Clash About Point Of Views From Two Writing Guides
You guessed it this chapter is the side by side comparison of the Point of Views Lecture 15 by Professor James Hynes in Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques (a more recent author of 2014) how should be done versus the Point of View instructions from Gabriel Arquilevich the author of Writing for 100 days from back in 1995.
Let's divide into the modern author lecture who still uses quite old timey language.
Lecture 15: Point of Views See Through Other Eyes
As we've seen throughout these lectures, writing fiction is all about making choices, and deciding what point of view and voice to adopt in a narrative is one of the most important choices you have to make. This choice not only determines the perspective from which the story and plot are viewed, but it can determine what actually happens, and it has a powerful effect on what characters you include and how you depict them.
In this lecture, we'll take a quick tour of the most important types of point of view; then, in the next two lectures, we'll look at the first person point of view and the third person point of view in more detail.
Point of View Tour
If you imagine your story as a landscape, you can think of point of view as the dome of the sky arching over the story. The different possible points of view are points on that curve: from the highest point, overlooking the entire landscape, to the lowest point, where a character or a narrator can see only what's directly in front of him or her.
The all-inclusive point of view is the omniscient third person. This is the point of view in which the author and narrator appear as the same person but it is not always necessarily the case. This sort of narration sees, knows and usually reveals everything about the characters in the story. The point of view is often called godlike, because like an all powerful, all knowing deity the narration can see into the minds and hearts of its characters revealing their most intimate secrets.
A little closer to the ground but still fairly high up on the curve is the objective third person point of view. One of the best examples of this point of view is Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. In this novel, although we see everything every character does, we never get inside their minds.
Unlike an omniscient point of view, which generally shows us what characters are thinking and feeling, the objective third person is more like a video camera, recording and reporting everything it sees but allowing readers to make up their own minds about the characters' feelings, thought, and motivations.
This may be the most lifelike point of view because it reproduces what it feels like for each of us to move through the real world, trying to infer what other people around us are thinking from their speech or actions but never really knowing for sure. Although it's perhaps more lifelike, it's also colder than third-person omniscient, which engages more deeply and intimately in the lives of its characters.
Lumna10's Author Note: Big Problem here James Hynes, you're describing sub categories I have never heard of my whole life since I learnt to write English. Where is this coming from? Aren't you supposed to cover the How to write as well as the what to write? You're a pretty stupid professor. This is what I call getting overcomplicated. Meh, I can't believe this guy, honestly. Glad, he never taught me. If I ever had his classes my headache would be as bad as the headache from the Professor in my Precalculus class I literally dropped from he was just as bad as teaching and this Professor is. What is it with older men and using overcomplicated ideas? My point is the "how" is not ever included.
About halfway down the dome of our imaginary sky is the close or limited third-person point of view. More recently, this has come to be known as free indirect discourse. In this point of view, the narration uses third person pronouns, and like the omniscient third person, it gets inside the ninds of its characters. But in many narratives of this sort, the whole story or novel is generally told from point of view of only one character.
Because this close third-person point of view can often shift among several characters in the same narrative, it can easily tum into the omniscient third person. George Eliot's Middlemarch is written in this way, as is Faulkner's Light in August.
The traditional omniscient third person is often more remote from its characters and capable of making sweeping judgments about society, whereas modern novels written in the more intimate close third person generally shy away from that.
-James Hynes.
Still don't see the how to write third person, second person or first person narrations, Skylights. -Lumna10.
So here you are from Writing For 100 Days Point of View chapter by Gabriel Arquilevich.
Now that you've developed a main character, it's time to decide on your point of view. (This book originally recommends working on setting and plot before deciding point of views those are often hard than figuring out your point of view to write with. So I omitted those mention. A point of view should not change through a story very often so it really shouldn't affect setting period. And the plot will weave itself around it-Lumna10. As I like to say when you start a chapter, get stuck and have no idea where to go read your story not necessarily out loud by just read it let speak to you like imaginary friends speak to toddlers the story will show you the way to continue it and to end it, Skylights-Lumna10. I made the omitting to make the chapter more simple for the inexperienced writers out there. So you're welcome, aspiring writers.)
In other words, you must decide who is going to tell the story?
The main character? A secondary character? A distant narrator?
This is one of the most important decisions you'll ever make. Imagine for example if Jack and the Beanstalk were told from the Giant's Point of View.
Third Person Point of View
A third person narrator tells a story without participating in it, using the pronouns he, she, they, and so forth, to tell the story. (Thank you, Gabriel Arquilevich. That is what I expecting. There is always a general point of view from third person narratives.) Here's the same sentence as above told in third person:
She walked through the doorway and saw a magnificent garden.
(That is the general third person of view all Disney Princess movies take except 1950's Cinderella her Fairy Godmother is the identified narrator at the very intro of the movie. How many people remember that?! Magic_Pyrix RoyalBunny7 Normaniforever4 -Lumna10.)
Third person gives the narrator authority. He or she is free to move from character to character and from episode to episode. All "once upon a time" stories are told in third person.
If you use third person, you still have to choose between a limited or omniscient point of view. The omniscient (or "all knowing") narrator can relate any character's actions, thoughts, and emotions. The limited narrator is restricted to describing the action without delving into the inner lives of the characters. Here is an example of each third person point of view:
Joey came up to bat with the bases loaded and two outs. In the stands, his dad sat nervously biting his nails. [limited]
Joey tried to muster up some confidence as he came up to bat with the bases loaded and two outs. In the stands, his dad sat nervously biting his nails and remembering his own little league experiences. [omniscient)
You may not understand why I don't complain about the why or the what of a story's types and pieces that is because they're not the most intriguing part of the writing or its character the how question is way more active in many novel storylines including ones of fantasy. The how question does this story end up here. How does the get here? These are questions that pull you in straight more so than the why and the what. People can spill so much about the whats and whys of tv shows and movies as long as they don't spoil the how the tv show or movie can still shake you to the core with the "how". That is what Star Wars franchise has been using the how more than they do the what and the why and it is working. Whereas Marvel uses only the what and the just "why?".
The Arrowverse collection of DC superheroes' show Flash & Arrow in particular use the how much more than the what and the why. And it has worked for years in those shows and it's why people love them. The how question is capable of being usable through telling and showing. What and why are just telling pieces. -Lumns10.
As usually James Hynes forgot Second Person Point of View completely. But Gabriel Arquilevich didn't. Second and first point of views next chapter.
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