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Kate on Point of View

As well as the business of giving characters names as discussed elsewhere in ‘Flight Paths’, another major issue when it comes to starting to create a piece of work is figuring out what kind of voice, or voices, to use. Style, tone, and point of view all come into play here. Point of view is a particularly tricky one, and something I grapple with in everything I write. The only project where I haven’t had problems with point of view is Inanimate Alice, another on-going collaboration between me and Chris. We decided from the very beginning that these stories would be narrated by Alice herself, in the first person, as a young adult looking back on her childhood. Limiting the narrative voice in this way was very important (as was our decision to never show or depict Alice visually - an almost arbitrary decision that proved to be a very important part of what makes Alice work as a piece). But with most of my fiction projects, online or in print, I find it much more difficult to find the right point of view, or points of view, and sometimes find myself still grappling with this issue in very late drafts of a project that should, really, already be finished. For example, I’m currently attempting to finish a novel (also mentioned elsewhere on this website) and the main sticking point was, is, and continues to be, point of view.


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So, to point of view in ‘Flight Paths’. The bit of text on the About page is in the first person. This is Harriet’s (!?) point of view. Now when I think about writing more text related to Harriet, I first have to figure out whether to stick to the first person.

And Yaqub (!?)? Does he get the first person as well?

Posted by Kate on 30 October, 2007
Tags: General, fiction, main female character, main male character, writing process

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Total comments on this page: 6

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Chris on paragraph 1:

I think this is a particularly interesting issue, both in the context of collaborative, participatory works like this, and the multiple and often conflicting viewpoints that might be found in this particular narrative.

As a multimedia work Flight Paths might even explore simultaneous narratives or points of view within the overall piece…

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16 January, 2008 3:50 pm
Chris on paragraph 2:

In some ways this question when applied to the main male character is a political one: to not write him in the third person might encourage the view of him as an ‘outsider’. It might be interesting to start this way - i.e. approach the story from Harriet’s perspective - and slowly integrate increasing amounts of first-person Yaqub as his story is revealed (by her?). But also (see my comment in para 1 above) we could try to integrate (or offer as user choices) various points of view…

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16 January, 2008 3:57 pm
Kate on paragraph 2:

Yaqub in the first person is very appealing, because of the potential for stretching the bounds of reality through his voice. If he is dead, but also in some way re-animated, alive, then the potential for his voice to be surreal or hyper-real is there already. Like everything else, this has been done before in good old print fiction - books: the most recent example I can think of is Ali Smith’s ‘Hotel World’, part of which is narrated by a ghost. It’s a great book, very exhilarating to read.

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23 January, 2008 11:03 am
huysmans on paragraph 1:

One thing that comes to my mind in regards to point of view is the idea that perhaps a piece like this can actually not have one. Already through exploring the site I have begun in my own mind to put the story together, perhaps by leaving it so free for interpretation and letting it expand based on what people bring to the project, the point of view will develop through the reader’s interaction.

That way written submissions won’t have to subscribe to a certain style but rather they’ll all converge on the project and add insight to the characters in different ways, similar to how the multimedia affects the relationship between art and viewer.

Huysmans

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24 February, 2008 2:23 am
huysmans on paragraph 2:

Again as I mentioned about and agree with Chris, I like the idea of allowing the contributors to decide how to tell the story. That way you’ll have not just chapters in one point of view but the view will change by submission, as will the medium, thus forcing the reader into a much more active engagement with the text. The reader will be able to take nothing for granted.

Huysmans

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24 February, 2008 2:25 am
Kate on paragraph 1:

Thanks Huysmans -

I agree, a notion like ‘point of view’ might be meaningless in this kind of project. I been heartened by your comments elsewhere on these pages when you say that the story and the characters are taking shape in your mind’s eye - it is fascinating, isn’t it, how few details we need in order to begin to create stories in our own imaginations.

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25 February, 2008 4:33 pm

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