Chapter Seven

Point of View

Establish Your Relationships

Writing is a matter of establishing relationships. With your first few sentences of your opening, you declare your relationship with your subject and, either directly or indirectly, with your reader. Deciding on your point of view is a matter of deciding whose story you are telling, from what perspective you are telling that story, and what attitude or feelings you want to convey regarding that story.

Where and how you position yourself in relation to your subject and your reader has a great deal to do with your success or failure as a writer. You indicate those relationships through your use of point of view, which has three dimensions: person, vantage point, and attitude.

Person is the who. It is the narrator or observer from whose eyes the story is told or the subject is viewed. The who may be first person (I or we), second person (you), or third person (he, she, it, one, or they).

First and second person are frequently used in transactional or business writing, correspondence, newsletter articles, and instructional writing, including procedures, manuals, and how-to books like this one (as in “I hope you are finding this analysis useful”). Third person is commonly used in more formal types of on-the-job writing and in scientific, technical, academic, and legal writing (as in “Consequently, the Court shall award all personal property in each party’s possession to themselves, and the Court shall consider the division as equitable”). Both first and third person are commonly used in narrative writing.

In fiction and other types of literary writing, a first-person narrator’s point of view is limited by what the narrator perceives by observing and interacting with the characters. A third-person narrator may be either an uninvolved observer or a participant in the action (one of the characters). When a third-person narrator knows everything that needs to be known about the unfolding of the story and has access to the thoughts, feelings, and motives of all the characters, the narrator is said to be omniscient. When a third-person narrator knows only what is perceived or known by a character (or a few characters) within the story, the narrator is said to be limited.

If person is the who, vantage point is the when and the where. It is the location or frame of reference from which the narrator relates the story or the observer views the subject. Vantage point has two dimensions: temporal (both the observer and the subject are located in time—past, present, or future) and spatial (the observer and the subject are located in physical relationship to one another—close or distant).

Person and vantage point are particularly significant in narration, as illustrated by the following three scenarios involving a limited third-person point of view.

• If a mother is watching her children play in the backyard while standing in her kitchen, she is viewing present action relatively close-up through her kitchen window.
• If a mother is watching a home video of her children playing in the backyard, she is viewing past action virtually close-up through the eye of the camera.
• If a mother is watching a home video taken from her front porch of her children getting off the school bus at the end of the block, she is viewing past action recorded from a slight distance through the eye of the camera.

In each example, what the mother is feeling—her thoughts and emotions—may be reported in the past tense or in the present tense. In other words, both the observer (as well as the act of observation) and the subject are located in time and place.

Likewise, in each example, the mother’s frame of reference—whether she is viewing past or present action, from close-up or far away—is limited. She perceives only what she can see through her kitchen window or the eye of the camera. If the children leave the backyard, or if the camera shifts to her children’s grandparents, and if she has no other means of gathering information, she no longer knows what her children are doing. As is evident in these examples, person and vantage point play a significant role in determining what information is conveyed to the reader.

The third dimension of point of view, attitude, is the how. It is the tone conveyed by how the narrator or the observer feels toward the action, subject, or thing being observed. A mother in her seventies viewing a video taken fifty years ago of her children getting off a school bus is likely to experience strong feelings of love and perhaps wistfulness for times gone by, whereas a mother watching her children get off the bus after having received a call from the principal informing her that they had been caught smoking is likely to feel something quite different. As we know from real life, the same event may be experienced and portrayed from various perspectives in markedly different ways. The nature of that portrayal is determined not only by person and vantage point but also by attitude.

All of these considerations contribute to your reader having a sense of your authorial voice and presence, which is at the heart of what we mean by an author’s style. Behind the choices regarding person, vantage point, and tone, the reader senses, to use M.H. Abrams words in A Glossary of Literary Terms, “a pervasive authorial presence, a determinate intelligence and moral sensibility, who has invented, ordered, and rendered all these literary characters and materials in just this way.” To a great extent, the effect of literary writing (as well as persuasive writing and, in some cases, transactional writing) depends directly on the reader’s sense of authorial voice and presence—or what I like to call the reader’s sense of the person behind the words. As Abrams and others point out, this presence plays an especially important role in engaging the interest and guiding the imaginative and emotional responses of the readers to whom the work is addressed. In other words, authorial presence, which is created in large part by point of view or the author’s relationship with subject and reader, is an integral feature of style.

Point of view is most often discussed in relation to narration and literary works, but it has implications for all types of writing, including description, exposition, and persuasion. All writing—even writing in which point of view is not readily apparent—imparts a sense of the writer’s voice or authorial presence, and in all writing, point of view may be used to the writer’s advantage. Here are some thoughts on how you can use point of view to connect with your reader and achieve your persuasive goals:

Use an appropriate vantage point, tone, and level of formality.

Vantage point and tone, as revealed by your word choice, determine your level of formality. A distant vantage point and a less personal tone are associated with more formal writing. For example, you may place yourself at a distance from your subject (“It is recommended that …”) or close to your subject (“I recommend that …”), just as you may place yourself at a distance from your reader (“I regret to inform you that …”) or close to your reader (“I’m really sorry that …”).

Closely linked to vantage point is tone, which conveys your attitude toward your subject and audience. You may adopt a formal, respectful tone (“I must take issue with your position”); a formal, disrespectful tone (“I find your position absurd”); an informal, respectful tone (“I’m afraid I disagree with you on this one”); or an informal, disrespectful tone (“You gotta be kidding”).

Maintain a consistent level of formality.

A friend once told me she realized she was spending too much time with young children when she caught herself saying to an adult friend, “Oh, look at the moo-moo cows!” Sometimes writers—especially on-the-job writers—make the same mistake. They use vocabulary that is inappropriate to their audience.

Whenever you communicate, you adjust your word choice—either consciously or unconsciously—to suit your audience and situation. When you speak to a three-year-old child, for example, you don’t use the same vocabulary that you use when you talk with your boss—unless, of course, you have a boss who doesn’t handle complexity well. In written communication, your opening words do more than convey meaning: They also establish a certain level of formality. Once that level has been established, you should use words that are consistent with that style.

If you begin a letter of recommendation with the words, “It is with great pleasure that I recommend …,” for example, you establish a relatively formal tone, and it would be inappropriate later in your letter to write, “Can we talk turkey?” Similarly, if you open an e-mail with “Hey, Joe. How’s it going?” you establish an informal tone, and it would strike your reader as odd if later in your message you wrote, “Despite our adversary’s implacable determination to offer no ostensible resistance, one can nevertheless discern a subtle shift in tactics.”

Abrupt shifts in tone and style are awkward. In the following letter, for example, see if you can identify which words and phrases seem inconsistent with the letter’s relatively formal style and replace them with more appropriate wording:

One way to revise the letter to give it a more consistent tone would be as follows: Replace nothing to sneeze at with not insignificant; replace Check out with Note; replace the exclamation mark with a period; replace I’ll touch base with you with I will call you; and replace Best with Sincerely. The revised letter reads:

In the following e-mail, see if you can identify which words and phrases seem out of keeping with an informal style:

To maintain an informal style throughout, replace I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your proposal with Thanks for your proposal; replace costs proposed therein with costs that you propose; replace Please be assured that your proposal will receive all due consideration with I assure you that your proposal will receive serious consideration, or simply We will seriously consider your proposal; and replace Sincerely with Thanks or Best. The revised memo reads:

In your on-the-job correspondence with readers outside your company or organization, you’re likely to use a style that linguists call Standard English, a style that falls somewhere between formal and informal English. Formal English (which is appropriate for academic and literary writing as well as some forms of public and political discourse) uses words like to admonish, to feign, and impetuous; whereas standard English (which is appropriate for most forms of business and technical writing) uses words like to scold, to pretend, and rash; and informal English (which is appropriate in casual situations when you know your reader well, as in most e-mail correspondence) uses words and expressions like to lay into, to fake, and brainless.

To some extent, your effectiveness as a writer depends on your ability to gauge the level of formality required by your audience, your purpose, and your subject, and to communicate comfortably and consistently at that level.

Use a personal tone in most correspondence.

In most correspondence, use a personal tone. Rather than “As per our conversation,” write “As we discussed.” Rather than “The above-referenced payment is overdue,” write “Your payment is overdue.” And rather than “It is regrettable that we were late in sending your shipment,” write “I’m sorry that your shipment was delayed.”

Consider Your Options in Narrative Writing

The options regarding point of view in literary works are more numerous and complicated than they are in other types of writing. In literary writing, which usually involves narrative, the question of point of view is not limited to person (first, second, or third). It also includes degree of power to enter the minds of the characters (omniscient or limited), role of the narrator (an uninvolved observer or a participant in the action), temporal vantage point of the narrator (describing present action or past action—the when mentioned above), spatial vantage point of the narrator (close to the action or far from the action—the where mentioned above), degree of presence of the narrator (intrusive or unintrusive), trustworthiness of the narrator (authoritative or unreliable), and attitude of the narrator (the tone—as mentioned above—toward subject, theme, setting, characters, story, and reader).

In determining attitude or tone, the writer has nearly limitless choices. As M.H. Abrams points out in A Glossary of Literary Terms, tone “can be described as critical or approving, formal or intimate, outspoken or reticent, solemn or playful, arrogant or prayerful, angry or loving, serious or ironic, condescending or obsequious, and so on through numberless possible nuances of relationship and attitude.”

As an illustration of how point of view is established, consider the following examples. If you write, “Nothing had prepared me for what I saw when I opened that door,” you declare yourself a first-person narrator participating as a character in the story. You are describing past action from a limited point of view, and you are writing a narrative lead intended to arouse the curiosity of your reader. If you write, “She seemed surprised by what she saw when she opened the door,” you declare yourself a third-person uninvolved observer (as opposed to a first-person participating narrator), and you are describing past action from a limited point of view. If you change “seemed surprised” to “was surprised” and you enter the mind not only of this character, but of any character whose thinking is relevant to the unfolding of your story, you declare yourself a third-person omniscient rather than limited narrator. If you add the phrase “Unprepared as always” to the main clause, “she was surprised by what she saw when she opened the door,” you not only declare who (third-person omniscient), where (close to the action), and when (depicting past action), but also how you feel about the character (critical, perhaps unsympathetic, even condescending).

The options relating to point of view, when taken at a glance like this, may seem overwhelming. But as you try to determine the most effective point of view for your purpose, audience, and subject, keep in mind two points. First, remember that writing represents spoken language and that written discourse is a type of utterance or a mode of speech. If you think of point of view as something you convey whenever you speak, the correct choices may seem more obvious. As Abrams reminds us, “To conceive a work as an utterance suggests that there is a speaker who has determinate personal qualities, and who expresses attitudes both toward the characters and materials within the work and toward the audience to whom the work is addressed.” Second, in the early stages of conceptualization, trust your intuition. As Stephen Minot advises in Three Genres: The Writing of Poetry, Fiction, and Drama, “When a story idea first comes to you, it will probably be a mix of personal experience and invention. Let it run through your head like a daydream. Don’t concern yourself at this early stage about the means of perception, person, and focus. If you analyze too much too soon, you may lose the feel of the story.”

Use a limited point of view to create intrigue and keep your reader guessing.

A writer’s power is determined not only by what is revealed, but also by what is withheld. Partial disclosure and gradual revelation are time-tested principles at the heart of all storytelling. Consider, for example, George Orwell’s use of a limited third-person point of view in 1984. Orwell opens his book with these sentences:

In these sentences Orwell establishes person, vantage point, and attitude toward his subject or—more particularly—toward his setting, which is made to appear bleak, surreal, and unwelcoming, but he doesn’t tell everything. Although the landscape is subjectively drawn (the reader senses the narrator’s attitude toward it), Orwell doesn’t tell the reader what to think, at least not directly. It isn’t until a few paragraphs later that Orwell moves inside the head of his third-person narrator: “Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing.” By moving only gradually to his character’s perspective, and then offering only a single thought rather than revealing everything his character is thinking, Orwell creates intrigue.

Flannery O’Connor uses the same technique of delayed and incomplete disclosure to create intrigue in the opening of Wise Blood:

O’Connor might have chosen to reveal more directly what her character was thinking, perhaps rewriting her opening to read:

Instead, she withholds information, leaving the reader to surmise from her character’s actions, speech, gestures, and expressions what he is thinking and feeling.

Use a subjective point of view to heighten drama.

Both Orwell and O’Connor use third-person narrators (that is, they refer to their characters as he and she rather than I or you) who possess limited power to enter some, but not all, of the characters’ minds. Both narrators report on the action without being part of it. In contrast, in The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story through the eyes of a first-person narrator, Nick Carraway, who mostly observes the action but occasionally participates as a character. Everything the reader knows about the thoughts, motives, and feelings of Jay Gatsby and Tom and Daisy Buchanan is reported by Nick Carraway. What Fitzgerald loses in access to the other characters’ thoughts, he gains in tone, subtlety, and nuance from the richness and subjectivity of his limited first-person narrator’s view:

Through the filter of Nick’s perspective, the story gains subjectivity and color.

Use a limited point of view to create humor and irony.

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses a limited first-person narrator who playfully walks the line between what is real and what is fiction:

Compared to Fitzgerald’s first-person narrator, Twain’s narrator is more central to the story, but he is also less trustworthy. Huck’s limited perspective—that of an “unsivilized,” mischievous, naive, but essentially good-hearted teenage boy—results in his frequently misreporting the motives of the duplicitous and corrupt adults he encounters, a misapprehension that serves as the book’s principal source of irony and humor. His gullibility, however, is punctuated by moments of keen insight and realization. Although both Huck and Jim are taken in by the stories told by the Duke and the King, and are “so glad and proud” to have them on board the raft with them, Huck soon recognizes the two men as imposters:

Here, and throughout the book, the narrative tension is created by the interplay among three perspectives: what the narrator perceives to be real, what the reader suspects to be real, and what the author actually thinks. When these three perspectives converge, as they do at different points in the story, the author speaks through his narrator to the reader with heightened intensity and authority.

Use contrasting points of view to add interest.

Sometimes your reader will enjoy the contrast between two sharply differing points of view. The contrast is a pleasing reminder of how much we differ in our perceptions and experiences, a reminder of the quirkiness of human nature, of what it is to be human. “I was quite pleased with the stylishness of my new golf outfit,” you might write. “My children, of course, thought I looked ridiculous.” Or, to turn the tables: “The engine hummed with power and the car leaned into the curve as though it were holding the road in a tight embrace, to Scott’s delight and his mother’s alarm.” In an essay comparing her own experience with pregnancy with that of the mother of Jesus, a student in one of my classes wrote: “Being told by an angel that she was pregnant had to be a perplexing moment, one that is difficult to fathom. It makes my moment of watching the stick turn blue seem meager.”

Use a persona for effect.

All writing involves a degree of role-playing. When we write a letter of application, we assume the role of the experienced, eager, and successful worker. When we write the minutes of a meeting, we assume the role of the objective, detail-oriented, precise observer. In narrative writing, however, role-playing tends to be more subtle, and the disparity between what is reported and what the reader perceives to have actually taken place is sometimes more pronounced. Adopting a particular point of view to achieve one’s purpose is integral to the genre, and the reader is more consciously aware of possible disparity between the author’s true voice and the author’s assumed voice. The fictitious voice is known as the persona, which, as Abrams reminds us, is “the Latin word for the mask worn by actors in the classical theater.”

The degree of similarity or dissimilarity between the author and persona depends on the type of writing and the individual work. As Abrams points out, personas vary from “entirely fictional characters very different from their authors” to speakers in autobiographical works “where we are invited to attribute the voice we hear, and the sentiments it utters,” to the author. Part of the complication (and the fun) of interpreting literature arises from the fact that the narrator’s point of view may or may not coincide with the author’s point of view. The writer’s challenge is to create intrigue; the reader’s is to determine the degree of similarity or divergence between the two points of view and, based on that determination, to interpret the author’s true message.

Maintain a Consistent Point of View

Once you have established your point of view, stay with it. As I pointed out when discussing parallel structure in chapter four, the reader expects consistency. Unexpected shifts in person, subject, voice, and tense interfere with the coherent presentation of thought. It isn’t that you can’t use more than one person in a particular piece of writing, but that you should not switch back and forth without good reason. Here are two things you can do to create and maintain a sense of consistency:

Exercise your first-person option early on.

Your reader assumes you are writing in the third person unless you indicate otherwise. If you are thinking in the first person, use I or we in your opening, or at least relatively early on. If you wait until your closing to use I or we, the reader will be surprised by what appears to be a shift in person. In an article written in the third person on how acid rain is affecting the water quality of the Great Lakes, for example, don’t surprise your reader by concluding, “As you consider the implications of the trends I have described, I’m sure you will find them as disturbing as I do.”

Maintain unity in narration.

Despite the number and complexity of your options in narration, your point of view is—or at least should be—readily apparent to your reader. As with other types of writing, once you have declared your point of view, you should maintain it throughout your narrative. This consistency gives your story focus and coherence.

For deliberate effect, however, you can add complexity and richness to your story by telling it from more than one character’s point of view, as William Faulkner does in As I Lay Dying, Louise Erdrich does in The Beet Queen, and Ernest Hemingway does in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” In each of these stories the perspective shifts not only from character to character, but even to an animal (a wounded lion). These sorts of shifts, however, are an intentional narrative device and should be thought of as an exception to the rule.

Use Point of View to Your Advantage in Persuasive Writing

What is the most appropriate and effective tone in persuasive writing? Is it unabashed assurance? Is it hesitant uncertainty?

In persuasive writing, moderately stated claims usually carry the most weight. Depending on your audience and material, the most effective tone lies somewhere between confidence without arrogance and diffidence without timidity.

Know when to hedge and when to insist.

As I discussed in chapter one, modifiers intended to qualify or intensify a statement are sometimes “hollow” or devoid of meaning, and thus a source of wordiness. When used properly, however, these modifiers are an important means of creating a reasonable, measured tone and a more accurate statement.

“Each profession has its own idiom of caution and confidence,” writes Joseph Williams in Style. Your persuasiveness “depends a good deal on … how successfully you tread the rhetorical line between timidity and arrogance.” (And as Williams also points out, he chose to qualify that statement with the phrase a good deal on.)

You have been taught that good writing is vigorous writing and that you should present your points forcefully and emphatically. But you can lose an argument by overstating your case. Sometimes you need to qualify your assertions to make them credible.

Here are some examples of hedges and intensifiers, as well as two common problems associated with each:

Hedges are used to qualify assertions. Common hedges include usually, sometimes, perhaps, apparently, in some respects, seem, and appear. As Williams points out, “The verbs suggest and indicate are particularly useful in making a claim about which you are less than 100 percent certain, but confident enough to propose.” Compare “The evidence proves we need to adopt my proposal” with “The evidence suggests we need to adopt my proposal.” Compare “This trend demonstrates that small businesses are more competitive” with “This trend indicates that small businesses are more competitive.” But sometimes you can overdo it. Watch for two patterns:

• Overqualification creates a tone of uncertainty and timidity. Compare “In certain circumstances it seems fairly likely that a confident tone might carry your argument” with “A confident tone can carry your argument.” Compare “Excuses mean almost nothing to the customer” with “Excuses mean nothing to the customer.”
• Hollow hedges are meaningless expressions such as rather, somewhat, sometimes, virtually, and actually. As with all modifiers, you need to distinguish between those that convey meaning and those that do not. Often context makes the difference. Read the following sentences out loud, first with and then without the italicized words. “We are rather concerned about your tardiness.” “We are at a virtual crossroads.” “Our count actually varies from yours.”

Intensifiers are used to create emphasis. Common intensifiers include indeed clearly, absolutely, unquestionably, invariably, always, every, any, and all. Compare “Rapid growth causes inflation” with “Rapid growth invariably causes inflation.” Compare “A good writer needs a good editor” with “Every good writer needs a good editor.” Again, watch for two patterns:

• Overintensification or overstatement may lead your reader to question your reasonableness or fair-mindedness. Compare “Tone is absolutely everything” with “Tone is everything.” Compare “Every faculty member is against redefining tenure” with “Nearly every faculty member is against redefining tenure.” Compare “We never make mistakes” with “We rarely make mistakes.” As these examples suggest, absolutes are always problematic. (Don’t you think?)
• Hollow intensifiers come in two varieties: redundant (basic fundamentals, end result, final outcome, important essentials) and meaningless (effectively, certainly, altogether, literally). For the latter group, good usage again is determined by context. Read the following sentences with and without the italicized words. “These are the important essentials of persuasive writing.” “This effectively limits our ability to respond quickly.” “Your description is altogether fitting.” “We took very immediate action.” “When asked to work overtime, he literally exploded”—a messy scene, as you can imagine. Note that “She literally fell off her chair” means she in fact fell off her chair.

Use Point of View for Special Effect

Although you often write to express what you think and reveal how you feel, you don’t necessarily say what you think and feel directly. In fact, the more comfortable you are with disparity, incongruity, and irony, the wider your range of expression and the more engaging you are likely to be as a writer.

Use disparity to create humor and irony.

Humor takes its effect in large part from incongruity in perspective. Often, the more sharply drawn the difference between what is anticipated and what actually occurs, the more humorous the effect. As I discussed in chapter four, one method for emphasizing incongruity is to create an expectation and then deliberately fail to meet it, as Douglas Adams did when he allegedly said, “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer.”

Disparity in point of view accounts for the effect produced by a particular type of humor called irony. Irony can take many forms, but the two principal ones are verbal (or Socratic, which I discussed in chapter five) and structural (or situational). In verbal irony, the reader senses a difference between literal meaning and intended meaning. In structural irony, the reader senses a difference between what is perceived to be true—often by a naive narrator like Huckleberry Finn—and what is actually true. Both types of irony, as well as humor in general, involve working on more than one level of meaning, an approach that appeals to the reader’s intelligence and playfulness.

Use the you viewpoint to involve your reader.

Sometimes referred to as direct address and the you viewpoint, the second person provides an effective means of emphasizing and involving the reader. Referring to your reader’s particular interests, concerns, motivations, or feelings, especially in your openings and closings, is a good way to recognize your reader as an individual and make your message seem more relevant and interesting.

Use anecdotes to create sympathy for your perspective.

As I mentioned in chapter six, anecdotes can be used as a means of explanation, clarification, and persuasion. Because they invite the reader to see things from the storyteller’s point of view, they tend to create sympathy—or at least understanding—for that perspective.

Use a personal point of view to reveal your feelings.

When you are writing in the first person, think carefully about how much distance you want to create between yourself (or your persona) and your reader. The trend in modern writing is to give the reader a close, personal look. Generally, the more forthright you are in expressing your thoughts, feelings, and emotions, the stronger reaction you will elicit from your reader. This advice does not mean that you should write without subtlety (or irony, for that matter), but that you should take a definite position. Let the reader feel your presence. Don’t hide behind your words. Have the courage to let the reader know who you are.

Create a persona to accomplish your purpose.

As I explained before, in narrative writing, the narrator’s voice and the writer’s voice are never exactly the same. Through a variety of techniques and devices, the writer reveals the degree of difference between persona and true self. To some extent, this difference cannot be overcome entirely. Even in the most brutally honest confessional writing, there is still an element of contrivance and artifice.

Given that all writing is to a degree fictitious—writing, after all, can only represent reality, it can never be reality—it makes sense to use the element of artifice to your advantage. At times you will want to project an image of yourself that is as close to your true self as you can possibly make it. But at other times you will want to base your persona on your purpose and your assessment of how your reader is likely to respond to that created self. If portraying yourself as polite and respectful is more likely to accomplish your goals, present yourself as polite and respectful. If portraying yourself as frustrated and angry is more likely to accomplish your goals, present yourself as frustrated and angry.

Develop the persona you would like to be.

In addition to using persona to achieve a specific goal in a particular piece of writing, you can use this fictional representation of yourself in a way that has far-reaching implications for you, not only as a writer but also as a person. As John Steinbeck once said, “I can say now that one of the big reasons [for writing] was this: I instinctively recognized an opportunity to transcend some of my personal failings—things about myself I didn’t particularly like and wanted to change but didn’t know how.” As you re-create yourself in writing, consider who you want to be. When you write, you have an opportunity to cultivate an image of yourself, to imagine the person you would like to become in real life.

To create a persona—to explore the similarities and differences between real and imagined people, and between your real self and your imagined self—is to explore some of the more interesting and subtle issues in writing. When you write, you create, and in creating you acquire a kind of unlimited power. You can be anyone you want to be. It’s a marvelous freedom. Have fun with it.