Workshop Seventeen

This workshop, we’re going to think about the perspective your scenes are written in. You may have a brilliant plot and a great story, but perhaps readers are saying that they don’t feel like they know your characters well. Perhaps readers are giving you the feedback that your writing feels a bit choppy. By thinking about perspective, I think you can smooth out your writing and help your readers get to know your characters even better.

Here’s an example of a scene written from multiple perspectives (by the way, my feeling is that this piece of writing here DOESN’T WORK ON THE PAGE)

Katherine sighed. She felt lonely when Harry left like that. She looked at the door. He turned back. He was tired of the same old argument.

He said, “I’m going now.” His mouth was dry.

 

She wanted to cry but she stopped herself.

Angel arrived. She yawned. These guys were always at the point of breaking up. “Hey there, you two. Fighting again?” She’d had a long, hard day at work and she was bored of coming home to her roommates doing this.

Can you see that we shift from Katherine’s perspective, to Harry’s, back to Katherine’s, then on to Angel’s. When I read something like this, it feels to me like I can’t just sit down and enjoy the story. Each time the writing changes perspective, it feels like I have to, as a reader, change perspective too.

Sometimes it works beautifully. You can have an omniscient narrator who sees everything. But often changing perspective too often in the same scene distances your reader from your characters because they can’t settle into the story. They can’t get to know any character well. By trying to see the scene from too many angles, the reader doesn’t get to see the scene at all.

Look at the same scene as above from Katherine’s perspective only.

Katherine looked at Harry standing by the open door. He filled the frame – she loved that he was so gigantic. If only he wasn’t so angry. She could see the way a small muscle twitched in his cheek, a sure sign he was furious, but she wasn’t going to apologize.

            “I mean it, Kate,” he said. “I’m going now.”

            It took everything she had to shrug and pretend she didn’t care.

            Angel appeared in the corridor behind Harry, and squeezed past him into the living room. “You guys fighting again?” she asked. She flung herself onto the couch and switched on the TV, flicking from channel to channel.

            Harry glared at Katherine. “I’m not coming back.”

            Katherine said, very softly, “Don’t make out this is my fault.”         

How does it read to you when you stay in the same perspective all the way through? Does it make it easier for you to imagine the scene and get to know Katherine? Try the writing prompt this week and see if staying in the same perspective works for you in your work.

This week’s writing prompt:

Write 250 words of a breakup scene from the point of view of one character. Write another 250 words of the same scene from the perspective of the second character.