Narrative Point of View: Decide Who is Telling Your Story and Why

Join Drake and Marie as they discuss choosing a point of view voice for your story.

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Transcript

When you choose present tense, what you're actually doing is excluding your ability to manipulate time. And since the character lived in the moment at all times in that story, it was a great POV to write in because it really conveyed the life experience of this character who lives in the moment only.

Yeah, the reason why it is so detrimental to most stories, even though they push through it anyway, is you lose the ability to manipulate time. You know, when you're writing in past tense, you still have present tense, you still have future tense, and you also have this magical past perfect tense, which is anything that happens before the past tense of your story that's happening in past tense.

And so you have the ability to just manipulate time and move back and forth in one paragraph, and it happens flawlessly.

Releasing your inner dragon.

Okay. Drake. Why is third person limited? The only valid POV?

Because we're epic fantasy writers, and epic fantasy really needs to be written in third person limited. Past tense.

Yeah. I mean, that is the answer.

And I guess that's what that's really what I want to kind of talk about today. You know, there's a lot of videos on point of view, and everybody talks about like, our producer gave us a bunch of videos to watch, and I went to watch them and they were all about, this is what first person is and this is what second person is.

And like, okay, great. But none of that matters. Like none of that is the real reasons. The real reasons are that every point of view has advantages, and every point of view has disadvantages. And depending on what your story you're telling, if you choose the wrong point of view, then the disadvantages that are inherent in that point of view because everyone of them have it, including third person limited.

It may break your story. And so as epic fantasy writers, when we're writing multiple of stories that are said over multiple places and multiple events with with subplots and parallel stories and all this other stuff, third person limited is the most advantageous where it's disadvantages affect us the least. And so therefore it is the best point of view for us to write epic fantasy.

And because of the fact that it literally the story needs that kind of robust,

framework to be able to exist with it. And I think that's the most important thing. And that's the reason why I have stories published in every point of view, including second person. You know, I have a story published in second person, but it's because that story wanted and needed to be told in that point of view, because of the fact that the advantages that it brought in far outweighed the disadvantages that it brought.

And so it was nice.

So the question was, was obviously a little bit of a jerk. Every POV does have its own strengths and and disadvantages.

We had, we should have t shirts made up to say all POVs matter,

And then have very small at the bottom of it, but only third person limited is valid. Ownership.

They all matter. But the only one that has value is third person.

Oh. We will get so much hate from the romantic authors. They will, they will. They will make us in their money. They will. They will stuff those of of money down our throats until we choke and be like, tell me again now. First person doesn't matter. Matter. Yeah.

Yeah. Them and their damn money. But I still have my pride. Damn it!

Anyway, okay, let's quickly just talk about very briefly what the, what the overall POV is. Also, we make sure that we have them upfront. So everybody knows what we’re talking about. Starting with you have first person second person and third person. first person is the pronoun is I. And you're pretty much,

everything is from the single narrator's POV,

inside of their head.

The entire narration is essentially inner monologue.

It's a limited point of view. And what that means is it's limited in scope of whatever that narrating character knows. It also means that you're not telling the story, the characters telling the story. You were just the monkey at the typewriter typing what the character tells you to type. But it also means that it's good for acting because you can become the characters that really is you telling the story, but not because it's you, the writer telling the story.

But it's you, the character telling the story, right?

So that's first person, and it works. We'll, we'll, we'll get to the various advantages. So let's just get the definitions, the second person is a really weird POV and it is highly situational. You're only ever going to use second person in if you're writing really specific genre, or if it's a gimmick because it's the you pronoun. Right.

So you as a you, the the reader, you're doing something. And that obviously is very weird to the reader because they're typically not. So, you know, and they patently might not have brown hair. But.

Oh, yeah, you can never mention you can never describe the POV character in second person, because, you know, if you're reading the book and you say, and I say to you, you walk in the bathroom, pull out your member and stand in front of a urinal to to urinate, you're going to be like, yeah, no, I don't.

Yeah, exactly.

So you can't mention any of that stuff. It has to be very, very generic when it comes to the character. Works really well for especially like, you know, all instruction manuals of building furniture is, is done. So you will take part A and you will put it in the slot B because that's what you're going to do.

It also works really well for adventure novels. So all adventure novels just choose your own adventure.

Choose your own adventure. That's yeah, it's your own adventure that's important.

Yeah. The the, the lone wolf books. I devoured those as a child that were amazing. I loved them as a teenager as well. So those are all written as as you books because it is it is basically like a computer game, you know, version of of.

But so I'm not going to spoil what I'm doing, but, one of the side projects that I'm working on, and I read some this week in the writer's room is a, is a lit RPG book and not working on a lot. Actually hadn't worked on it in a really long time, but since I read it last night, I really want to poke at it again.

But I actually this morning came up with an idea of how to turn it into a choose your own adventure as well.

right. So so that's first person. Second person, then third person is, he she they, you know, whatever pronoun you want to attach to it. It's basically the third person who is narrative. And.

Basically, with third, people say that it's a third person that you have omniscient versus limited. That is not 100% true in theory. First person can be written omniscient. Right. It is written omniscient when the character is from the back end, like they're out of the story and they're now telling the story, knowing everything that has happened.

Yes, I remember a time when I was a kid and we were down in the swamp playing with the muck locks, and I kind of got in a little bit of trouble with one of the muck locks because I decided like, yeah, like it's obvious that I have future knowledge. I have. And that's the problem point of view.

There isn't three point of views. There isn't for point of view, there isn't five point of views. There are. I mean, I if I had time, I would have gone through, but there is at least a dozen point of views depending on how you want to chop them. Everything like that. Yeah. And and

depending on the story that you're telling, one is going to be more advanced advantageous for that.

And so that's the one. You got to fair it out and figure out which is going to be the best for how you want to tell that story.

So so let's just let's just run through basically okay. So we've got first, second and third. And then you have omniscient, which is the narrator. The storyteller has access to all of the characters feelings and experiences. They can tell you what every character is feeling. They can give you a broad overview of the world, they know about the future, etc., etc..

Lord of the rings is written in the style. It is a rare style these days, but it's not completely unheard of. Despite what Drake will tell you. And, and it has some strengths. It does. But not worth it, in my opinion. But they do.

Exist. The thing that I was just talking about, the lit RPG, choose your own adventure. Now, I'm writing in third person omniscient.

Yeah. So I think I do think it's.

I do think that. So one of the things that third person omniscient brings to the table is you get a character that becomes the narrator. And so when, especially when you're writing comedy,

so your Terry Pratchett's your,

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, those are both written in omniscient, and it's because he's given the narrator this really funny way of looking at the world, this really unique kind of take on things.

And so now you you end up having another character that you can do that now. Lord of the rings is written in omniscient, because that's the style of the late 1800s, early 1900s. But it doesn't have a character. It's completely character less. A lot of people are like, oh, it must be Gandalf. That's that. Or maybe it's Tolkien himself, that's that or whatever, but you don't know.

No, there is no actual personality. To the narrator of Lord of the rings. And that's why it's always this guess of who you think it might be, because it isn't anybody. He chose to make it true omniscient, where it's just this soulless, emotionless kind of narrator which works fine for Lord of the rings, but it would not work for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, like, you know, and that's the reason why, so the project called stranger in a Stranger Land, and it since it is this comedy, I wanted to have a narrator voice that I could play with that could really be funny all on its own, outside of the slapstick funny that's

happening in the actual events of the story.

Yeah. So I mean, exactly. So there are advantages even to omniscient, which we have often slammed on this podcast. So I'm just I just wanted to put that out there.

Because so the big disadvantage that omniscient comes with is it's the least viscerally immersive of the POV. So for the reader.

It is the hardest to connect your reader to the characters and readers. Read for characters. Yeah, like even if you think of Lord of the rings, who do you read Lord of the rings for? You read Lord of the rings, for Frodo, for Boromir, for Aragorn, maybe for Gandalf. You know, Faramir. But you don't, you know, like.

And that's the reason why I think omniscient works so well in comedy, because then the since you characterize the narrator voice. Yeah, that's who you connect to. You actually connect because, again, so we're still connecting to a character. We're just connecting to Douglas Adams funny way of looking at the universe, or Terry Pratchett's funny way of looking at this.

And I'm hoping to do the same thing in stranger in a Stranger land, that you connect to the funny way of how the world is described and how the story is unveiled to you. So you're still connecting to a character. It's just not a physical character within the story.

Yeah. Okay, so that's limited, omniscient. Then the the industry has this new term deep, which is I, it's just.

Limited. It's just limited. That's all it is, is kids today want to change every single word that's ever been made. They want an entirely new language, and I just want them to get off my lawn because I'm tired of this crap.

Grandpa, would you like to move a limit?

Just if the word works?

I'm not. I'm not 100% sure it's limited. It might be. No, it might be that limited is seen as free and indirect, right?

Right. That's exactly where I was going to go. Right.

And deep is limited. Limited as in taking so. So the difference in my mind is free and indirect means that you are half way between omniscient and limited. Mostly you are in the character's thoughts and in the character's ideas, but you can also step back into a more omniscient point of view right? So it's a it's a POV, actually, that, Jane Austen came up with and she came up with that and, you know, so romance writers, you are, you know, just this was the original.

So there you go. But she, she came up with it because she,

didn't know how to write omniscient. Right. So. Exactly. So so she doesn't.

And actually, most writers write in a free indirect discourse. It's just that is the way it is. And I've been trying to resurrect that term. If you get my book,

my better writing through stronger narrative, where I go through a point of view, I try to resurrect that term. That is a term that died in the 90s.

But yeah, basically it means you you have you can kind of swiftly. So I know it was last week for you guys. It was just like five minutes ago for us. But in the last episode where we critiqued, a writer that was really more free indirect discourse, where they were slipping between limited and omniscient and limited and omniscient.

And that is way 99. Almost everyone says they're writing and limited. And I think that's I think you're right there. Think the reason why the inclusion of deep has been added is because then they'll read someone like me and you and they'll go, wow, those people are writing Deep Third Limited. And we're like, no, no, we're writing limited.

You're writing something different and saying that you're writing limited.

So the thing with deep,

is that the the idea and the principle here is that it is the same as first person. But with third person pronouns. Yeah. Esentially it's not quite, it's not 100% because you don't get as much of the character's voice and we'll get into that. But it is like it is every everything is seen through the character's eyes.

There is never anything that is from a bird's eye view, from an external perspective, from a like no. Everything narrows in through the character's eyes.

Yeah. We're not we're not posters. We're not describing the posters behind Marie and what they look like. We're describing how I see the posters behind Marie and how they affect me.

Yeah, and the emotions they evoke in you and all the rest of that. Right. Every every description is colored by the character's perceptions. Now, somebody in the peanut peanut gallery just said, made a very valid point. Most normally people can't tell the difference between 100%. Readers can tell the difference between first person and third person and tenses.

And that's about it. Like.

And that's stretched like that. Stretched. I mean, not everybody can even do that. Like they'll like. I have no idea. I mean, I can't tell you how many readers that I've read. And I'm like, oh, is that written in first or third? No. Like, I don't know what that means. Yes. Like, did they say I or did they say Hank?

And they were like, I don't know.

So this is not necessarily something that a reader is going to be like, oh yes, this was written in third person, deep past tense. And it was marvelous. Yeah.

Yeah, that's only us writer-ly type. People are going to be.

Saying, okay, to put it like that. What the reader is going to experience is how much they connected with a character. And that's where the various strengths of the various voices come in.

Yeah.

But before we get there, I just want to define two lost terms. The narrator versus the protagonist. Yeah. The protagonist is the person or people who are moving the story forward. They are protagonist because of their actions. The story goes, the narrator is the person telling the story. And you don't even have to be omniscient in order to have a narrator who's not the same as the protagonist.

The Great Gatsby very famously has a peripheral narrator.

And it's written in free in her discourse. So third person limited as people. Yeah, miss classify it today.

Yeah.

and they the narrator is not the, the actual protagonist. Yeah. So just bear that in mind. The narrator is the voice telling the story.

So in an omniscient, in an omniscient narrator, the narrator is the omniscient narrator, but the protagonist is a character within the story.

Correct?

Yeah. So all we're doing, like with The Great Gatsby, is we're just taking the omniscient narrator and turn it into a character, Nick Carraway. And so Nick Carraway is a character in the story telling the story about the protagonist, Great Gatsby, who is the protagonist actually doing the story? Yeah. Sherlock Holmes, the same way. You know, Watson is actually those are written in omniscient.

So that's a that is a peripheral narrator.

Yeah. I swear they're actually written in first person.

Are they? I spent way too long since I've even looked at it.

I'm I'm a little shocked. I will look this up, but I swear.

Who wrote those? Oh. Doyle. What's his name?

Also called the Conan Doyle.

They are in public domain.

By the way. They are in public domain, that's all. I was just going to. Volume one. Somebody still selling it?

There we go. In the year 1878, I took my degree of doctor of medicine of the University of London and proceeded to I.

Remember, was special. So like we said at the beginning of this, where there's so many point of view, so there is first person omniscient, peripheral narrator omniscient. Yep. That is not the protagonist of the story. Like there's so many things that you can do, and that's why people get in trouble with this stuff is because there is so much flexibility and so much freedom, and I want to get to that in a second.

So I'm going to hold that point of why this is important, because this is what I want to center my discussion on with point of view is that,

Well, we're through definition.

No, no, no, there's one more, there's one more. Okay. What?

I'm here for fun.

And that's tense, because tense is a part of point of view. So we have we have past tense. We have present tense. And technically we have future tense. But you can't write a story in future tense.

I know you have future tense.

Right?

Unfinished. We have no future.

That's because you could die at any moment from the cold. It's like there is no future for us. You could step outside, literally die from exposure. Like what? Like I love my favorite Finnish word is your word for spouse, which is a person I like or I hate the least. Because who knows who's in my house is going to be tomorrow?

Because this one can just be dead. There's no future in Finland.

For those of you who are curious, the Finnish language doesn't have a future tense.

Yes, it's fun, but anyway, so in English grammar we have passed. Since we have presidents, we have future tense. Even though we have future tense, we don't write stories in future tense, because you can't write a story where the prince will one day save the princess. Because that's not a story, because nothing will ever happen. But what this comes down to is it comes down to verb forms.

And we have 12 or 13 verb form somewhere in in they're verb forms. Have to do really. And the reason why it's so important to me is it has to do with manipulation of time. That's really what verb forms are. So if we look at the word walk, if we look at present tense, then Drake walks across the room.

So he's actively doing it now. Past tense would be Drake walked across the room. So it happened in the past. He walked. If it happened before the past tense of the past tense story, it would be in past perfect tense, which is. Drake had walked across the room. If we go in a future tense, it would. It would be Drake will walk and it's always just most of the time.

Not always, but most of the time it's adding other words because there's also future perfect tense and like all this other stuff, like there's a huge amount. It just adds more and more words is usually what it does. You know, he will be walking like like there's all sorts of places.

There are grammar rules none of us want to talk about.

Right, exactly. But we can we can focus on really those for future present past and past perfect. And the reason why picking the correct tense is so important is the manipulation of time. Everything that we're going to talk about with point of view is about creating an illusion that you're going to wrap your reader in first person, second person, third person.

That's it's an illusion. And so when you start mucking around with these and you start breaking these and you start mixing them incorrectly, what you're really doing is you're breaking the illusion that you're creating. So tense is the same thing. So if we're going to write in present tense, so like, like Hunger Games went insane with we talked about this last episode where the industry thinks process has to do with success.

So Hunger Games was successful and they went, wow, I was this successful. Well, it can't be because it was interesting characters and a good story and tension throughout the entire thing. And, and you know, all this other stuff. It must be because it was written in first person present tense. Let's buy a bunch of first person present tense stories like, no, that's not why it was successful.

All those other things were why it was successful. But so they bought a bunch of first person present in stories. And now a lot of that way genre is written in first person present tense, which I won't read because I will not read the first person present tense. It's dumb.

I have no problem with first person. I cannot read present tense.

Yeah, but here's my problem with it, because I do have a I have a story that's published in first person present tense of the story that I wrote for Sony.

It was the right tense and the right story for that POV. The main character is a kobold who I describe as a four year old on crack. He doesn't know what's going to happen two seconds from now, and he doesn't remember what happened two seconds ago.

Like writing it in present tense was it begged to be written in present tense? And it really worked well for that. But

when you choose present tense, what you're actually doing is excluding your ability to manipulate time. And since the character lived in the moment at all times in that story, it was a great POV to write in because it really conveyed the life experience of this character who lives in the moment only.

Yeah, the reason why it is so detrimental to most stories, even though they push through it anyway, is you lose the ability to manipulate time. You know, when you're writing in past tense, you still have present tense, you still have future tense, and you also have this magical past perfect tense, which is anything that happens before the past tense of your story that's happening in past tense.

And so you have the ability to just manipulate time and move back and forth in one paragraph, and it happens flawlessly.

And most stories require the manipulation of time. Most stories are not like that Kobalt story, which was all happening right now in a character's head that only lives in the right now. So that's the only story that I have written in present tense, because it's the only story that I've ever created that that tense wouldn't break everything.

You know, sometimes I got to go a little further back before the story, and sometimes, you know, we got to be in the now, which that's the beautiful thing about present or past tense, is that all dialog is written in present tense. And I don't know why. That's one of the there's a few questions in writing that I've never figured out why we do it.

It just works. And I don't know why it works, but it does. And so that's my only answer, because I'm a big why guy. So I always want to know why we do things. But that's there's like two questions in the writing world that I've never been able to answer, and that's one of them. But so we have past perfect, we have Astons, we have present tense, and of course we have future tense.

When you choose to write in present tense. Sure. Can you go before the story? Absolutely. But now you're breaking the illusion that you're creating, that it's in the present tense. And so why would you do that? If your story.

Needs.

To go back in time, then it.

Needs.

To be written in past tense. Like that's kind of the point of it. Like we, you know, the joke that we made at the beginning of this, why do epic fantasy writers write in third person, limited past tense? Because the story needs the advantages that that brings to the table. And if we write it in any other POV, we will be fighting the POV.

To tell the story, we have to continuously break the illusion of the POV that we're using to do what is necessary to tell the story. And so tense is very, very important, and it literally has to do with manipulation of time. That's what tense is. Tense is not jack all to do with connecting the character to the reader?

Everyone is like, oh, I'm writing in present tense because it connects you to the story. It does not because I will connect my readers to my past tense stories a million times better than 90% of all writers out there writing in first person, present tense. And it's just because I'm a better writer. I'm sorry, just the way it is, what it really has to do with.

Because there's one other term or I said one term, there's two terms. And we've kind of touched on this, this term. But the last term I do want to talk about is, the limited. We brushed over it with the ominous it in the limited, but I think it warrants its own discussion because that's the difference between what, you know, if the world is going to go with this deep third versus just regular limited, it really is free or indirect discourse versus limited.

And then the same thing with omniscient first person versus true limited first person. It really has to do with the knowledge level of the author of the narrator of the narrating character. So if the narrating character like, it's very simple in theory to write really great past tense that feels like it's happening right now, all you have to do is make sure that your character only knows up to the sentence that you're writing.

Yeah, everything from the sentence you're writing to before the character knows but they don't know Jack of what's going to happen in the next sentence or beyond. So when you write stuff like, you know, it wouldn't have done this had he known that, it would turn out terribly, then that's future knowledge. And that means you're writing in your you've pulled more into the omniscient spectrum as opposed to being in that now.

And that's and again, that has to do with that manipulation of time. So if you just remember, if you write your past tense, first person or third person doesn't matter if you write your past tense, knowing that the character, the narrating character only knows everything in the story up to that sentence, then it's going to feel more like it's happening right now to that character.

Now, I, I do want to say that you can absolutely use that because you know, that that that kind of little bit of future foreshadowing. All right. But it works better in first person than in third.

Right. When the first person that writer is like, had I known then what I know now, you know, I would not have done blah, blah blah. But as it was, this was what I knew. And then you head into the, you know.

Yeah, but now you're in more in freedom in indirect discourse of first person. You're in that, you're in that in between of omniscient. It's and again so the where I wanted to center my discussion on for this one of you has a lot of rules and has a lot of things to learn. And we just went through a bunch of things and we spent a half an hour just going through the basics, and we didn't cover anything like we literally, I don't know if we scratched the paint.

On point of view. And that's why my point of view book, my better Writing through stronger narrative, is 80,000 words long. It's the most in-depth discussion on point of view that you're going to get. But none of it matters. The only thing that matters is understanding how what you're doing affects the reader. So if I'm writing a story where I want you to know that it's me now taking you on a journey, if something that happened to me in the past because that's important.

Because because you being with the me now is going to matter. There's going to be a payoff to that. There's going to be a magical oh my goodness moment. Then I'm going to do something like, had I known then what I know now, I would not have done this because I'm going to pay that off. If I'm just writing that and it never pays off, then you're a moron.

You you've literally used an omniscient POV which is less immersive for no value. And so I'd rather go, you know, I was walking down the street, I love life, I was on the top of the world. I knew everything there was to know. And then just have the world fall out from under me and take the reader down that path.

It depends on what you want the reader to feel. That's the thing that we forget. So like the come on, this idea of like, oh, like name of the wind from Pat Rothfuss. A lot of people are enamored by the fact that it goes from third person to first person. And it goes, it's in first person when you're in the main protagonist head and it's in third person when you're in any other character and they're like, oh, so brilliant, but it doesn't do anything.

There's no payoff for it other than the gimmick of being able to write a book that has both third and first. And he did fine. I mean, it's a New York Times bestseller. I'm not Pooh Pooh in on the book at all. It's a great book, but. His first person is amazingly strong. And his third person is weaker.

Not that he's not a, decent third person writer, but he's hit when you compare it chapter to chapter with his first his first person is so amazingly strong. So had we been I mean, we're friends now, but had we been friends back then and he was in my writer's group and we were, you know, he wasn't published and we were just kicking around ideas.

I might have said, man, if you could try to figure out how to tell this story all in first person and just keep it in, whatever his name, I can't remember the name. It's been too long. So read the book.

Coffee?

Yeah. If you can keep the whole story in his perspective. You are such an amazing first person writer. So.

Yeah. So let's just let's just briefly talk about the benefit of first person, because there is a benefit of first person that is unique to first person, and that is that it gets.

To you before you even say what you're going to say, I'm going to say I'm gonna push back against it, but go ahead and say what you're going to say, and I have no idea what you're going to say.

Then the narrator's voice, it gives you a highly, highly personal narrator's voice without needing to go omniscient. Yes. So you can have that very intense narration voice, but you don't have to step into the narrator's voice, which is, which is a benefit of first person.

Even though I'm not pushing back on at all. I thought you were going to do direction.

Yeah. You always assume I'm going to say things that I'm not going to say.

Almost everybody. The first thing that anyone says about first person is it's the most immersive of the POV.

No no, no. So so first person and and third person deep, if we're calling it that, let's.

Call it limited. It makes us feel better.

I mean, it's like, what if the point is the they are they're there. But about the same. Right. You can you can just.

So they're not they're not. But the problem is it's subjective for some people. True or two. First person limited is more immersive than true. Third person limit for others like me and you that are epic fantasy readers, true third person limited is usually deeper than first.

So so 100%. But I mean, the point is that they they're, they're.

Tit for tat.

Yeah. That tit for tat that they are more or less the same level of immersion, depending on your genre and your kind of fantasy. So, you know, like if you're writing urban fantasy, you're probably going to go with first person because it's like it's traditional to the genre and the readers want to get and if you're going epic fantasy, you probably want to go a third person, but they're about the same level of emotion.

Would know what first person gives you is a narrator's voice without going omniscient?

Yes.

And that's its benefit.

I just think about any noir murder mystery is like, you know, oh, I thought nothing good was going to happen today. And then she walked into my room like, you know, we have we have this, this way of we just like what we were talking about with the Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett stuff, where the narrator's looking at the world in this very unique way.

If you understand how to really take advantage of that first person voice, then that first person can can be that. And now you're also connected to the protagonist, because the first person is also, you know, usually not always because we just talked about, Sherlock Holmes first person, not the protagonist. Yeah, but usually that first person is also the protagonist.

So you get this triple whammy of not only am I, you know, connected to this unique narrator voice, I'm also connected to a character in the story, and I'm also connected to the protagonist of the story. And so you have this triple whammy of awesomeness.

Yes. So. And 100% so. So that is like my, like my argument for first person.

Which is why it's always so sad when I see first person written as narrative.

As.

Narrative. Just narrative. No, no voice.

Yeah. No, no and no.

And you always, you know.

I think first person it must leap off the page.

If it's.

Linear and then the. Yeah, yeah. Then the narrator leaps off the page.

Yeah, yeah. Look at look at the Dresden Files, you know, Dresden, Harry Dresden, you know, he's talking to you. Yeah. Like he's telling you that story. It's his voice. So I'll. I'll give you a clue, a hint for you to decide if you're writing in a really good first person, limited voice. If at any time you feel that it would be better to write an inner monologue line in first person because it would be more in the character's voice, and then you failed, like your narration is now just narration.

And you know this innately, which is why you have the desire to to write a line of inner monologue. If you were actually writing the first person narration as a voice, you would never even think about using inner monologue, because it would all be like when like that little crappy thing that I wrote just a second ago, the I thought today was.

Just a tiny bit. And so there is one case in which you could write an inner monologue line in first person narration, but that is only if the person is literally thinking the words.

Oh, right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, but I'm talking about inner monologue that we normally do, which is toward the verb to, to tell the story. But I mean, when you think of, you know, that little crappy thing that I wrote at the beginning of this, it was, you know, what was it? I thought today was gonna be a crappy day.

And then she walked into my office. And then the inner monologue would be something like, hi. You know, she was really, really thought, like. But, yeah, you literally just said that in your own voice, like, yeah, like you're not going to do that if the voice of the narration is already there, you're never going to have this inclination to want to write a piece of inner monologue if the character voice is already in the narration.

So that's a great test that I try to tell people, you know, if you ever have this feeling like you could write a piece of inner monologue, then your narration of first person is not in the first person. If we're going to adopt that terminology.

Yeah.

You're writing in more of an omniscient first person and that means you just writing narration. If you're going to do that right in third person, because you're not taking advantage of first person.

Omniscient is omniscient. First person is in my opinion, only useful if you're writing a biography, right?

Yeah. 100 Sundays. Or maybe it's a thousand Sundays or whatever. It was Billy Crystal's biography about his dad. You know, it's him talking about his his life with his father. And you can tell the whole book. You can tell it's it's an older Billy Crystal, you know, probably in his 50s, reminisce, reminiscing about his childhood. And it's never you never feel like you are the child.

Billy Crystal. You always feel like you're the adult Billy Crystal reminiscing about the child Billy Crystal. And that's fine.

Yeah. But yeah, so how do you choose? Yeah. So we've spoken about first person, and you first person needs to have a narrator that is leaping off the page. If your narrator is not that strong, if they're not leaping off the page, if you're not that intensely on it, don't write in first person. You not because it's not going to connect you to the reader or whatever, but because it comes with weakness.

Yeah. And if you're not going to take advantage of its major strength, then don't don't adopt its weaknesses.

Yeah. Because you can, you know, like one of the big weaknesses of first person is you really need to have only one POV character. I'd love to have multiple people be characters in first person, but it is dumb because you only get the word. I. And so it is so hard to switch from an I had that is, you know, Drake to an I head.

That is Marie.

Yeah.

Because you only get I. Yeah. And so if you're going to write narration anyway if it's just narration then. Right. And even if you only have one TV character, I mean, the first Harry Potter book outside of the opening, which he was a child, you know, a baby, an infant, every other chapter of that book is written in third person, limited with one POV character, and that is Harry.

And we are never out of Harry's head. It's a one POV book, but we're always in third person.

So it's it's free and indirect.

I said third person. Yeah, that was in third person. That's what I'm saying. You should write it in third person, not in. Yeah. First person. So we're just talking about choosing between first and third.

Yeah, yeah. Hundred percent. Yeah. And that's the thing because third person gives you freedoms, it allows you to have multiple POVs. It allows you to occasionally take a little bit of a, like a backwards, you know, like a backward step, maybe look at the world a little bigger if you're not going deep, if you're going more of kind of the limited, free and indirect, so, you know, it gives you more options.

First person is more limited. The trade off you get for limited is the narrator's voice. If you narrator's voice isn't strong, don't use Forster's.

Yeah.

So that's my that's my first piece of advice.

And so let's, let's add to this just to take it to another level. So not only is first person the most limiting of the two peeves, because they're not going to really talk about the second person. No, no one writes and it's just.

Either a gimmick or a very specific genre. And if you're thinking that you know what you're doing. Right. Exactly.

So not only is first person much more limited than third person, and it brings more disadvantages with it than then. Wow. I don't want to say it brings more disadvantages than advantages because it's probably about the same. It's just the disadvantages are serious disadvantages for certain types of stories, like multiple POVs or whatever.

You have a disadvantage with first person that you don't have a third, and that is that you have to manage the I pronoun very. Oh yeah. Yeah. Because you can't use a character's name, you can't use it. You you can only use the pronoun. Yeah. And, and the amount of students that I have to rewrite in order to eliminate eyes and knees and my eyes because they have.

The same limitation. And the third, they're just different because now you overuse the character name. You got to watch pronoun, connections and everything like that. It's it's different.

But it's like you've got more.

Right? 100%.

Yeah. Because you can use the character name and the pronoun. Yeah. Which at least gives you some variation. Right?

Exactly.

This person. Man.

Yeah, yeah. No. And when I'm writing first person, one of my drafts is literally just I look at every sentence as a and I, me or my and I go, can I rewrite this? And cut that I me or my. Yeah. And you can't cut them all. I mean, I cut 20%, maybe 25% at the most because, because.

Because it's just it's a nice you have to have some have.

To use it. There's you have no other options.

But you have to also continuously rewrite in order to eliminate as many of them as possible, just to manage the product.

Right. But where I was going with that was not only is first person the most limiting of the two of the two big choices that we have, then let's go to tenths. And now we have present tense and past tense. And we already discussed about how present tense is the most limiting of the tenses, because it actually limits your ability to manipulate time.

So the reason why me and Marie are so much against that first person present tense is because you're writing in the most limited POV first person, using the most limited tense, which is present tense, which means that the story must be the most simplistic story structure that exists on the planet to be successful. Why did Hunger Games work in first person present tense?

Because it's a single character that starts at a single moment in time. It moves forward linearly to the end of the story. It has no subplots, no side plots, no, it's the most simplest story structure that exists. And so therefore the POV didn't break it. But if she had tried to also incorporate the sister and and other types of subplots and all this other stuff, it would have been a struggle.

And so when you.

Look at this thing is I just want to I just want to caveat we're not saying that Hunger Games was a simple story, or that it wasn't the great world, or that it wasn't complex characters, but the structure of the story is 100% linear, like a train track.

Yes. You know, and that's why when you look at so what was the next big first person? Kind of the the maze, what was it called? There was one that came right after it that was bought wholly because it was first person, present tense runner. Yeah, I think it was Maze Runner. Maze runner is a more complex story structure.

Notice no one talks about Maze Runner. We still talk about Hunger Games to this day because the P.O.V. did not thing to hinder the story, and therefore the disadvantages that come with the POV. Intense choice didn't hurt it. Whereas she took advantage of its advantages, Maze Runner trap. The story structure was more complex and therefore the story writer now has to fight the point of view that it was chosen.

It.

And that is what we're talking about here. We're talking about being smart. It's not about oh but I only like characters like memory aren't going oh we only like for third person I'm ten. So that's all you should write in. Not at all. Traditionally me and her write epic fantasy. We write big, massive stories with multiple characters and multiple side plots and parallel stories and and all of this stuff.

And we bounce back to thousands of years in history and, and we're doing all this complex storytelling that if we try to write in first person, present tense would literally be the hardest thing that we we just couldn't accomplish. We couldn't it would be so limiting for us that it would make our jobs impossible. Yeah. So it's about picking.

That's why I'm literally publishing every one of you intents that exists on the planet, because of the fact that I've written a bunch of stories, and so therefore eventually I come up with a story. It's like, oh man, this one really needs to be written, and blah. And so I write in the point of view. I mean, I'm pretty sure arent your isn't the, you're way written in first person.

I don't have a way. What? The other one? No, I've I've got my urban fantasy.

Urban fantasy? That's what I meant.

Yeah, yeah, it is written in first.

Yeah, it's first person.

Because it's no one. Yeah, yeah. No urban fantasy. So yeah.

So it works out really, really well. It's a single POV. It works out. It's still past tense. So I have the ability to be like time. So yeah, it's about it's not about being pigeonholed into someone in the comments that I've only written in this, maybe I should do. Yes you should you absolute. But but it also depends on the story.

If you're only telling certain stories, then maybe you will only write in certain in a certain POV. I mean, if all I ever wrote was epic fantasy, I don't think I would write in any other POV ever. Although I guess the cobalt story, I don't know, it's more adventure story because it was a short story that I wrote for Sony, but you know, still, it was a short story.

Two is 3000 words. Not hard to hold the first person present tense story for 3000 words. So it's that's the big thing. It's it's always it really comes back to how does it affect the reader. Yeah. How does it affect the reader.

And that, I think, is the second thing that I want to emphasize in choosing your narrative point of view,

how close do you want the readers to feel to the characters? Right. Your omniscient point of view might be correct. If you don't want the readers to feel that close to the characters, maybe you want them to associate more with the narrator the way that you know, it's the case in some of Terry Pratchett books or in Douglas Adams books, etc. 100%.

Then you do that right. You create the strong narrator's voice and you write in omniscient.

Oh, it's like, you know, why are we in,

Watson's point of view with Sherlock Holmes? Yeah, we were writing from Sherlock Holmes. It'd be like I walked into the door. I noticed that the killer was trying to convince everybody that it was this, but it was actually that, end of story. Yeah. There you go.

It would be. It would be boring from from Sherlock interview. So you don't want the reader close to Sherlock. You want them close to Watson, who's admiringly watching, you know, Sherlock.

Like, is trying to teach him. Yeah. And by default, that means that Watson is an anchor character. So an anchor character is a character that can be a stand in for the reader and anchor the reader to the story. So that's why farm boys are always the trope in epic fantasy, because no one knows less about the world than a farm boy who's never left the farm.

So when they leave the farm, they're like, what is that? Who is that? And is that where it's going.

On with.

Her? They are not real. The farm boy doesn't need to know anything because the farm boy doesn't exist. They are the anchor. They anchor the reader to the story so that the reader can be like, is who is that? How does that work? What's going on over here? And they can get those answers organically. Yes, that's what Watson is.

He's an anchor character. He anchors us to the brilliance of Sherlock Holmes detective. And then Sherlock Holmes is basically like, hey, reader, come on, it's not that hard. All the clues are here. Let's use your brain. Come on, you can do it. It's elementary. Come on. We can. We got it. And so that's why we love those books, is because we aren't just passively watching some brilliant dude fix the problem.

We're trying. We're being encouraged to be a part of that solution. Yeah, and that's what made it successful.

so so so you want to, when choosing your POV, you want to we've spoken about the need to understanding your stories needs. You need to also consider how much information you want the reader to know. And then you need to consider what emotional impact you. Write how how close you want to readers so spoken about that and then the narrator's voice how much does that matter to you?

But notice everything that Marie just said. Everything she said are decisions you make for the reader. None of those are for the story they're all for. And that's why I wanted to focus on the thing that no one talks about a point of view. They get locked into the details. Well, first is these rules. And second is these none of that freaking matters.

The only thing that matters is what vehicle is going to bring the reader into this story. Best period. End of discussion. What is going to impact the reader the most and allow them to enjoy this story more than any other vehicle? Because that's what a point of view is. It's just a vehicle that the reader is writing in.

And so everything you just said is that it's it's all about choice for reader, choice for reader. What about this choice for the reader, and what is this for the reader? Because the reader is the only thing that's real.

And that's why often with genres, you'll see the same choices made in a writer, right? Because readers who consume that genre like that point of view.

Or at least.

They're that's why there are a whole bunch of romance, spicy books that have got a multi first person POV. Because for for reasons related to spiciness, I guess the.

And I don't, I'm going to push back on it. I don't think it's that they like it. I think that they're used to it.

Yeah.

Because. When it is not the best when you come in because you know, every genre has everything. So even the spicy genre has third person past tense and all of that. So I'd be willing to bet it's just it's more of a because, I mean, I when I meet writers that are writing in first person present tense, my first question is always, why did you choose that point of view?

Now, most writers when I ask that question, they their answer is, what? I'm like. Why did you choose to write in first person present tense? I like I don't understand the question, as in they don't realize they have a choice. But when you drill down, the answer is usually because 100 games is written in it. And I like Hunger Games, but you're not writing Hunger Games.

So I'll tell you why. I think the spicy stories have defaulted to that. It's because the the birth place is on the internet. Sites that are all written. In first person in order to give you the most direct, spicy experience.

Yeah, one of the peanut gallery just did a joke that is absolutely hilarious. Error 404 P.O.V. not found.

That was awesome.

Yeah.

But no, they don't they don't understand. They didn't understand that they had a choice. They read this genre. They this genre. Everyone else is writing in this genre. So that's what I should do without understanding why, my first person or my romance is written in first person. It is, but it's written in past tense because I refuse.

My stories are too complex. Even my romance stories, which are very simplistic compared to my fantasy.

I can't read first person, I can't read present tense stories. I just write call, I call icon, I can.

It's just not.

Like I couldn't even make it through Hunger Games. I just, I can't get. So if I can't get into it.

You know, you're not going to write it.

I'm not going.

To write it just because that would just be.

Not it's not possible for.

Me. Yeah. But now I get that, but for me still, it's about it's about the reader. Every decision I make is always about the reader when I introduce the characters, because it's going to be impact the reader the best. When I introduce a scene, it's because it's going to impact the reader the best. And when I do every line of dialog, every everything is always because it's what the reader needs at that moment.

It's what the reader is gonna be affected by the most at that moment. It's all everything. Is that so? I'm not going to change that perspective. When I take a point of view, it's going to be picked because the reader is going to be most in, most advantageously impacted because of this choice that I'm making in my store.

Ultimately, the reader consumes the story. The point of view that you are writing the story is the point of view that makes it the most immersive, smoothest experience for the reader to consume. The story. So when you're choosing your point of view for your story, think about how think about your your reader, the kind of reader that is going to consume your story.

So the kind of reader who reads your genre and think about how they consume stories most easily and make your choices based on that, how close do you want them to the character? How much do you want them to know? You know, and how strong do you want that? Narrator voiced.

Okay. Anything else?

You're looking for? I recognize any of these others. I'm on Goodreads looking at, popular. Well, read rising, but I couldn't read Red rising. Everyone raves about Red rising, but it just wasn't for me. I tried. I'm looking at, present tense books.

I, I have no opinion on them. I just, I, I for me, I just can't get into them. I've tried A Handmaid's Tale.

I didn't, didn't, couldn't finish it. It was. The story's great, but but the writing was just terrible to me. I couldn't read it. It was so telly and so repetitive and so just, But again, not that the story's bad or anything like that. This is a personal thing. I'm not saying that that Margaret Atwood isn't a good writer.

I'm saying she isn't a good writer. For Drake. That's where people miss. That's why I don't like people who do reviews on stuff, because it's you really just telling me what you like or don't like. Now, I will say that when you do get a good reviewer that you can that you can. So like Siskel and Ebert, I do miss them tremendously because they were perfect for me as reviewers.

Basically, if both of them gave it a thumbs up, I was going to skip that movie because it was going to be a piece of garbage. If both of them gave it a thumbs down, I was 100% seeing that movie because it was going to be awesome.

So, I actually want to push back on whoever said that The Handmaid's Tale is in present tense, because I read Handmaid's Tale and let me just read the opening. We slipped in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was a varnished woods with stripes and circles painted on it. For the games that were formerly played here, the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone.

I mean, that's past tense.

Where's the where's the present?

I don't know, I'm on Goodreads and I just typed in, books written. And so it says the title of this article is Present Tense Books and Hunger Games, the first three books of The Hunger Games. And actually, it wasn't Maze Runner that I was thinking of. It was divergent. Divergent was the next one that came out right behind Hunger Games.

And it's it's on here. And it was first person present tense.

And that's the one that was too complicated. But again, no one talks about divergent either.

Yeah.

And then I was just going through it.

She does mixed tenses with The Handmaid's Tale.

But oh yeah, I couldn't read it.

Yeah, but you like Handmaid's Tale is Handmaid's tale is amazing. If you like stream of consciousness. Right.

But if you are not into stream of consciousness.

Why enjoy the TV show and how close that was.

Yeah. Very close. It was very, very like clockwise was very, very close.

Okay. Because I couldn't read the book.

I know, but but Margaret Atwood's writing style is stream of consciousness. It's like a, it's like a flow, you know, of, of like you kind of, it's hard to describe, but it's so.

Stream of consciousness is just basically when you're writing the story straight out of the character's head, you know, they're just they're just rambling through the story as they're thinking about it, as opposed to being more specific with scene setting, worldbuilding,

yeah.

It's most people write their first draft in stream of conscious, which is why most of your first drafts are going to be action and dialog.

Yeah. So, so and yeah, Margaret Atwood style is a very unique style. And you either like her voice or you don't. Like it's, it's a, you know, and it's definitely not for everyone.

When like I said, that's why I don't give a lot of opinions on. Yeah. Well I don't mind giving my opinions on things, but I make sure that I hammer on the fact that this is my opinion on this thing for me, for me as a reader, for me as a watcher, for me as a fan, for me, as a whatever.

Now, if the story's broken and I can point you to what breaks the story and the vast majority of audiences, that should be the fans of that or like, I didn't like this. Those are like like the new Marvel movies, the new, Star Wars movies, stuff like that, where the fan base themselves or like, I didn't like this movie, I know, yeah, you didn't like it because that piece of code is broken and that piece of code is broken, and that piece of code is broken.

That's different because those are now factual kind of things.

Somebody in the writer's group, writers room, critique group this week read something. And they've been reading it for the last couple of months. And it was the they'd gotten to the very end. And so the last time they read was a cliffhanger right before the climax.

And so people showed up to the writer's group literally just to hear him read the end of the story, not even critique him on the story. They were just so invested in the story. And let's just say he didn't stick the landing.

And so I went, here's the codes that you broke. Here's why this is not going to impress the audience. Here's why. Everyone was like, okay, yeah, we got the ending story. Great. As opposed to, and as as amazing saying, like, here's the code that you just didn't do. You did this, you did that, you did this, you just that.

So that is less subjective and more factual. You actually missed the mark on these things.

But usually when it's talking about like The Handmaid's Tale, the writing style wasn't for me.

Yeah.

My writing style. Yeah. So I'm not critiquing Atwood. I'm critiquing her as my preference. She is not she does not write in a style that I find appealing.

Yeah, yeah. That's, you know, and that's it. Like, like, that's why I don't read presentation. I don't really talk about Hunger Games because. Right, I watched the movies because they were really good.

But if you want an example, if you want an example of first person present tense written flawlessly, that is it. Now.

Absolutely.

I don't think it was very well-written. I don't think that it's very immersive. I think it's kind of telling me that the tension is there in every scene. The characters are dynamic, the story is dynamic. And again, we talked about this all the time. The only thing readers actually care about is character and story. Yeah. So if the characters and story are there, they're going to overlook the little bit of telling us that's in there.

So while I didn't find it offensive, it wasn't so me like like the Margaret Atwood stuff. I found fairytale. Yeah. And I just couldn't I could never get into it. It was just there was it was line after line after line that just kept throwing me out of the story. Throw me out of the story. It wasn't that way in Hunger Games.

It wasn't viscerally gripping and immersive, but it was not offensive to me either. And again, we're talking my personal reading style, my personal reading preferences. So and I am way more snotty and snooty than the average reader because I pushed myself so far down this path, I've ruined myself as a fan. It's why I need to listen to audiobooks so that I can't see the words.

But, it just kind of depends on what you're doing.

But yeah, anyway, to get back to POV

Yeah. Because I think that's I was gonna say

the big thing for me about POV is just remember, all you do need to learn this stuff and it's a lot. And again, I would highly recommend

turn to the camera.

If anything we said is of any value to you, you should probably either go to starving Writer Studio or DrakeU.com links will be down below and pick up a copy of Better Writing through Stronger Narrative. It is a massive 80,000 word book where I go into great detail about all these things that we've been talking about here on the show.

You can get it from Amazon if you want to give Jeff Bezos some money. I know he's kind of poor right now and but you know, I my company is called Starving Writer Studio and it's not an ironic title. So that extra dollar or two thrown to me might help me more than it helps Bezos out. So just saying.

Starving writer studio. I use the same shipper as he does. You'll get it in the same amount of time. I actually got it $5 off. So it's 25 from him with free shipping. Or you can get it for 20 for me. And you do pay for shipping, but it ends up being about 25 bucks. So either way, it's gonna be the same for you.

It's a little better for me if you get it from starving writer Studio. It goes into depth on all the stuff that we've been talking about on this episode. I highly recommend that you pick it up. So

turn back to Arcane.

So I think that the most important part about choosing your POV is bearing in mind your reader how you want them to consume that story, and I think that that's a good not understand this episode. Absolutely.

For my.

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