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Viewpoint - and another thing...

WendyWendy
edited January 2006 in - Writing Problems

Comments

  • WendyWendy
    I have been reading the ponderings on viewpoints and they have been very useful. I have a viewpoint/narrative voice query - if that's the right definition! I have used a few different viewpoints in my novel, all in the third person, but whenever the main character is in the scene, I always write that scene through her eyes, even though we might have met another character through their eyes at another point in the story. My problem is this. When my protagonist (let's call her Susan) is in a scene with someone she knows as Mrs Smith, but we have met more 'intimately' as Vera in another scene, is she referred to in the scene with Susan as Vera or Mrs Smith? It's like having parent and offspring in a scene and seeing it through the daughter's eyes. Do we keep saying 'Her mother did this...' or refer to the mother by name? In a way that one is less difficult, because their relationship and the mother's name feel more interchangeable. Moving from 'Vera' to 'Mrs Smith' feels uncomfortable. Perhaps one uses Vera in general terms and Mrs Smith if it is directly linked to Susan's thoughts. Any ideas out there?
  • DEEDEE
    Yes. I'd certainly go for that. She's Mrs Smith when you're thinking as Susan; Vera when you're thinking as God. I have done it a few times in the unpublished blockbusters and found it works well when the two approaches are working smoothly together and are well differentiated - and dreadfully when they're not. So how you feel when you're writing it is a good clue - but isn't it always?
  • WendyWendy
    Hi both

    Thanks for that! I'll give it a go and see how it feels.
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