Focus on POINT OF VIEW

1. Elements of Fiction Focus onPOINT OF VIEW

2. EnhancingYour Understanding 1 3 2 Telling the Story He said, She said 3rd Person I Spy 1st Person Who’s telling this story anyway?

3. 1 Telling The Story What and Why

4. What is it?

5. What is it? If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own. Henry Ford

6. Matters Why it Our point of view biases our observation, consciously and unconsciously. You cannot understand the view without the point of view." Noam Shpancer (The Good Psychologist: A Novel)

7. The Choice DOESMatter “The choice of point-of-view will largely determine all other choices with regards to style, diction, characteristic speed of sentences and so on. What the writer must consider, obviously, is the extent to which point-of-view, and all that follow from it, comments on the characters, actions, and ideas.” John Gardner

9. 2 First Person Point of View Seeing it through my eyes

10. I

11. become “I like to write first-person because I like to the character I’m writing.” Wally Lamb

12. 1st Person “As I walked down the aisle to introduce myself to the teacher and get my slip signed, I was watching him surreptitiously. Just as I passed, he suddenly went rigid in his seat. He stared at me again, meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face – it was hostile, furious.” From Twilightby S. Meyer

13. EVERYTHING ABOUT ME “All my movies have an autobiographical dimension, but that is indirectly, through the characters. In fact I am behind everything that happens and that is said.” Pedro Almodovar

14. ALL THAT I SEE AND HEAR Mysteryis another name for our ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain. Tryon Edwards

15. How 1st Person Narratives Affect Us THE PERSONAL EFFECT

16. "Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream." Joseph Conrad (The Heart of Darkness) INTIMACY

17. “…intimate and immediate with no gulf between audience and action…” Ted Pappas YOU KNOW WHAT I KNOW

18. UNRELIABLE “My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating” Ashleigh Brilliant

19. 3 Third Person Point of View He said, She said, what?

20. he

21. he s

22. he y t

23. It makes all the difference “Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry… It’s like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes.”Diana Abu-Jaber

24. OMNISCIENT The main advantage of the omniscient approach is that it's the easiest to handle. That's the major reason so many writers select it. Arthur Herzog

26. The All-Knowing Narrator Before long they saw the marching line approaching: the Ents were swinging along with great strides down the slope towards them. Treebeard was at their head, and some fifty followers were behind him, two abreast, keeping step with their feet and beating time with their hands upon their flanks… The old man was too quick for him. He sprang to his feet and leaped to the top of a large rock. There he stood, grown suddenly tall, towering above them. His hood and his grey rags were flung away. His white garments shone. He lifted up his staff, and Gimli’s ax leaped from his grasp and fell ringing on the ground… The Two Towersby JRR Tolkein

27. How 3rd Person Omniscient Narratives Affect Us THE GOD-LIKE EFFECT

28. “Writing is a form of personal freedom.” Dan Delillo FREEDOM

29. "That which exists without my knowledge exists without my consent." Cormac McCarthy IN OUR HEADS

30. UNCONSTRAINED "Time is an illusion." Albert Einstein

31. THIRD PERSON LIMITED

32. LIMITED “The third person [limited] narrator, instead of being omniscient, is like a constantly running surveillance tape.” Andrew Vachss

33. 3rd Person As to where I am, I was, admittedly, lost for a moment, between Charing Cross and Holborn, but I was saved by the bread shop on Saffron Hill. The only baker to use a certain French glaze on their loaves - a Brittany sage. After that, the carriage forked left, then right, and then the tell-tale bump at the Fleet Conduit. And as to who you are, that took every ounce of my not-inconsiderable experience. The letters on your desk were addressed to a Sir Thomas Rotherham. Lord Chief Justice, that would be the official title. Who you reallyare is, of course, another matter entirely. Judging by the sacred ox on your ring, you're the secret head of the Temple of the Four Orders in whose headquarters we now sit, located on the northwest corner of St. James Square, I think. As to the mystery, the only mystery is why you bothered to blindfold me at all. Sherlock Holmes (the movie) Limited

34. How 3rd Person Limited Narratives Affect Us THE MOST COMMON EFFECT

35. "When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own." John Berger (Rondezvous) FOCUS

36. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." Oscar Wilde FORGIVING

37. COMMON "Distance lends enchantment to the view." Mark Twain

38. "Seeing things through a different set of eyes changes the whole picture." Cameron C. Powell

40. FOCUS ON FICTION What’s Your Message?