My perspective
Filed under Writing Journal on August 24, 2004
Tagged: perspective, Terry Brooks, third person
I mentioned yesterday that I was re-reading The Sword of Shannara. There were a couple things that immediately jumped out at me about the storytelling, one of which I want to talk about today (I’ll save the other for later).
Brooks uses a third person, omniscient perspective in writing this book. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t read a book written from that perspective for a while, or because I use third person, limited in my writing, but I found it very confusing to see inside one character’s head and then suddenly jump to another character. It felt unnatural, and sometimes I lost sight of what character was being focused on. Of course, that could also be due to some pronoun confusion (remember, this was Terry Brooks’ first book).
For folks who aren’t familiar with what I’m talking about, perspective is the point of view from which a story is told. Third person, omniscient uses a point of view that sees all and knows all. Third person, limited focuses the story through the eyes of a particular character, giving you only their inner thoughts and only the events and descriptions that they see.
My confusion aside, I realized something about my writing. I prefer the third person, limited perspective. I like the way it forces me to tell a story, and it is easier for me to write from that point of view. Both my short story for Realms of the Dragons 2 and Maiden of Pain are written in third person, limited, and I imagine I will write most–if not all–of my Chronicles of Arunda books that way as well.
