introspection
or point-of-view |
introspection allows your reader to
be privy to what is going through your character’s mind. Like
dialogue, introspection needs to mimic the way people really think.
It may range from stream-of-consciousness, which is …
to an approximation of these effects – a gentle informalizing
of the language.
Introspection will reflect the feelings of your point-of-view character,
his/her thoughts, reactions, musings, and should be true to his/her
personality. In fact, introspection can be used to most accurately
render the personality of the character. For instance, you may have
a character involved in a situation where he/she must be on best behavior
(with a boss, perhaps, or a prospective mother-in-law). In such
a case, your character’s dialogue will most probably be on best
behavior as well. The character’s thoughts, however, will present
him/her accurately.
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| I don't understand point-of-view. Can you
explain it to me so it makes sense? |
Introspection consists of what your character is thinking
and feeling. It’s a device that allows a reader to ‘see’
a fictional world through a character’s eyes. It allows
the reader to identify with the character, feel his or her perceptions,
reactions, and emotional state.
In early literature, narration is often outside the story, in
the form of an omniscient voice that knows all and tells all.
In the twentieth century, narration shifts to a character within
the story. The reader is privy to this character’s thoughts;
and, therefore, the reader perceives the story from the character’s
eyes, from the character’s point-of-view.
You won’t find a set of precise rules for writing fiction.
There is, really, no correct or incorrect way to do it. Therefore,
it’s entirely permissible to write fiction from several
characters’ points of view. In fact, you’ll often
find this done in a novel. Using multiple points-of-view has
a potential problem, however. It can cause a disruption in the
reader’s experience. The reader’s experience is
crucial to the success of a fiction, and an author intent on
producing a successful fiction needs to keep in mind what he
or she is asking of the reader—suspension of disbelief.
A reader knows that the experience on the page is not real,
that it is only a rendering of the experience. To cause that
unreality to fall away, to cause the reader to ‘forget’
the book and enter the fiction, the writer needs to present
the written experience with as few reminders that it is written
as possible. Readers are entirely willing to imagine a character,
especially one who is convincingly evoked, and, in fact, the
more we get to know the character, his or her feelings, introspections,
and characteristics, the more we identify and accept that character
as real. We come to ‘trust’ the character, to care.
We’re curious, interested. We keep turning the page.
As writers, we need to keep a reader’s trust intact. A
sudden change in a character the reader has come to know or
imagine (finding out the character has a crippled leg in chapter
two, for instance) or a sudden change in the narration (finding
oneself inside another character’s head) is something
the reader can cope with, but it has the effect of bumping her
out of the story and back into the room she’s sitting
in with a book in her hands. In other words, it degrades the
reader’s experience.
Across its breadth, a novel can absorb changes in narration
or point of view, although it’s generally wise to stick
to one point-of-view within chapters. A short story, on the
other hand, needs to be virtually free of reader dislocation
to be truly successful. The short story format is too brief,
too distilled to support many instances of confusion or disbelief
and generally requires a single point-of-view.
To insure as seamless a reading experience as possible, a writer,
especially one starting out, should concentrate on becoming
skillful at handling one point-of-view. Once a writer is consistently
creating believable characters that come alive on the page,
he or she can venture into new approaches to those characters
(multiple points-of-view) with a much more assured chance of
success.
EXAMPLE: When the
elevator doors opened, Kate stood there in the lobby for a second,
unable to move. Matt looked at her from inside the elevator,
looked away. Not even a hint of recognition. Then the shock
melted enough so her feet could get her onto the elevator, and
she pushed number eleven even though it was already lit. She
stood there watching the numbers change on the digital read-out,
so aware of him she could barely breathe.
EXERCISE:
Here’s the situation: Your point-of-view character is
meeting her mother-in-law for lunch. Theirs is not a warm relationship,
but your character is determined to try to get closer to her
mother-in-law because she feels it’s important to her
husband. Write a few pages of this meeting, keeping all introspection
firmly inside the younger character’s head. Write this
in such a way that we gain some understanding of the mother-in-law,
as well. |
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