178
56
First-person point of view
is the most intimate, thus
requiring special handling.
Some people feel fi rst-person POV is constraining because
it doesn’t let you jump to another scene in a different POV,
or allow you to get into another character’s head. Such con-
straints are also the strength of fi rst–person POV, which
gives the reader the most intimate view of a character.
There are several moves you can make within fi rst
person that work just as well as shifting from one point
of view to another.
employ a time delay
I learned this from reading Phyllis Whitney, who did
most of her suspense novels in fi rst person. She’d some-
times end at a tense moment, then cut to the next scene,
where the narrator is ahead in time, in a completely dif-
ferent setting or situation. But what happened back at
the tense moment? Whitney strings you along until the
narrator fi nally decides to recall it.
use multiple fi rst-person pov
Primarily a device used in literary fi ction, the multiple
first person gives you the opportunity to create inti-
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179
macy with several characters. Some authors put the
character name as a chapter title, to clue readers in on
the switch.
As long as each voice is distinct and can carry its
own weight, you can open up a story this way. This is
an advanced technique, so I recommend you cut your
teeth on pure fi rst-person and third-person POV before
you consider it.
visit another head
I know this sounds like Being John Malkovich or something,
and in a way it is. The narrator can speculate about what
is going on in the mind of another character.
For example, maybe you have a criminal on the run
with a former girlfriend named Sarah. He might pause
and think:
I knew what Sarah would be thinking right
about now, the sun going down, the lights of the
city coming up. Yeah, she’d be thinking about it
all right, the next guy to stab in the back. She’d
be looking out her window, watching the business
types getting out of cabs and stepping into the
hotel for high-level meetings. Looking at them like
items on a buffet table. Who will it be next? Mmm,
let’s see, maybe I’ll try an executive from San Francisco
this time. Hmm …
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180
reveal information
through another character
Your narrator can describe a scene as if in third person
and reveal that he got the info from another character
who was there. Lawrence Block opens The Devil Knows
You’re Dead:
On the last Thursday in September, Lisa Holtz-
mann went shopping on Ninth Avenue. She got back
to her apartment between three-thirty and four and
made coffee. While it dripped through she replaced
a burnt-out light bulb with one she’d just bought,
put away her groceries, and read the recipe on the
back of a box of Goya lentils. She was sitting at the
window with a cup of coffee when the phone rang.
It was Glenn, her husband, calling to tell her he
wouldn’t be home until around six-thirty.
The third-person style goes on for a few more para-
graphs, until the narrator, Matt Scudder, says:
I picture him sitting at the table in his shirt-
sleeves—a blue pinpoint Oxford shirt, a button-
down collar—and tossing his tie over one shoulder,
to protect it from food stains. I’d seen him do that
once, at a coffee shop called the Morning Star.
So how did Scudder know what to report about events
he did not witness? He’s an investigator for hire, so we
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181
come to understand he gathered the facts later. He also
speculates about an action—tossing the tie—he had once
observed. So what if it didn’t happen in the “real” past?
This is fi ction, and Block uses the detail to set a mood.
You can also have another character report the facts
of a scene to the narrator, then have the narrator render
them as if in third person:
“He starts leading me,” Trip said, “and I
thought about getting out of there, but something
kept me going.”
“Your morbid curiosity?” I said.
“Maybe saving your skin,” he answered. “Why
I do these things for you I don’t know.”
“So what did you fi nd?”
Trip told me Morris had led him to a di-
lapidated guest house on the back property of
a shabby house in the less desirable section of
town. The railroad tracks were literally across the
street. Scrub brush sprouted from every crack in
the sidewalk, and the eucalyptus trees lining the
street were in various stages of decay.
Morris’s place was a one-room, windowless
shack that might have originally been designed to
store tools. Now it was lined, fl oor to ceiling, with
the detritus of a lifetime.
Old man Morris was a classic pack-rat. Books,
newspapers, vinyl record albums, shoes—including
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182
two pairs of red and white bowling shoes, Trip not-
ed—closed the quarters into a bizarre theater-in-the-
round, with a small living space in the middle. A soli-
tary mattress with an old Army blanket was the only
piece of furniture, if one could call it that. The air
inside was stale and heavy. [The scene can continue
in this fashion, then cut back to the conversation
the narrator is having with Trip in “real time.”]
“Wow,” I said when Trip was fi nished. “You
meet the most interesting people.”
combine fi rst person with third person
This is done quite a bit these days, especially in com-
mercial fi ction. Purists may rebel, arguing there is a jolt
when you switch POV styles. But readers won’t mind if
you write compellingly in the different views. By that
I mean that fi rst-person narration should have its own
unique attitude, distinguishable from the third-person
POV by more than just using the pronoun I.
use the “if i’d only known …” move
Here’s one move you can’t do in third person, but only
in fi rst: The “if I’d only known” move. (This also can’t
be done in fi rst-person present-tense style.) Because the
fi rst-person narrator is looking back in time, he can com-
ment on what is about to happen, as well as what he’s
describing “onscreen.” This is not to be done often, or
too clunkily. Stephen King does it in Christine:
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