Viewpoint – In Praise of a One-Lane Street

A good viewpoint character just may be the best friend a writer has. And like most lifelong friends, we may have to warm up to a few inconveniences and quirks, before we start to appreciate how many ways a really compatible point of view character can smooth our writing along. Besides how it brings the chosen character or characters to life—and in the end, doesn’t all writing work through that?—using it can also animate all the supporting characters too, organize the world to keep it plausible and again to guide the whole description process, and even trim bulky pages.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

But somehow I keep seeing writers who are uncomfortable with it, who neglect it or even resent how it complicates some of their exposition. Yes, a strong viewpoint can make a few things awkward—but every limit there is also more than one opportunity, while almost nothing looks as amateurish as not sticking with whatever VP choice we make.

Just to line up the basic options, we have:

3rd Person Limited: Bill thought __ so he did __. Then the other guy did __. Bill thought __ and…
1st Person: I thought __ so I did __. Then the other guy did __. I thought __ and…
3rd Person Omniscient: Bill thought __ so he did __. But Joe thought __ and did __. Bill thought __ and…

(Plus, there’s the question of whether one of the first two methods will change viewpoint characters when a new scene starts.)

Let’s just get the Omniscient option out of the way—because, frankly, that’s where I hope most writers keep it. Being able to show any thought in the scene may make it a lot easier to reveal things… but that’s one of the main styles it’s used for, just trying to make the story easy. True, some of its other uses are to back away from individual characters to make their gestalt impression (the town, the human condition, whatever) seem more important than any one person, or to make direct contrasts between one thought and another, but pulling those off is a lot trickier than it looks. It also can’t be done without at least understanding each character’s view first.

So that leaves 3rd Person Limited and 1st Person, simply “he/she” vs “I.” Compared to the other option, these two are pretty much the same thing in terms of what viewpoint does. Their difference is really in tone: it’s just more intense to get through a whole tale of “I”s with none of a character’s passions and blind spots pushed back to “John hated to…” Some writers (or stories) work better with that bit of distance, while on the other hand I’d hate to read any of Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter books that didn’t throw me right into Dubious Dexter’s mocking little lines of thought. But extreme or subtle, any character can be done well in 1st Person—still, most writers have found the 3rd is more than powerful enough for them.

Either way, the good stuff involves knowing one of those two specific viewpoints. Which makes sense: stories aren’t read by gestalts, or by readers whose answer to “Will he give me that raise?” is to read the boss’s mind. (Much as we love to read about people like that.) 1st Person is simply how we live, and 3rd Limited is its more polite twin.

The basic value of a good VP, of course, is that this becomes the set of thoughts we can and should just show. Simple as that; as a writer, “you get one” mind to follow in a scene, so we make the most of it.

—Which is not to say we show every thought the character has, of course; that still depends on good pacing and the style we want, same as anything else. Then again, it works both ways, so choosing the right viewpoint character himself—or is it herself? choices, choices—ought to have a huge hand in defining how much of what to dwell on. Laconic, all-business VP characters are great for many stories, and a big effect of that choice should be limiting how detailed they bother to make their thoughts. Someone else might muse about everything he saw… or breeze past most things but slow down to wax lyrical about how to hack a computer, because that’s who they are.

(Special warning: if something would be on the character’s mind, don’t hide it from the reader just to play tricks. “They never knew I was the killer” may be the most infuriating last line you can ever write, if it blasts the readers with how dependent they’ve always been on your character telling the whole story. Yes, the plot may be all about why the character doesn’t know a thing, or there may be big memories that honestly haven’t come up yet, or the character can hint there’s something but flinch away from thinking it in detail at first. But don’t just cheat if we should know it’s there.)

Beyond what someone thinks, how does what he does and notices filter into that view? There may hundreds of things in a room, but by really following the character through it you get both a strong guide for describing it all and many more chances to characterize him. Does he just settle into the chair and wait to be told what’s up, or do his eyes pick out the rifle on the wall—and is it because he’s an appreciative hunter, a paranoid spy, or an author who remembers Chekov’s saying about guns?

Writers and readers often say characters are more important than plot. (I think their relationship is more complicated than that.) But there’s no question that anything we learn about that person’s mindset might affect any number of things to come, and beyond all that her attitudes are likely to connect with the reader more than the raw details of how a US President goes on the run from assassins. And every thought, action, and perception that crosses her viewpoint (or misses it!), plus what order she takes them in and how she perceives each, can be a chance to building that picture… and without slowing the story down. Because the pace of the story is how the right character is living it.

Consider: how different would a Sherlock Holmes tale be from Holmes’ own view, seeing all the possibilities at once rather than with a Watson who’s quickly led through them? Or from Inspector Lestrade’s, able to do his job but clueless enough to need a Holmes to do it right? Or from some ignorant servant’s view, or (evil chuckle) from Moriarty’s… If viewpoint doesn’t define the whole story, it certainly RE-defines every part of it.

I do like to think of it as driving in a one-lane street. A second lane to maneuver in might let me skip ahead and see more cars sooner, but staying mostly in one lane makes me so much more aware of each car, and especially how its speed matches my own. (Yes, that’s a sloppy metaphor; are viewpoint characters the cars or the lanes? But I’ll get the other reason I like the image.)

But, what about that viewpoint’s price, the key things right in a scene that a character doesn’t realize? (And those blind spots are, of course, some of the strongest ways to make a point about that person.) There, I think you have two choices:

Change viewpoint with the scenes. A whole book with exactly one viewpoint might be stronger, but we all love to split the narrative between a few characters that see different things. It might be because they wind up on different continents as the story plays out (we Game of Thrones fans know what I mean), or because using another pair of eyes in the same room shows whole other things (which is also Game of Thrones, come to think of it). But as long as the jumps between views are complete and not a new one every page, each view works in its own right, and the combination builds whole other shapes.
Or, get subtle:

Consider another “Lane,” namely Lois—a character who’s famously defined by the one thing she doesn’t know. Say you’re writing a Superman novel (or just any story where you want to state the characters as firmly), and you decide Lois needs an actual viewpoint scene of her at her best, grilling the latest Lex Luthor-wannabe about his shady dealing at a press conference. But this is also a villain that Clark Kent would be keeping an eye on, using all the resources that both his identities have… You could have Clark bumble his way through the scene and then later in his own scene mull over what he actually learned there. But you could also let Clark could get in one very good, penetrating question, and Lois could stop to think how she hates that a guy could have real reporter’s instincts sometimes but always be such a wimp…

(And of course, which one you use depends on which version of Clark Kent you’re writing, the “my God how does he keep his job” version or the “my God it’s just a pair of glasses” version. Characters fit the story.)

But there are always ways to make the reader notice something but hide it from the viewpoint character. If he doesn’t see something, what’s the reason for it: is he bored, trusting, impatient? Or even if it’s just him missing the elevator his girlfriend’s on, he can think a prominent “It can’t be that important” to make the reader suspect what it’ll really mean. It doesn’t have to be a strict characterization reason he misses something; just the viewpoint fact that he misses it gives the writer more than enough to hint with. Either way, the reason you’re hinting at is at least as entertaining as the fact itself, so all you have to do is use that, both to hint at the fact and to emphasize the larger truth.

Even when a character can’t know something, viewpoint isn’t a limit. It’s a twofer.

As to whether Lois Lane is really that limiting, the first modern “secret identity” story was Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, which is told mostly from the woman’s point of view…

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Character-Centered and Plot-Centered – Making Room

“Do you write plot-centered or character-centered stories?” is a favorite question between writers. But it’s usually asked just as a way to insist on strong characters, sometimes suggesting a mix but sometimes to claim a plot doesn’t even matter compared to the people in it. From my own Unified perspective, I always want to join the authors who hold out for balancing the two… except I keep seeing some hard facts in favor of the “Characters Rule!” approach that are hard to balance out at all.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Of course, “character” means different things to different people. Indiana Jones is an unforgettable guy, but not as much for the reasons most people think of when they really get into character-building. Yes, he’s an action hero who dares to be afraid of snakes, but that only goes so far as a “deep, realistic human being.” He’s great partly for adding just the right touches of humor and humanity to the thrills, but also because the overall film (from plot to lighting levels) coalesces around him to make him look great—“I love Indy” is partly shorthand for just loving watching his movies.

–Or is it the other way around? Maybe the character isn’t a tool for the overall story, maybe the story is a device to make us believe the character is possible. Not “possible” in that “If I get mugged someone will whip the thug’s gun away,” but meaning that heroism, facing fears, style, and all the rest of it have something to say about our own lives.

It’s not like we writers don’t know how valuable characters are. Loosely speaking, “plot” can be absolutely whatever comes into the story, and some tales are all about lingering over their people while others rush on to the next task to take on. But we humans are the proverbial social animal; we’re wired to notice anything about a Who more than we do about a What or How. So any time some hero’s about to duck a bullet through sheer skill, we know it would be so much more thrilling (and easier to explain) to say that it instead comes down to him facing his fears or realizing it’s the “friend” at his back who’s going to shoot him.

But is even that getting away from the characters? Many people think so; sometimes “plot-centered” is code for turning up their noses at any kind of genre fiction and any challenge or adventure that isn’t perfectly everyday.

The thing is, they’re partly right:

First Danger of Dangerous Plots: is what’s at risk so big that you’re skipping most of life’s questions of whether a goal’s worth struggling for, for the hero and everyone around him?

Once someone finds a killer hunting him or her plane goes into a crash-dive, they don’t have to resolve if that’s their priority now. That can be an advantage for higher-stakes tales—once you settle on a big threat, you don’t have to convince the reader it matters. But it also means those characters aren’t dealing with the ordinary choices about how things compete with their regular lives, and how persuasive the easy choice and “What if I just walk away” are for all of us.

So, when we choose what kind of story we want to write, we need to see how much that’s limiting its ties to those regular challenges even if it’s adding focus to the bigger thrills. But it doesn’t mean a strong plot has to squeeze out some of our character choices.

One clue to that is that sometimes even small, adventureless tales end up being more plot than character anyway. A “career tale” can be purely about how to be a better accountant or rock star, or a romance can slip from the character issues of “Who’s right for me?” to plot twists struggling over “Can I get her alone in time to say I’m sorry?” But of course these tales still have one way they’re usually closer to character-based than the bigger-stakes tales:

Second Danger of Dangerous Plots: is what’s affecting the plot so different from ordinary life, so that how he copes with it doesn’t generalize as well to the reader’s own struggles?

(Yes, in my Plot – Just Three Tools? breakdown, this is drawn from the Difficulty tool while the other Danger was the Reward and Cost questions.)

One of the biggest reasons characters are fun reading is that anything about human choices has some meaning to everything else human. Most readers haven’t tried hunting killers, but we don’t even need to have had a demanding boss ourselves to relate to the hero biting his tongue and trying to listen hard for what he needs to keep his job.

Whatever the story’s plot is, here are a few ways to make the most of your characters:

Character is deciding What someone wants, not just How to get it. A romance could be “Can she get the promotion to face her boyfriend as an equal?” but it’s exploring character more if she can’t get it and has to consider if dating her boss is worth what it does to her self-image. –Of course, one thing both versions depend on is neither character losing their jobs so the problem disappears.
Character is visibly Caused by Characters, not just events. The less someone is forced into a position by big events (let alone “just born bad,” or good) and the more we see they’ve made choices to get as far as they have, the more we see the choices they have ahead matter too.
Character is Checking All The Choices. You can rush the plot along by showing there are only a few things to try doing next… or you can take a moment to show someone trying to consider every option, and/or showing their blind spots. Bad characters in danger never call the police, good ones realize they don’t have time—and great ones have reasons they hate to trust anyone (or they have a really well-presented Don’t Have Time scene).
Character is solving the How with the Why. You can do a great story of how a general wins a war on his maps and blasts through the enemy lines, but it’s so much more human to focus on his own weakness of being suspicious or impulsive, or learning to work with his superior. Biases and bosses, biases and bosses are always fun.
Character is Other Characters being free too. If you want to do justice to the hero winning a victory through human insight, don’t let the people he has to persuade or figure out have their own choices locked in. A cop who sees the hero chased by a murderer has a lot of choices, but not as many as a cop who only sees him get some threatening calls, or if the witness is only a neighbor who isn’t sure he wants to get involved. Real folks deserve a full range of real folks to deal with.
Character is Consequences, even to the plot. A strong plot often means finding a path to the end that you want… but it can lead to doing “character development” as various dead end things the hero tries that just lead to him getting back on course, supposedly changed inside but not really outside. How often have we seen a hero tempted to leave the struggle for others to take over, or to sacrifice himself for innocents, but events force him to do what the story needs? You can measure how much character affects story by how completely a “change” he goes through really changes where the story’s going and how his life stands now. (Or better yet, it puts him in a wheelchair, or teaches him to fly.)
Character might be a Plot After The Plot. Decide where your story is on the range between one main plot goal fed by a couple other threads, versus defining the tale as several separate goals. The more the story can completely finish one goal and still be about what’s next as much as it was about the last thing, the more clearly it’s like real life. Isn’t that the kind of thing Fitzgerald meant, about American lives that don’t have “second acts”?
Character is Character-ization. Going back to Indiana Jones again, he’s memorable partly for a great movie but also for the mix of little touches that constantly say what he’s like… that is, much of screenwriting a new Indy would be the three words “cast Harrison Ford.” There are whole posts’ worth of little things that even the fastest-paced tale can take a moment to include: gestures and extra actions, clothes (the hat!) and home, the right dialog style and thoughts. And yes, you can mention or even show what the hero’s doing an hour before the next plot-relevant scene, or a year before that. On the one hand it might slow things down, but on the other every glimpse is part of what he is, and you never know when some reader will fall in love with a character for a passing statement about how he paid his college bills.

–So by all means, let’s keep the classic question in mind: How does your hero do his laundry?

It’s all character. A strong plot can keep circling back to the character too, or it can be streamlined to carry him along but mostly interact with the world… it’s all degrees of focus, and knowing your options. Either way, the character’s still there in the center, and it all helps make the story.