Point of View Can Suck My…

So apparently there are rules. Always have been, like wearing clothes in public and driving cars on the right side of the road (the left side, obviously) and not mooning the Queen. You probably use them because you’ve read so many books that they make sense. You probably break them because you’re lazy.

As a reader, changing point of view drives me crazy! I’m in one character’s head and then all of a sudden I’m inside the petty thoughts of a minor prostitute, looking in the opposite direction to the main character. This jump in perspective derails me and has me crashing into a figurative mountainside in an instant. My immediate thought is always, “Well that author doesn’t know what they’re doing.” I get why a beginner writer does it, they want to show the emotions and thoughts of all the characters in the scene directly, ‘cause let’s face it, subtle description of body language, tone of voice and picking the right word to convey how pissed off someone is takes a lot of thought. And we just want to get to the action! Don’t get me wrong, you can have more then one person’s point of view in a novel, you don’t have to stick with one character. If you’re jumping scene or time, and there’s a break in the prose or chapters, it’s fine to delve into the voice of a new character. But my god, if you jump back and forth between characters and points of view in the same scene I want to throttle you until you become a purple as Violet Bulrigard. As a reader, I love books that follow the hallowed point of view rules, and if an author deviates I will throw them down quicker then a bag of fire ants.

As a writer, point of view is a pain in my arse! It creates all sorts of discontent. I know exactly why I can’t be lazy, and as such I find two stories waring in my head, yelling insults at each other and not moving on with their own storylines. Unfortunately, I only get to pick one. Take my latest story Jake’s Page for example. I had wanted to bring the phenomena of social media to the page to show how you could follow a person’s life and get a sense of their personality through their online platform. That meant getting into the main character, Jake’s, head. At the same time I wanted to show that the person we present online isn’t necessarily the person we are in real life. Anyone who has frequented Facebook would know that finding someone who doesn’t stretch the truth about themselves is about as rare as a model that eats McDonalds. That meant getting out of his head and showing how others perceived him, and how his actions differed from his words.

This story was not a full novel; it wasn’t even long enough to push out into a novella. But it was a story very close to me and I had to tell it. In the traditional publishing world this is a struggle, for I would’ve had to choose between them. I wouldn’t have been able to present the same story, in two different ways, in the same volume and have it published, so that people could see to subtle difference and think on it. Because it was that slight difference in presentation that made the social comment. Hell, I couldn’t even write this story in a traditional prose format, social media was it’s own beast entirely and it didn’t conform to paragraphs and chapters.

But we are in a digital age now, where traditional publishing and formats are no longer the be all and end all. I am a storyteller for goodness sake, I may still have to conform to the rules of writing a good story (like point of view) but that didn’t mean I had to play by traditional ideas of a book or formatting.

I felt both perspectives of Jake’s life were important, a 2D perspective and 3D perspective as it were. Jake was based on someone I once knew and I wanted to get it right. In the end I conceded that they couldn’t be told at once or even in the same format.  They were two separate stories and they needed the right medium to be told. Thus ‘Jake’s Page: A Short Story’ and ‘Jake’s Page: A Play’ were born. The short story, written first, deals with the wacky character of Jake as seen through his Facebook page and private messages. The first thing you notice just how easy it is to get a sense of his personality through the posts he makes and the pages he ‘likes’. The writing of the play required the adaption of the short story into a script, where the action of the real world could be contrasted with the posts (dialogue) of the digital. The adaption was completed under the mentorship of playwright Caroline Reid and focused on translating the phenomenon of Facebook to the stage, bringing the contrasts of the digital and real world to light, and delving into the reasoning behind why Jake acted as he did when he knew the risks, something we couldn’t know from reading his Facebook page. 

Each format tells a different story and gives us an alternate perspective into the comic personality of Jake, University life and the tragic consequences of not looking after yourself. I had never written a play before, so I was glad I had a guiding hand, but as soon as it was complete I knew that a combination of these stories made one harmonious whole and that was how it had to be presented. In e-book format, available on Kobo or Kindle or for the cost of a Tweet at the end of the post. Perhaps get a copy and see why the story had to be written that way, see how much it differs from a traditional e-book (if there is such a thing) but also see how the difference makes sense. It matches the story rather then the story having to conform to the format.

Do you have a novel that’s not coming out the way you want it? Then play with the formatting, mix and match. We no longer need to conform to verse or prose, as indies we should be the ones experimenting, throwing objects at the wall and seeing what sticks, creating art and not following tradition. We’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Do you have two stories waring in your head? Tell us about it below and what your thoughts are in changing the format for the story.

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