How Will You Tell Your Story?
Nine Month Novel Week 6: POV and Narrative Voice
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When I first read The Catcher in the Rye the summer before my senior year (in preparation for an upcoming AP English class that would change my life and set me on the path of literature and writing), I was blown away. I had read first person stories before that, but never told from such a unique and powerful perspective. The narrator, Holden Caulfield, revolutionized what I thought might be possible in a story. I was addicted.
Fast-forward almost exactly thirty years, and here I am, still wrestling with voice and point-of-view. Recently I talked about writing the first 30,000 words of a manuscript in first person and then scrapping it because it wasn’t working. Maile and I are constantly questioning each other’s choice of POV in the stories we write. And we marvel aloud when someone nails voice (looking at you Barbara Kingsolver, Leif Enger, and Abraham Verghese).
The story in which a voice is told bears an oversized impact on the telling. Detail and diction are important; proper dialogue can make or break a story; metaphor can make it beautiful. But if the author botches the voice, all will be lost.
Try to imagine Catcher in the Rye being told from a third person omniscient POV? Or a first person All the Light We Cannot See?
So today’s (longish) writing video is dedicated to that all-important decision we have to make as story-tellers . . . what point-of-view will I tell this story from?