Finding My Narrative Voice: Part One

One thing I've struggled with while writing is finding the right voice for whatever piece I'm working on at the time. Do I use first person? Third person? Then there's the question third person with an omniscient viewpoint vs. third person with a limited viewpoint. One of my favorite book series is Harry Potter. In most chapters, with a few notable exceptions, J.K. Rowling chose to make the narrative in the third person but from Harry's view only. He didn't know what was happening in the rest of the school when he wasn't there. There are a handful of scenes scattered throughout the last half of the book that Harry isn't present for. JKR makes this break from her normal narrative voice to make show that the war is bigger than Harry himself and to remind us that while he is fighting Voldemort from on the ground and in his head, others are fighting too.

One of my favorite examples of a change in narrative voice while not cutting away from the main character's point of view is Patricia Briggs use of this story telling mechanism in her book Frost Burned. This story is the 7th in her Mercy Thompson series. The story is told in the first person from Mercy's point of view. Partway through Frost Burned Mercy encounters a magical artifact that is intended to steal her will. She doesn't notice it happening. The reader doesn't either until a secondary character picks up on her odd behavior. During the time that Mercy isn't herself and does whatever anyone tells her to do, Briggs changes over to the third person point of view. Mercy is still there but we aren't really inside her head. Mercy's encountered will-power stealing magic before and during those times we were still right inside her head with her thoughts in the first person. But she realized it was happening last time. This time it was more subtle, so we weren't aware of it either until someone tells us. This works especially well since Briggs makes the change in voice from one chapter to the next. The reader doesn't see the new third person narrative bump up against the normal first person narrative. I should have noticed because the chapter with the narrative break is titled "Adam" (the name of Mercy's husband) and none of the other chapters have titles. But the typface is simple and understated. It doesn't draw attention to itself until it's pointed out to the reader more blatantly. Then we go back and re-read the passage and go "wow she even changed the point of view without us knowing."

It was pretty cool and really effective, especially when Mercy breaks the magic with the help of her friends and we see it go back to first person.

First person isn't my favorite tense to write in and it's not always my favorite to read, unless it actually works for the story. It works in the Mercy Thompson series because she is literally our guide in her supernatural world. She's a shapeshifter herself so it makes sense for her to tell us about the world in her own words. In Harry Potter we learn about the world along side Harry. He isn't the one guiding us. Ron, Hagrid, Dumbledore and Hermione guide us with their knowledge.

So when I attempted my first novel-length piece of writing I had to make a tough decision: first person or third? Limited perspective or an all-knowing narrator? I'll explain what I chose and why in part two of this blog post.