 |
|
Third Person Narrative Point of ViewIf you are anything like me, you were probably tempted to skip this article explaining Third Person Narrative Point of View - and the next one on First Person Narrative Point of View - and move straight to the material looking at the pros and cons of third person and first person point of view. But trust me, without getting to grips with the fundamentals outlined here, it will be impossible to master viewpoint in your novel writing. "Learning about point of view by reading a book can seem like learning to play a card game by reading the rules in 'Hoyle'. Relax. As you use different viewpoints in the fiction you write and notice how point of view works in the fiction you read, it will become as natural to you as poker to a professional gambler." What I want to talk about in these two articles is the roles played by four different people in the writing of a novel:
Understand the sometimes subtle, but always important, differences between these people and you will be well on your way to mastering first and third person narrative point of view. The Author and the NarratorThe first person we need to consider is the novel's author - the one writing the words and whose name appears on the book's front cover - and that person is obviously you! (Third person narrative point of view might be complex, but it is also very logical.) What about the novel's narrator? Well, in a third person point of view novel, you are also the narrator, or the person telling the story. (There's nobody else doing all the hard work, is there!) But here is the thing: there is actually a subtle but crucial difference between author and narrator. Stick with me on this one because it isn't totally straightforward to explain... When a reader reads a novel written in the third person narrative point of view, they know perfectly well that the events never actually happened, that it is a story made up in the author's head and written in the author's words. Us readers, though, like to imagine that the events did actually happen and that the characters really do exist (this illusion of reality is one of the reasons why reading fiction is so pleasurable). Yes, on one level we know that it is a novel, that it is made up, that it didn't really happen - but while we are reading we are happy to pretend that these people are as real as we are. This phenomenon has a technical name: the willing suspension of disbelief. If we read Gone With the Wind, for example, we know perfectly well that Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler are characters created by Margaret Mitchell and that the events never actually occurred, but we nevertheless like to imagine that we are reading about real events happening to real people. The willing suspension of disbelief, incidentally, applies to movies, too - and to stage plays, musicals, things like that. Yes, we know logically that Scarlett and Rhett are imaginary characters being portrayed by real-life actors Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, but for the running time of the film we still like to imagine that we are witnessing reality. For those two or three hours, we willingly suspend our disbelief in order to become more emotionally involved with the story. But back to novels, and to this difference between authors and narrators in a third person narrative...
You can read this article in full, and loads more besides, in my 500-page eBook. Follow this link to discover more about the Ultimate Guide to Novel Writing.
|
|
