This is the most important handout I give my students. There’s a lot in it, in very skeletal form. Try answering the questions for something you’re working on. Or, try them for a short story you know well but that you’re curious about. The answers should be as detailed as you can make them.
To work out what Point of View a story is being told from, you should begin by asking these three questions:
Who is speaking?
When are they speaking?
Who is listening?
By speaking I also mean, who is writing and who is having the thoughts in their head transcribed? By listening, I mean reading. By story, I mean any kind of story.
Who is speaking?
Are they closely involved in the events they are describing?
Are they an impassioned or a dispassionate observer?
If your story has multiple narrators, you need to be able to answer these three questions for each of them individually and then for the story as a whole. The likelihood, for variety, is that each narrator differs.
Stories with multiple narrators have an invisible organising narrator who never directly speaks to the reader, and who may not always be you. (More on this another time.)
When are they speaking?
When exactly are they speaking, in relation to the events they are speaking about?
Has a lot of time passed? (this will affect their tone; this will affect how many terrific tiny details you can include) Has no or almost no time passed? (this will mean they are still emotionally bound up in the more recent events)
Does the story give them enough time to complete the writing of the text we are reading, in the form we are reading it, if it is a first person written down account?
Who is listening?
If there is an implied listener, what knowledge of people and events and the whole world within the story are you assuming they have?
If you are writing a novel, working out precise answers to these questions may take you years. It may be the main labour of your book, though it manifests as questions about using this adjective or that one.
Or, you may be able to write more instinctively, just closing your eyes and listening very closely to the story-voice in your head, always asking, ‘Is that how they’d say it?’
If you feel like sharing your thoughts in the comments, please do.
I love how analytical and logical this is. I don’t love that I thought I was ready to write and now I’m not.
Absolutely loving these pieces, Toby Litt. Aaaand…. Already missing your chronicle of your own writing life too. Is there room in your life for putting out both, or both alternately or something like that? Asking for an as-was truly-cheered-and-companioned-feeling writing friend:).