The Complete Guide to POV

First person plural future tense

We now reach a very obscure, rarely visited POV.

The first person plural future tense. (We [both/all of us] will go…)

It may be that writers have avoided this POV because, by default, it lacks immediacy.

I had to make up an example.

We will climb up the western face of the mountain as the sun rises through golden clouds. There will be a vulture circling towards the west – and we will take this as a good sign. Death will be elsewhere, not with us. We won’t speak very much because we’ll be concentrated on the holds. The treacherous holds. There will be one, about four hours in, that is particularly tricky. We will be stuck there for a while — not knowing if we’ll be able to make it any further. We will get past this by seven thirty and push on towards the summit. We will feel joyous release.

I’m sure there are stretches of this collective-predictive POV in isolated paragraphs of first person plural stories. That’s inevitable, if they stray into planning or wishfulness.

And it happens frequently in dialogue. Here’s a piebald snatch of it from Jane Austen’s Emma.

“Do come with me,” said Mrs. Weston, “if it be not very disagreeable to you. It need not detain us long. We will go to Hartfield afterwards. We will follow them to Hartfield. I really wish you to call with me. It will be felt so great an attention! and I always thought you meant it.”

But right now, I’m sensing it as the Annoying Tour Guide POV. The Guide not only tells you what you’re looking at, as you’re looking at it. They also — during the boring in-between bits — tell you what’s coming up during the rest of the day.

As with the Tour, this is likely to dull any emotional effect of the sites when we eventually get to see them. That’s when we know we are going to follow the tour through to the end, inevitably.

When we enter the next but one room, ladies and gentlemen, the magnificent spectacle of the Sistine Chapel will be around and above us. We will gaze upwards in awe at the great artistic achievement that is Michelangelo’s acknowledged masterpiece. Most of all, our eyes will be guided towards that heartstopping point where God reaches out his finger to Adam, who reaches his finger out towards God. We will, however, remember not to dawdle because there others behind us who will want to marvel in a similar fashion.

But what about when we — as readers or listeners — know that the later part of the tour is never going to happen, and that the speaker is referring to an impossibility?

A father is dying, and to comfort his young daughter he promises to take her to the seaside in the summer. And to swim with her in the ocean. And to buy her a huge cone of her favourite ice cream.

This is like the doomed hopefulness of West Side Story’s ‘Somewhere’ —

We’ll find a new way of living,
We’ll find a way of forgiving.
Somewhere,
Somewhere . . .

There’s a place for us,
A time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.
Hold my hand and I’ll take you there
Somehow,
Some day,
Somewhere!

(Gets me every time.)

At this point, I should mention a couple of things.

First is that, future tensewise, there is (as I mentioned in an earlier entry) the option of shall as well as will.

This brings up the difference between the implied necessity of shall (We shall green the economy) and the expressed desire of will (We will invest in renewables). But as with the contemporary use of whom rather than who, shall suggests in a posh way as well as in the future. Just something to be aware of.

Second, and it’s something I’ve come across in researching POVs, is this —

Grammar Nerd Alert: There is no future tense in English. Only modal verbs (will, may, might, etc) and the progressive/continuous tense (going, meeting, looking, etc.)

I’m happy to concede. Because English needs to lump two words together will + verb in order to refer to what hasn’t happened yet, it lacks a really gnarly grasp on the future.

Perhaps this is why we’ve generally been sceptical of prophets, religious and secular.

I’m not sure we’re that healthily dubious any more.

A certain future — almost any certain future — seems a comforting idea, right now.

But who really wants to see the triumph of the will?