In Character: Viewpoint and Voice

I frequently give a presentation on point of view in writing, explaining the big and little techniques for avoiding and escaping viewpoint traps. One aspect that often gets overlooked is staying true to the viewpoint character’s voice.

We have viewpoint options. In simplest terms, first person, second person, and third person, but variations exist. Unless you’re writing a story in third person objective — that is, a non-subjective camera point of view, or the proverbial fly on the wall, in which you simply report what is seen — you need to remain consistent to the viewpoint character’s voice.

It’s easy to stay in viewpoint in the first person if you place yourself in the true narrative voice of the character. Even then, you may trip up and use language the viewpoint character may not typically be expected to use.

It’s even easier to make that mistake when writing in third person subjective. Suppose you write a blue collar character working on a commercial fishing boat in Levy County. Maybe she dropped out of high school. Or maybe she earned a college degree in biology. Either way, you’ve created an interesting character. The high school dropout’s perceptions and voice of a bad day on the water will differ from those of the biologist, unless you’ve established that she is also bright and has made it her mission to pore over textbooks late into the night to self-educate. By either description, you begin to hear her speech patterns and vocabulary. The story line for either may be the same, but the voice of the characters must now vary in appropriate measure.

Writing dialogue makes for manageable viewpoint voice. What takes a bit more attention to detail is the non-dialogue narration, even in the third person, and especially when diving into a character’s mind.

Two faves by Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, illustrate this. Twain’s unmistakable and distinctive style shines through in both, but the narrative voices differ dramatically. Both are told in the first person. Young Huck tells his story in his backwoods vernacular, rife with faulty grammar, down home colloquialisms, and impish mischief. The anonymous Connecticut Yankee, in contrast, is a highly educated and practical minded engineer, and his narration consistently carries that through. If he waxes eloquent about the machinations and intrigues of political schemers, it works. If Huck had done the same, it would have performed a narrative face plant onto concrete.

M.R. Carey’s 2014 post apocalyptic novel, The Girl with All the Gifts, manages multiple viewpoint voices within a single volume. Written in present tense with multiple third person subjective narration, most of the narrators are adults and their viewpoint voices are expressed in adult tones, tinted and varied according to personalities and backgrounds. But one character, a little girl named Melanie, struggles to understand what is going on around her and why the grownups fear her. Her viewpoint voice springs beautifully and naturally from her child’s perspective.

Work viewpoint and voice into the very structure of your novel. Critical information is delivered — or withheld — depending upon the point of view of the character. It can be spooned out in small dollops like honey or blasted like a T-shirt cannon. All approaches work, but only when they remain true to the character. Do it well, and listen to the writing hum.