Perspective and Parents' Names, Part Two

Last time, we discussed the subtle perspective error that can arise from calling your perspective character’s parents by their names in the prose—it creates a subtle implication of distance to the relationship. It’s a small problem, but one that writers should be aware of.

If you’re looking for ways of dealing with this problem (beyond simply calling the character “his mother” throughout the entire story), here’s a few tips and ideas:

Call the parents what you want, and make the relationship fit. There are a lot of reasons why a character might call their parents by name. You can easily work one of those into the relationship between your protagonist and their parent.

I’ve read plenty of stories where one of the central conflicts was between the protagonist and their disapproving/distant parent. If you’re going to have a conflict between the two of them anyway, why not ramp it up slightly? Perhaps your protagonist calls his father by name in order to upset his father. Perhaps he’s been so long estranged from his father that it feels odd to call him “dad” now, so he thinks of his father by name.

Perhaps your protagonist works with her mother, and her mother is concerned about potential accusations of nepotism. She might have the protagonist call her by name to avoid any appearance of favoritism. Perhaps there are other social circumstances behind the decision.

Or, barring external motivators, perhaps they’re simply the type of parents who prefer that their children call them by name.

Killing off the parents is always an option, too, though it can be a bit overdone. 

Call the parents by a different title. It often works surprisingly well to simply call the parent characters “Mom” and “Dad” without bothering to distinguish “my mom” or “so-and-so’s dad.” This only works if we’re very deep inside the perspective of the protagonist—usually because they are narrating in first-person perspective:

     I was ready to go, but mom was still loitering at the cash register, flirting with the perfume salesman. “Mom, we’re going to be late,” I called. She ignored me. Mom always got like that around cute guys.

This is particularly effective when your perspective character is a child (or an adult narrating their childhood).

Change the perspective. This is both the simplest and most time-consuming fix for the problem. Time-consuming, because if you’ve already written a significant portion of the story, it will require a bit of work to switch it to a new perspective. Simplest, because it fixes the problem without gimmicks or major adjustments to character relationships or plot.

The “Parent Name Problem” is most prevalent in third-person limited perspective, when we’re inside the head of the protagonist. If you switch to first-person, you can easily use the “Mom and Dad” approach above. Or, you can switch to a third-person omniscient narrator, who can tell us what is going on in your protagonist’s head while still referring to them by name without it being a perspective error.

Perspective Errors: Parents' Names

 First-person perspective and third-person limited perspective are probably the two most commonly-used perspectives in fiction. First-person is narrated by a character in their own words, while third-person limited places the audience directly inside the mind of the perspective character. In both cases, the language of the prose and what the narrative focuses on should be filtered through that character, as we’ve discussed before. We’ve also discussed perspective in relation to the name placeholders that you use to refer to characters. Today, we’ll look at a specific name-related perspective problem that writers encounter again and again.

The problem is this: perspective characters often have parents. That’s a good thing—not every protagonist should be an orphan. 

"One would think that Fiction's entire collection of protagonists had been recruited solely from her orphan asylums. Which we know is not the case."

But parents create a rather unique problem when it comes to names and name placeholders. Take a look at this example:

     Teri crouched on the top of the tall brick wall, watching for danger. There was no movement on the grounds below or in the manor ahead, and the narrow street behind her was clear of people in her direction.

     From her left, she heard a soft whistle. “Johanna, Luis,” Alina called to Teri’s parents, “we’re all clear. Come on up.”

     Teri gave a thumbs-up to her parents, and they silently scuttled out of the shadows across the street and up the rough face of the wall. They crouched beside her; Johanna bore a long rope coiled over her shoulder, and Luis carried a bag of thieves’ tools on his back.

     “Good job, you two,” Johanna whispered. “If you see anyone headed our way, signal us in the usual way.”

     “If we’re not back in twenty minutes, head back to the hideout,” Luis added. “We’ll catch up to you there.”

     Teri nodded. “Be careful on the skylight, dad.”

     Luis ruffled her hair with a smile and climbed down into the manor gardens.

     “I love you, my little girl,” Johanna whispered, giving Teri a quick hug.

     “I love you too, mom,” Teri whispered back as Johanna followed after Luis.

Do you see the problem? This passage is written in third-person limited perspective, and we’re inside Teri’s head. Now, Teri calls her parents “mom” and “dad” when she speaks. It is therefore logical to assume that she thinks of them that way, too—most children do. Most people do, for that matter. No matter how old we get, most of us think of our parents as “mom” and “dad.”  But in the passage above, Teri’s parents are referred to by name in the prose, even though we’re in Teri’s head.

Now, this is a very common difficulty, especially if your protagonist’s parents are prominent characters in the story. It can be very awkward and clunky to refer to them as “so-and-so’s mother” over and over again in the prose. For example:

     Teri handed her mother the bag. Her mother began to dig through it, frowning. “I want the two of you to stay here until I get back,” she said.

     Teri and Alina glanced at one another. “But you’ll need spotters,” Alina said. “It’s too dangerous for you to go alone.”

     Teri’s mother shook her head. “No. The two of you aren’t ready for this kind of job. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

     Teri placed her hand over her mother’s where she was holding the bag open. “Mom, please. Let us help.”

     Her mother sighed and hung her head for a moment. “Not this time, little girl,” she said. When she looked up, Teri was shocked to see that there were tears in her eyes. She’d never seen her mother cry.

That gets a little awkward, doesn’t it? Besides “her mother” being a bit of a long name placeholder, we're forced to repeat it more than we would her name (to avoid confusion between all of the instances of she and her that get thrown around with three female characters in the scene). We’re also forced to repeat Teri’s name a little more than looks good (otherwise, we’d create situations where the her in her mother would seem to be referring to Alina and not Teri—hence we say “Teri’s mother” in the third paragraph instead of “her mother.).

This problem is kind of a Catch-22. There tend to be problems whichever way you go.

Referring to the parents as “her mother” and “her father” thoughout the prose will be more true to life. But the larger the parents’ parts are, the more difficult this will make the writing.

Choosing to refer to the perspective’s characters by their names in the prose is an acceptable option, even if it is technically a small perspective error. Plenty of authors have done this in the past—for instance, if you read the first chapter of The Eye of the World (the first book of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series), you will see that Robert Jordan chose this method of dealing with the problem. Even though the perspective is third-person limited from Rand’s viewpoint, Rand’s father is referred to by name (Tam) in the prose. Most people don’t even notice anything unusual about it—and those who do notice the perspective error will quickly get used to it.

The problem with this approach is that it can create a subtle, unconscious distance between the perspective character and their parent. In the case of Rand and Tam, for instance (minor spoilers ahead), I was completely unsurprised when it was revealed that Tam was not Rand’s biological father. Rand was completely shocked by the revelation, but for years I could not figure out why it didn’t surprise me. Eventually, I pinpointed this as the reason—it is not uncommon for children or grown adults to refer to their adopted parents or step-parents by name, for a variety of reasons. The fact that the prose referred to Rand’s father by his first name even though we were in Rand’s head caused me to unconsciously label their relationship as an adoptive one rather than a biological one.

(This is in no way meant to disparage the relationships between children and their adoptive parents, of course. It is simply an observation of common patterns of speech and the situations in which they tend to appear.)

Now, is that a minor problem? Yes, probably. However, it is a problem that you ought to consider when approaching the problem of how to refer to your perspective character’s parents in the prose. 

Next time, we’ll discuss a few tips and possible alternate solutions to this problem.

Perspective Errors: Too Much Information

Another very common perspective error occurs when the author gives the audience too much information—that is, more information than the perspective character should have. For example, let’s say you’re reading a book written in third-person limited perspective from the viewpoint of a man named Sam, and you come across this passage:

     Sam glanced at the notebook on the table and then shook his head. “I won’t need it today,” he said, turning and walking out the door. Little did he know that, by leaving his notebook behind, he had just ensured that this would be the single worst day of his life.

Do you see the problem? Since this story is written in third-person limited perspective, we should only receive information that the viewpoint character has access to. Sam doesn’t know that he’s just ruined his day . . . the passage explicitly states that he doesn’t! Therefore, in giving us this information, the author has just made a perspective error—they leaped briefly from third-person limited to third-person omniscient narrator.

Generally, when an author makes a TMI perspective error, it’s because they’ve described the emotions, thoughts, or motivations of a non-viewpoint character:

     “I’ll be fine,” I said, kissing Emily on the cheek. “Go have a good day.”

     “Wait a second James,” she said, worried that I was still upset. “You’ll still call me at lunch, right?”

or described action that the viewpoint character cannot see:

     “I don’t want to go,” Missy said, thinking of the long drive and the awkward silences that would surely fill their conversation on the way. She turned away from Frank to look out the window at the storm. “It’s just going to get cancelled because of the weather, anyway.”

     Frank sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Well then, what do you want to do?”

In the first example, we’re in James’s perspective—therefore, we shouldn’t know that Emily is feeling worried. James can speculate that perhaps she is worried, or note that she looks worried; he can even say that he knows she’s worried, just as long as the action remains in his head rather than jumping into hers.

In the second example, Missy is our viewpoint character. She has just turned away from Frank, and therefore she cannot see when he runs a hand through his hair—and if she can’t see it, we shouldn’t be able to, either. 

Here are some options for how the previous examples could be fixed (italics for emphasis):

     “Wait a second James,” she said, probably worried that I was still upset. “You’ll still call me at lunch, right?”

     “Wait a second James,” she said. Her face still looked worried. “You’ll still call me at lunch, right?”

     “Wait a second James,” she said. I could tell that she was worried I was still upset. “You’ll still call me at lunch, right?”

     “I don’t want to go,” Missy said, thinking of the long drive and the awkward silences that would surely fill their conversation on the way. She looked out the window at the storm and then turned back to Frank. “It’s just going to get cancelled because of the weather, anyway.”

     Frank sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Well then, what do you want to do?”

     Frank sighed and stepped up beside her, running a hand through his hair. “Well then, what do you want to do?”

     Frank sighed. “Well then, what do you want to do?”

Overview: First-Person Perspective

I discussed here the most common perspectives and tenses that are seen in fiction writing. Over the next few weeks, we'll delve into each of these modes of writing with a little more specificity and discuss some of the strengths and foibles of each.  Today we'll look at first-person perspective.

A story told in first-person perspective is being told by one of the characters in the story, usually the central protagonist. Here's an example:

     I closed my eyes and jumped off of the roof, silently praying that Dall was as good a pilot as he claimed. The duke shouted in alarm, screaming for his men to stop me, and then his voice was drowned out in an angry rush of wind.
     I had been determined to keep my eyes closed as I fell, in hopes that I would be less afraid if I couldn't see the ground approaching. But it turns out that not knowing how far away the ground is was far more frightening than knowing. My eyes popped open after only a few seconds of falling.
    The ground wasn't nearly as far away as I would have liked, and for a brief moment I panicked; then Dall's skimcar appeared from around the side of the building. Dall waved at me from the cockpit as he pulled up alongside me, matching my pace. I reached out and grabbed the top of the car, my fingers clenching so hard that I thought they might actually bend the di-steel.
     Dall slowly maneuvered the skimcar beneath me and then slowed our descent. He slowed more abruptly than I would have liked, and I thudded into the cockpit with a grunt, spread-eagled. It wasn't bad enough that it hurt, but it did knock the wind from me.
     "Sorry, Joan" Dall said with that irritating grin of his, his voice muffled by the glasstic between us.
     "Just let me in!" I shouted.
     He shook his head. "Not until we come to a complete stop. Too dangerous otherwise."
     "Too dangerous?" I shrieked. "I just jumped off a three-hundred story building without knowing for sure that you were down here, and you think that would be too dangerous?"
      I should take a moment to mention that I'd had a little problem with heights ever since I was six years old, and Dall knew that perfectly well. He was just being a jerk.
     "You'll be fine out there for a minute or two," Dall replied, still grinning.
     "Two minutes?"

In the case of this example, one of the characters—Joan—is telling the story, as though she were sitting in front of us speaking. She uses "I" to refer to herself, marking this as first-person perspective.

So, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of first-person perspective?

Advantages

Intimate: Because the character is relating the story themselves, first-person perspective often creates a more close, intense, and intimate feel than other perspectives, and the action often feels more immediate.

Strong Personality: When a character is relating a story "in their own words," so to speak, it can often be much easier to get their personality across than it might have been in another perspective.

Unreliability: If you want to tell a story with an unreliable narrator, first-person perspective is often the way to go. Since the perspective character is telling the story, their opinions and prejudices can color the narrative, or they can even outright lie to the reader. This can make for some very interesting stories.

Info Dump: It's easier in first-person for your narrator to step away from the story for a moment to explain something that the reader needs to know; Joan did it near the end of our example.

Simplicity: First-person can often be one of the easiest perspectives to write without making perspective errors.

Disadvantages

Most limited perspective: Since one of the characters is telling the story, the author cannot relate anything that the main character cannot see. If you want your audience to know something, then your main character has to know. You can't just jump to someone else's head for a bit and then come back. (There are stories with multiple first-person perspectives, but these can be very tricky to write well.)
Difficult to explain character appearance:   After all, if I were sitting and telling you a story, I wouldn't need to explain what I look like, would I?  Look back over our example; there's not any information there on what Joan looks like, and it would be very awkward to try to fit in a description of her anywhere.
Difficult to make the audience worry for the character: Since first-person perspective requires the main character to be alive and well to tell the story, it is difficult to get your audience to worry about the safety of the narrator. How would the story be told, after all, if the main character weren't around to finish it?  This is particularly true of first-person stories told in the past tense.

      

Perspective and Tense Overview

Ah, perspective and tense. These are a vast and thorny topic—too vast for me to cover in only one blog post. So, for today, we’re simply going to run through what perspective and tense are and which of them are best for writing. Once we've established a solid understanding of what perspective and tense are, we'll be able to discuss the ways in which writers can make mistakes with them.

Perspective

Put simply, perspective means “point of view”—who is telling the story and in what manner. There are only a few perspectives from which a story should be told:

First Person

This is when your story is being told from the point of view of one of the characters. It’s usually easy to pick out—if the word “I” crops up a lot in the prose, than it’s probably first person.

Third Person Omniscient

This is when your story jumps from character to character, showing many points of view over the course of any given scene at once. There may be an implied narrator or there may not.

Third Person Limited

This is when your story is limited to the point of view of a single character at a time, but that character isn’t personally telling the story, as they are in first person. It is marked by frequent use of the words "he" or "she."

While it is technically possible to write a story from a different perspective (many choose-your-own-adventure stories are told in second person, for instance), it’s not something that should be done with any sort of regularity or without a very, very good reason.            

Tense

Perspective’s pernicious twin sister is tense. Tense is the “when” of the action. Did it already happen, or is it happening right now? When we’re speaking to one another, it is very easy to keep our tenses straight; but when you’re trying to string together a coherent set of several thousand to several hundred thousand words, tense can be difficult to keep track of.

Past Tense

Past tense stories are told as though they have already happened, finished, and are now being related to the reader.

Present Tense

Present tense stories are told as though they are currently happening (“Jason runs to the car” instead of “Jason ran to the car”). This is increasingly common in first-person stories but is very unusual in third-person.

When we combine our common modes of perspective and tense, we end up with four results that encompass the majority of literature:

First person, past tense: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Animorphs series by Katherine Applegate, the Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan

First person, present tense: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, Divergent by Veronica Roth

Third person omniscient, past tense: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, Anna Karenina and War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy, Dune by Frank Herbert

Third person limited, past tense: The Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

Over the next week or so, we'll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each of these narrative modes, and then we'll be set to discuss some of the many, many ways in which new writers tend to break their perspectives and tenses.

P.S.

Before we finish, a word of warning: many novice writers are tempted to look at a list like this and think, “But I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing. I want to be original! I’m going to write a novel in second-person perspective and future tense! That will get some attention.” To you, hypothetical reader who is even now nodding to yourself in confident satisfaction, I have one very important word: no.

Don’t do it. And because I’m afraid you won’t listen to me, I’m going to attempt to convey the gravity of that sentiment by isolating it as its own paragraph, capitalizing it, bolding it, and italicizing it.

NO.

I really can’t make it any clearer than that without opening up a live video chat with you and screaming it in your face. Do not attempt to write in a perspective/tense combination outside of the four that I’ve shown you here. You’re not the first person to think of that idea, not by a lo-o-o-o-ng shot. You won’t come across as clever and original, you’ll come across as amateur and inept. Editors won’t even read your story—they’ll take one look and go, “Second-person future? Why is this person wasting my time?” And then they’ll give your story to an intern and tell them to send you a rejection. I know they will, because I’ve seen editors do this, and I have done it myself.

Now, I know: There are some excellent and original books out there that are written in unusual narrative modes. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney is in second-person perspective, while Markus Zusak's The Book Thief and Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones are written in first-person omniscient. Maybe you’ve read something else that was written in an unusual narrative mode that just blew your socks off.  Great. Send it to me, I’d love to read it. 

But those stories are atypical. They probably got to print because the author was a well-known, respected professional with a history of turning out great work—the type of person that an editor can trust to not waste their valuable time. The type of writer who has learned the rules inside and out and now knows how to break them to spectacular effect. You’re not that person, not yet. For now, stick with the tried-and-true basics until you've mastered them inside and out.