Writing Circle 1/3/2012

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Category: Blog

Written by Megan Justice

Voice and Point of View are tied together. The point of view of the narrator creates the voice the narrator carries. One cannot exist without the other. But, how is it that you know you’ve hit the right voice for that point of view? Or that the point of view can indeed carry a specific voice being used? First, let’s take a brief look at each of these parts of narration. Then, an exercise.

Quite simply, the point of view is the reference point given to the reader by the narrator. A close point of view sticks with the character – events are observed through a specific character’s eyes. Anything the character cannot see or know the reader does not get to see or know either. This can be difficult if the reader needs to know about an event(s) the POV character does not observe or participate in. A more distant, or omniscient, point of view removes the reader from the action and puts a distance between the reader and the character’s experiences.

Voice is the words the narrator chooses to use and the tone they create for the reader. A butler wouldn’t say “hey dude,” just like a teenager wouldn’t say “please sir, may I have some more?” (Finding the exception is easier than writing it – why don’t you write the exception?).

Want to play around with this on your own? Here’s an exercise:

Start with a location, a setting. A laundry room. There’s a washer and dryer, not new, but not old either, and piles of laundry all around, some clean, some dirty. Now add an objective: all the laundry needs to be sorted by load, clean laundry needs to be folded and sorted by owner. And now the variable: characters with different points of view, and different voices. First, put a nine year old girl in the laundry room with this daunting task. What does she see? How does she feel about the chore? Does she do it? Is she interrupted? How? Then put her dad in the laundry room; wash, rinse, repeat. Put someone else in there, someone of your own making.

How do all the characters react differently? What makes them different? How did the voice change? What words were consistent, what words were unique to which characters? How did the landscape change?