Week 12: The Importance of Point of View

Imagine your favorite story (mine is a forever toss up between Jurassic Park--book or movie--Silence of the Lambs, The Empire Strikes Back, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, or The Catcher in the Rye). To be honest, I could keep going, but I digress.

Take one of your favorite stories, we'll use The Empire Strikes Back for this example. Looking at the story, it is firmly told from Luke Skywalker's point of view. Sure, there are moments where we drift into Princess Leia or even Han Solo. But most of the story is told through Luke's perspective. His whiny, foolhardy, sophomoric perspective. Anyway...

Let's say that The Empire Strikes Back switches the point of view for a reimagining of the classic Space Opera. Let's say they release a novel in which the story is told from Darth Vader's POV.

The story starts to shift. The film no longer begins on Hoth. On Luke getting lost and imprisoned by a space yeti. There's no scene with Han Solo blasting open a tauntaun and decrying the odor of their viscera. There's no banter between Han and Leia and their endless need to needle each other. Most importantly, there's no awkward moment in which an incestuous kiss occurs and only in hindsight do the characters realize the atrocity of their actions.

Instead, the film would open in an Empire star fleet. Perhaps the Empire is still reeling from the loss of the Death Star. All those hours of work, all those employees lost, all the paperwork to fill out. So now, the Empire and Darth Vader are determined to stop the pesky rebels. They are closing in on Hoth and they plan to attack as soon as they are in the planet's orbit. Darth Vader will stop at nothing to find the young jedi, even if he does have an inkling of sentimentality when he draws nearer, which makes him wonder if the Emperor told him the truth about the fate of his children all those years ago on Mustafar.

With one slight switch of POV, the story becomes completely different. It is no longer a tale of rebels contending with a seemingly insurmountable, bureaucratic force. It is a narrative about a man who contemplates the nature of his actions. Is he following the Emperor's orders? Or will he sacrifice himself to save his children?

When developing a story, take mindful consideration of point of view. Who is telling the story? And in deciding who is telling the story, it will determine what the reader sees -- what events they have access to, what internal thoughts and machinations they experience alongside the character.

You have to make the conscious decision to tell the story from Luke's POV or Darth Vader's and realize how it will affect the story the reader will experience.