That's right. I do not mean to welcome you to The People. Sorry. Unless by "The People" you mean persons who read my blog, in which case, welcome.
What I am struggling with is who will be the eyes, ears, nose, and other senses of my novel.
I could stick my reader in the head of one character via first or third person narration and let them experience the world of my novel via that one character. Or, I could bounce at will among heads. I am confident that you could find a discussion of viewpoint in any number of texts that I have mentioned, or even in the Writing Excuses podcast.
My point is more elementary than that. Who is the best person/ are the best people to tell the tale.
If your main character is insane, they might not be the best choice, unless you want your narrative to sound like a stream-of-consciousness nightmare:
I woke up and the walls floated and I floated in the walls and the bed was a bloated shadow floating below and everything floated the cat ate my eyes and the dog ran away with my tongue I cannot talk and I hear the ants in the walls and they singaboutmedyingandIhatemysocks--they itch so much.
I have seen narratives that read like this, only more skillfully polished and thus more convoluted and difficult. I would not want to write like that for 300 pages, let alone read about it for that same length.
Now, some mentally unbalanced or just plain evil characters are not so hard to read, but just as unsavory. If you had to live inside the mind of Jigsaw, Hannibal the Cannibal, or a Demon (like C.S. Lewis' Screwtape) for 300 pages, would you have a fun time or would you hate writing after about two days.
If you're writing aliens, do you do any service by relaying the directives of the hive mind as narrative:
Eat people. Plant alien spawn. Kill.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Would it not be more fun to see through the eyes of the hunted:
The clatter of scythe-claws echoed as my finger itched on the trigger. Ceiling, walls, or floor. No way to be sure. I flicked on my night-vision with the barest thought. That mouth and those teeth--no one told me hell existed on 3.2.20011, Periphery World.
Functionally, the aliens might be the focus of the whole narrative, but the story is better told by the humans.
Part of the fun of fiction is that readers get to live in the head of people or things that they never would, like a dog, an alien, a human-animal hybrid, provided they don't sparkle (Vampire, Werewolf, genetic mutation like Dren from that creepy movie I don't want to watch).
I am just suggesting that writer's need to be conscious of why they pick certain characters as viewpoint characters.
I always thought it would have been fascinating to get inside the head of Gandalf or Dumbledore, Sauron or Voldemort. To my recollection, it never happened.
Why?
If someone is very smart, wicked, good, or even otherworldly, the illusion of their otherworldiness, extreme wickedness, intelligence, or goodness is preserved for some authors by seldom seeing the world through their eyes.
The more alien the character (be he or she god or devil), better this character be known by actions and words through the eyes of someone else.
If your fascinating central character is an enigma in some way, picking a side character to observe them for much of the novel might be an appropriate choice.
What about picking among mere mortals. If you followed my previous post, you may have gleaned the impression that no fictional character in a main role is entirely unexceptional. Han Solo may have not had the force, but he was quick with words and his blaster and had the resilience to withstand torture. He exhibited a rather physical strength, while Luke's battle was rather metaphysical and somewhat mystical.
Three quick guidelines before I end:
1. Pick the people who are going to be around.
If someone is not there to see an event, they can't know that it happened. I want my viewpoint characters to actually have a life and be where the action is. Your toddler viewpoint character would not be at the board meeting.
2. Pick the people who would/would not get what's happening.
If you want your characters to understand, partially understand, or not understand events, then that will dictate who is narrating. A murderer might understand exactly why he killed his victim. A family member of the victim might be too distraught to care or too vengeful to see the facts for what they are. A detective would see the killer's point of entry into the room, the way the victim died, the possible motives for the killing, etc. Is it more important that the reader grasp the emotional impact of the scene? Then pick the bereaved family member. Is it more important that the reader understand the facts of the crime? Pick the detective. Is it more important that the reader understand the motive behind the crime? Pick the murderer. Everyone that is a viewpoint character should have a stake in what is happening, in my opinion.
3. Pick someone who would actually be there.
If your female lead is crying in front of a mirror in a work restroom, her male boss will not likely walk in and ask what's wrong unless he wants a lawsuit. Grandma likely won't be at the Soundgarden concert. An avowed atheist will not enter a church under most circumstances. If a scene is happening somewhere, make sure your viewpoint character has a believable reason/excuse for being there. Anyway, there are a few days left to pick the person whose head I will start in. Whoever it is, I better know them well.
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