New Point of View – First Person VicariousPosted by John Woodington on July 23rd, 2010
So I’m sitting here thinking, “what can I do to bring out this particular narrative idea in my novel,” when all of a sudden, I get a light bulb idea, which leads me to rewrite the ending of my story. I decided to break a cardinal rule of writing, the one that says you should never shift the point of view of your story. Well I tried it. And so far, I kinda like it. The shift only occurs for about ten pages, but it’s something weird and different and I like the heck out of it. The first person narrator/main character vicariously experiences something that another character is experiencing, and the narrative captures that. It’s basically a first person narrator briefly hedging his way into some sort of third person omniscience, without ever leaving his own head, of course. I can break rules, but I can’t destroy them.
I’m hoping this particular risk pays off. Right now, I’m feeling like I need to do something coolish and new to get this story recognized, and I figure I may as well throw caution to the ether until somebody tells me it sucks. Or until a consensus of people who have good, objective judgment tells me it sucks. Breaking the rules of good-sense English is not usually my bag, so this is out there for me, and I kinda dig it.
It reminds me of a birthday card I saw earlier this year which went something like this:
[picture of two guys]
“Where’s the party at?”
“Dude, that’s incorrect grammar. You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition.”
[open the card]
Where’s the party at, b*tch?”
Now that’s just good English right there. Can’t fault ‘em for fixing their own lexical aberration, right?
Happy Friday.