Guest Blog: Enjoy The View – Kate Allan on Viewpoint

Today my fellow Pocketeer, Kate Allan, joins me for a guest blog on viewpoint. There are also two chances to win an ebook of Kate’s sweet romance, Snowbound on the Island, so read on and find out how.

Snowbound On The Island available from Amazon

Snowbound on the Island review

After the break up of a long-term relationship Lisa escapes to the remote Isles of Scilly, twenty eight miles off the coast of Cornwall, for a new year reunion with old college friends. But as winter weather sweeps across Britain the airports close and only two people make it: Lisa and Dominic. She always thought him attractive and he still is, but he doesn’t even seem to remember her.

This is a very short but very sweet and sensual, read about Lisa and Dominic. When a planned weekend with old college friends goes awry due to the weather, Lisa and Dominic find themselves alone in a holiday cottage with plenty of time to get to know each other again. It’s very subtly done, with lots of sexual tension. But a hint of vulnerability shines through both characters, making them very likeable. The love scenes are pitched just right, so you get a sense of that vulnerability but also realise that whilst the sexual attraction is there, this is going to be so much more for both of them.

Enjoy the view: Kate Allan on viewpoint

This was the title of the workshop I gave on Saturday at the Get Writing conference in Hatfield, Herts, where we looked at writing viewpoint. Viewpoint is, I think, one of those tricky subjects. I remember wrestling with it when I was learning to write. Once I’d discovered that I was supposed to be writing in character point of view, I could get it 95% right, but there would be moments now and again when an authorial voice or another character’s eye view would interrupt. Once I could stick to a certain viewpoint, then the fun started and I could experiment. Which is one of my “rules of writing”:

-        first learn the rules, then break them

 I experimented with transitions from one viewpoint to another. I’m sure there are other ways of doing it but found the best bridges (for me and my style of writing) were action and dialogue. If I could seamlessly switch from one character’s viewpoint to another’s mid scene and without the need for a space or three little stars, it seemed like an art, not technical craft stuff. Satisfying. Ingenious.

My next discovery was something called “deep third”. No, nothing to do with deep space, or a very, very poor class of degree. This was where one could write so deeply in the third person point of view that you could create, it seemed, all the intimate qualities of writing in the first person. Indeed I got so far into deep third, I had to rein back, because I was losing action and pace. Motto: deep third can cause the same issues with too much introspection as first person. And worse. It can begin to cause confusion in relation to the action. People don’t think their actions. And thus you can’t wrote deep third as a stream of consciousness. Not in my novels, anyhow, which are very active.

So our workshop group sat around a table and I asked the writers there whether they preferred first or third person. I’ve only ever tried first person once, properly. While I found it refreshing it’s still on the subs bench of my repertoire. All my published novels are in third person. The workshop group were divided, some firmly in one camp, the others unsure. Those who were certain they preferred first or third confessed they had done very little of the other. We all agreed we’d try and broaden and experiment. Nobody had ever tried second person viewpoint. I’ve only done it in letters, and excerpts from letters, included in novels.

We then talked about tenses and the advantages of (simple) past or present. We agreed that it depended on the narrative. We also considered briefly the future tense and decided it sounded impossible for novels although could work for a short story, but no one had tried it.

Which brings me to another of my little “rules”:

-        until you try something, you won’t know if you are any good at it

Which means I’m going to have to write something in the future tense sometime. Just because.

A question I often had a tackle when a novice writer was that of which character should the scene be seen from. Now, I know instinctively. Then, I had to think about it. The fog cleared when someone said to me that the writer should always consider whose the scene it was emotionally. Leading to another little rule:

-        write the scene from the viewpoint of the character with the most at stake

I think that’s my only actual viewpoint “rule” as everything else is breakable. Do you have any viewpoint rules, and do you find viewpoint a struggle or did it come naturally?

Thank you to Sally for kindly inviting me to post on her blog during my Snowbound blog tour for my new novella, Snowbound on the Island.

Copies of Snowbound on the Island and chocs up for grabs in my winter photo competition on Facebook. Share your winter snaps to be in with a chance to win.

Available on Amazon

Twitter: @kate_allan

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Win a copy of Snowbound on the Island on this blog.

Thanks Kate for that fascinating insight into tenses. Along with Kate’s photo competition there’s also a chance to win a copy of Snowbound on the Island on this blog. Just leave a ‘pick me’ comment below and your name will be drawn out of a hat when the comp closes at Midnight (GMT) on Sunday 19th February 2012. I will pass the winner’s name on to Kate, and she will ensure you receive your prize.