Viewpoint control is a subject that tries the patience of many a fledgling writer. If there’s a maxim more imperative than “One viewpoint per scene and no head-hopping,” it must be “Show, don’t tell.” But the latter has been harped upon sufficiently for a century or two, so let’s expend a few keystrokes on modern trends in the management of narrative viewpoint.
Just now, we’re seeing quite a lot more first-person fiction than was common a few decades ago. In part that arises from the indie movement itself: less experienced writers will usually fare better with first person than with other modes, because its limitations are self-enforcing. But in equal or greater part it’s because of the explosion of adventure fiction of several kinds. The reader’s thrills from such stories are amplified by the closest possible bonding with the protagonist, which is to the advantage of first person narration.
Stories written in the third person offer more challenges. The “real” narrator is off-stage; he tells the tale through the eyes of one or more characters. From the very beginning of such an undertaking, the writer must confront several important questions:
- Third person singular or third person multiple?
- Third person limited or third person telepathic?
- If telepathic, should thoughts be presented in direct or indirect fashion?
- How much of the viewpoint character’s thoughts should be made an explicit part of the story?
- When is it proper to conceal the viewpoint character’s thoughts from the reader?
The answers cannot be prescribed in a general way. The only criterion is what pleases the reader — and you won’t know that until your book is in his hot little hands, now will you?
Every now and then a smattering of fiction appears written in the second person. This abomination is so plainly foul in the eyes of God that we shall pass over it in silent horror. Anyway, it’s never been at all popular with readers.
A form that largely languishes in disuse today is the omniscient mode of narration: the writer allows himself absolute fluidity of viewpoint among his characters, without concern for scene boundaries or the immiscibility of characters’ thought streams. This narrative form was once more frequently encountered than it is today, though it hasn’t disappeared completely. It simply doesn’t suit the great majority of contemporary tales, nor the great majority of contemporary writers and their readers.
As writers learn more about how to snag and retain the reader’s attention, we tend to discard those practices that are less successful. Omniscient viewpoint tends to deny the reader one of the experiences he most enjoys: bonding emotionally with a particular protagonist. If the reader is more likely to become a fan of writers whose stuff is written in first person or third person, then writers who choose those narrative modes will outsell those who choose omniscient mode. Emulation of the successful and the desire of publishers’ editors not to take up residence in abandoned refrigerators and packing crates will dictate what follows.
While omniscient viewpoint can be quite well suited to a highly dramatic story painted on a grand canvas, such stories are difficult to handle narratively for other reasons. They require a grandiloquence and a breadth of imagination few writers can maintain comfortably. We get one Tom Clancy per century — and note that even he tended to veer into omniscient mode only rarely in the course of an otherwise third-person narrative, and to switch back quickly in the usual course of things.
Impersonal mode — omniscient without exposing the reader to any character’s thoughts — which was favored by Shirley Jackson, has even fewer devotees than omniscient, for the same reasons as omniscient mode but magnified. Neither of these approaches is illegal yet, but the paucity of practitioners, even in indie fiction, should tell us something about current tastes and more.
Those are your choices. The one you elect to employ should be the one that allows you to write most naturally — i.e., the most comfortably. All else is a matter of taste and your readers’ responses, neither of which any essayist could usefully address.
(Though it’s off the main topic, I shall close with a few words about the importance of careful proofreading: The last sentence in the paragraph above read “about more than testes alone” before I reviewed it. There’s a moral in there, somewhere.)