The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes by Jack M Bickham Read Free Book Online Page B

story of a mountain-climbing expedition in Tibet, you can't very well put the viewpoint inside a child who never gets outside of Topeka, Kansas.)
    Beyond this point, however, other factors must be considered. Readers like to worry through their stories. They'll worry most about the viewpoint character. And what are readers likely to worry about most? Whether the character with the most important goal will reach that goal . Therefore it follows that you should give the viewpoint to the character who has the goal motivation that makes the story go... the character who will be in action toward some worthwhile end... the story person with the most to win or lose in the story action.
    This character—the one threatened at the outset who vows to struggle—will be the character who ultimately is most moved by what takes place. That's why some fiction theorists say the viewpoint should be invested in the character who will be most changed by the story action.
    It has been pointed out, however, that it's an inevitable result in fiction that the viewpoint character and the moved character will become one and the same. If you don't start out planning your story that way, it will either end up that way—or the story will be a flop. Because the viewpoint character is the focus of all the story's actions and meanings, the viewpoint character must become the moved character; it can be no other way.
    What does this mean for you as a writer working with viewpoint? For one thing, it means that you simply can't write a story in which the viewpoint is put inside a neutral observer. It won't work. Even in a novel like The Great Gatsby , the character Gatsby ultimately is not the most important character. Nick Carraway is the one who is finally moved... changed... made to see a different vision of the world, and so decides to go back to the Midwest at the end of the story. Nick is the narrator, the viewpoint character, and finally the story is his, and the meaning derived from his sensibilities, whatever the novel may be titled.
    To sum up, then, this is what I meant when I say you mustn't forget whose story it is:
    • Every story must be told from a viewpoint inside the action.
    • Every story must have a clearly dominant viewpoint character.
    • The viewpoint character must be the one with the most at stake.
    • Every viewpoint character will be actively involved in the plot.
    Probably since the dawn of time, beginning writers have wrestled with these principles, hoping to find a way around them. They seem harsh and restrictive. But after you have worked with them a while, you will find them to be very useful in focusing your story. A storyteller has plenty to worry about without wondering whose story it is, or from what vantage point the reader is supposed to experience the story! And, even more to the point from a practical standpoint, you might as well accept viewpoint as a central—perhaps the central—device of fiction. You can't escape it. It's simply at the center of how fiction works on readers.
    You mustn't forget.

13. Don't Fail to Make the Viewpoint Clear
    Let's suppose you're writing a story about Bob, and you have decided that he is the viewpoint character. How do you make sure that your handling of his viewpoint is as powerful as it can possibly be?
    The first thing you must do is imagine the story as it would seem to Bob, and only to Here you really get to exercise your imagination.
    As you write the story, you the writer must become Bob. You see what he sees, and nothing more. You know what he knows, and nothing more. You hear only what he hears, feel only the emotions he feels, plan only what he can plan, and so on. When you start a scene in which Bob walks into a large room, for example, you do not imagine how the room looks from some god-like authorial stance high above the room, or as a television camera might see it; you see it only as Bob sees it, coming in... perhaps first being aware only of the light from