Work for Week 8: ‘point of view’

‘Point of view’ covers a variety of things.

·         Who narrates -   first person or third person.

·         Overall attitude and tone of narration -   naïve narrator, doesn’t realise what’s happening;  cynical narrator;   suicidal narrator.  Slick and witty narrator

·         the ‘camera’ angle from which a scene, person, object is seen  -   creating a sense of the room by focusing on one object in it,  the sense of a person by focusing on one characteristic/item of clothing.

·         How we get into the mind’s of characters in third-person narration -  by the narrator reporting what their thoughts are;  by giving their thoughts;   by the narrator ‘guessing’ their thoughts;  by the narrator making them do and say things which ‘betray’ their thoughts.

Free Indirect Discourse

       This is where the third person narrator seamlessly takes over the ‘voice’ of  the main character

You could say:       

Jenny watched her husband talking to Natalie.  She realised that they were lovers. 

Or you could move into her mind with

Jenny watched her husband talking to Natalie.  My god, they’re lovers! 

           

Edit a passage from the work you’re doing, in which you have one of the character’s thinking.   To see how it works, do the thinking through free indirect discourse.