The Most Important Point of View--Yours

Right after college, when I had moved to New York and was just beginning to discover who I was as a writer and as a person, two brilliant young writers were making huge waves in the literary community--Junot Diaz with Drown and Edwidge Danticat with Breath, Eyes, Memory. A few years later, Jhumpa Lahiri came on the scene with her short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies. All three writers were (and still are) fiercely talented. Their works also shared the common themes of the immigrant experience and cultural marginalization. All three moved to the United States when they were very young--Diaz from the Dominican Republic, Danticat from Haiti, and Lahiri from London (though her family was from India).

I admire all of three writers greatly, but putting my young self up for comparison (a treacherous pastime all of us would do better to avoid) was hopelessly discouraging. It's one thing to compare talent--even if I fall short, there is at least the hope that one day, if I work hard, maybe I'll achieve similar skills--but another thing entirely to compare one's point of view. All three writers, by virtue of their cultural histories, had an inherently interesting point of view. I did not. I had a happy, quiet childhood and grew up in a small Maine town. Likewise, my young adulthood was focused, calm, and full of hard work.

Yawn.

No matter what I do, I will never be able to change my history, my cultural heritage, or who I am. My source material is far less interesting right off the bat. It's like starting a race one lap behind. This bothered me a lot early on. Who would be interested in the musings of a happy, well-adjusted person?

Two conversations I had over the past year helped me change my mind. The first was with a friend of mine who moved to the US from England five or six years ago. She confessed to me that while growing up in England she was obsessed with American culture and that a book about small town America seemed very glamorous and exotic to her. Really? It had never occurred to me that a story about rural America could be exotic to anyone. My world view, obviously, had been too narrow.

The second conversation was with my writing mentor, Richard Russo. I mentioned to him my fear of being too "normal" to be of any interest to readers and then he said the simplest, most remarkable thing--that my point of view is as valid as anyone else's.

Maybe I knew this all along, but hearing those words somehow gave me permission to be me without apology. So if you've experienced a similar feeling of self-doubt, let me pass on the following affirmations:

Your point of view is as valid as anyone else's.

You are an observer and have learned things about human nature just by virtue of being alive. 

What is dull to one person can be exciting to another. Not even Diaz, Danticat, and Lahiri 
appeal to everyone.


Your work will find an audience. 

So there. Now stop fretting and get back to work.

Don't Take His Word For It

The other day I was editing a scene I had written when I came across a mistake that seemed to have slipped by me a few times. The problem lies in the point of view, which is told in close third person through the eyes of the main character, Ovid. See if you can spot the error:

Ovid’s voice, as he so marvelously discovered after the fact, bounced cleanly in the ceramic box and reverberated the steel in the piercing manner of a tuning fork. The ring momentarily broke the rhythm of the kitchen as all the cooks stopped their work to look up at him. Behind Ovid, the back door clacked against its frame. Curiosity seemed have bested the dishwasher, who was now standing in the doorway, his lips sticky with mango juice.

Did you catch it? If you said “sticky” was the problem, give yourself a big pat on the back. For those of you who aren’t sure why this is a problem, picture yourself in Ovid’s shoes for a minute. The dishwasher walks in with mango juice on his lips. Short of kissing him, how is it that Ovid knows his lips are sticky? Sure, we know from our own mango-eating experiences that mango juice can be sticky, but saying so is making an assumption. Ovid cannot know the dishwasher’s lips are sticky because the word sticky denotes a sense of touch. All Ovid can do is look, so I changed sticky to shiny. Problem solved.

Point of view errors are among the easiest mistakes to make in fiction. Why? As an author, you can easily slip in and out of the heads of all the characters, forgetting that your characters cannot do so with each other (unless, of course, you’re writing sci-fi). Sometimes, the errors are sensory in nature, but more often, they involve thoughts. For example, in an earlier scene, Ovid is crossing a dark parking lot behind the restaurant, trying not to be noticed, when he is spotted by the dishwasher who is taking a break by the back door. How does Ovid know the boy has spotted him? Because he cranes his neck and is looking in the old man’s direction. If you’re not careful, it would be easy to write the following sentence:

The boy recognized Ovid or at least knew about the car. He obviously realized something suspicious was going on.

The above sentence would work fine if I had an omniscient narrator. However, since this is in close third, the lines are a problem because they contain assumptions stated as fact. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with one character guessing what another character is thinking, just be sure to let the reader know that what is being stated is an assumption, not fact. Our perceptions color everything we see, so the character’s conclusions may or may not be correct. Here is a better way to write the above example:

The boy must have recognized Ovid or at the very least knew about the car—knew enough, it seemed, to realize something suspicious was going on.

By using phrases such as “must have” and “it seemed”, we are notifying the reader that the following is merely the character’s perception and must be taken with a grain of salt.

One could say that such distinctions are picky and would largely go unnoticed by the reader, but I would argue that it is precisely these distinctions and careful attention to detail that elevate a work of fiction.

Finding Your Voice

Over the last few blog entries, I’ve listed a few things that have helped me break through a lengthy block—these are developing my characters, having those characters form opinions about others and their situation, and coming up with a simple premise that calls the characters to action. The final piece—the piece that I’ve found really makes a story take off—is the voice.

The voice of a novel is the overall style and tone. It can be wry, ponderous, intimate, lofty, delicate or in-you-face, just to name a few. It can be a unique combination of any of these styles. The key to pulling off the voice is that it must complement the characters and story, but most importantly, it must be consistent throughout.

Think back to a movie you’ve seen where the characters and story seemed ok, but for some reason that you couldn’t quite put your finger on, you didn’t like the movie. This is often a tone problem. There was something in the way the story was told that didn’t quite reflect the story. Maybe the tone was too melodramatic for the lightness of the situation, or too breezy for a story that requires a little emotional depth. When the tone is wrong, we find ourselves laughing at the wrong times or shaking our heads in disbelief. Using the wrong voice can undermine the credibility of your entire work.

Finding your voice can be a long and elusive quest. A good place to start is to think about your natural speaking voice. How do you tell a story? Are you a person of few words or are you more leisurely? Tell the story out loud and write it as you go. You can also try switching points of view, which is one of the quickest ways to change the voice. Another method is to free write, alternating between dialogue and narration, without trying to force a particular style. What I’ve discovered is that often a bit of dialogue or a turn of phrase will bubble up and suddenly, you’ll just know…. you’ve found your voice. If you can build on this little bit of discovery, zero in on what kind of voice you have, you can use it to re-write previous scenes in this new tone. When I’ve done this with my own work, it feels a bit like performing CPR. It feels like I’m breathing life into the prose.

Even after you discover your voice, there will be times when you'll get a little off track, when your storytelling becomes flat. When this happens, return to that moment on the page when you first discovered it. Or, find a particular scene that really sings. Revisit your successes and use them as inspiration to move forward.