Write from a Different Viewpoint

Today I've been working on a short story I wrote some time ago. I thought it worked and it was quite a good story, and other writers I trust liked it too, but after it was rejected by a magazine I had another look at it and thought about what I could do to make it work better. What I chose to do was to alter the viewpoint.

Viewpoint in fiction writing refers to whose eyes you see the story through. The same events will seem very different when experienced by the various people involved. Adopting a particular character's viewpoint can allow us access to what that character knew and how they felt, but it can also be limiting - how can we write about events to which the character did not witness and had no knowledge of?

The story I was working on today was written from the point of view of a ten-year old girl, which was useful in that it allowed me to really show how passionate she was about what she wanted - she was desperate to learn the clarinet. But I felt that maybe my characterisation of her and her father wasn't strong enough and it was quite limiting to see everything from her viewpoint especially as she was very young.

So I had the idea of re-writing the story from the point of view of her big sister. She can let us see some of the same events happening, but being that bit older she has a more sophisticated understanding of them. Writing from her point of view also allows me to add a touch of humour to the story and to explore the family dynamics a bit more.

The writers' self-help group that is going to meet on Tuesday is going to read both versions, so hopefully I will find out then if my strategy has worked.

Meanwhile it's worth bearing in mind this approach - if you have a piece of writing that isn't quite working, try writing it from another viewpoint and see what effect it has on the story. It's worth a try. Keep your original version safe too, in case you decide it was better after all.

Is It All Right?

These past few weeks, I've frequently opened my e-mail box and found a note from one of my students saying, 'I've had a go at writing a radio drama/autobiographical piece/short story, but I don't know if it's all right. Would you take a look at it for me?'

Often I find the writer has been worrying about nothing - the piece they've sent me is really promising. Maybe it needs a few little tweaks or there are some odd spelling mistakes or a bit of wonky punctuation. Maybe it needs quite a bit more work done on it. But whatever my verdict on the piece, I'm always pleased to see that they've been trying something new.

That's the thing about writing. It's usually better to have something rather than nothing. Even if you're at the very, very start of your journey as a writer, or if you were having a really bad day when you put pen to paper, the very fact that you have put pen to paper is a good thing.

A piece of writing isn't like a silk blouse which you could ruin irrevocably with a faulty seam, an uneven hem. If you do need to redo it, it won't show needle marks where you've unpicked the fabric, done a nip here and a tuck there. If you've trimmed away too much, you can always add extra and nobody will ever see the join.

You can afford to take risks with your writing. It's all part of the learning process. No risks, play it safe all the time and you'll develop at the pace of a racing snail. Experiment, try out a few new forms, a few genres that you may have thought were beyond you, and you'll be amazed at what you can come up with. You may even find that your forte turns out to be something completely different from what you first thought of.

I have a card pinned above my desk, which contains a quotation by the German poet, Goethe. It says:
'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and
magic in it.'

Dare you be bold in your writing. Dare to take risks. Dare to try something new. Try it, and discover the magic for yourself.