of multiple perspectives, you can explore human connection in ways that we may miss in real life.
https://www.writersdigest.com/there-are-no-rules/5-quick-tips-for-writing-in-multiple-perspectives
KC Storytellers 