Writing and Selling the YA Novel (16 page)

This implicit contract between reader and narrator allows you as the writer to add multiple points of view if you wish. Since the narrator is the author, and the reader accepts that the author knows everything, there's no need to limit yourself to just one character's viewpoint. One common technique is to switch the focus back and forth between characters with each chapter. This can be done in first person as well. You could use two characters and go back and forth between their perspectives, as Rachel Gohn and David Levithan did in
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist,
or you could use a different character for each chapter throughout the novel as Ellen Wittlinger did in her novel
What's in a Name.
Using this type of narration can be a lot of fun when it's done well because it allows the reader to see the same events from multiple perspectives, and often each character adds his own unique twist to the plot.

THIRD-PERSON OMNISCIENT POINT OF VIEW

But what happens when there's no clear delineation between points of view? In the examples above, each chapter is still consistently focused throughout the narrative. What would happen if we wanted to shift between characters' points of view within a given page or paragraph?

Most of the time someone will mark the letters
POV
in the margin of your manuscript, meaning you should check to make sure you haven't made a mistake and your point of view remains consistent, but there is one occasion when you're allowed to jump back and forth between characters without any clear delineation between these sections. This is when you're using the omniscient point of view.

According to the
New Oxford American Dictionary,
the word
omniscient
means "knowing everything; having very extensive knowledge." If you get confused about what qualifies as the omniscient voice, go back to the meaning of the word. When you use the omniscient point of view, your narrator knows, well. . .
everything.
She can tell you what every character in the book is thinking and doing even when those characters are in separate places. Omniscient point of view has also been described as being "godlike" because the narrator sees all that's going on and can offer knowing commentary on events.

If I were using the omniscient point of view with the passage above, I could use the same text from version four, but I might tack on something like this afterwards:

What Jeff didn't see was Charlie, hidden beneath the stairwell. Charlie who'd been watching him for weeks now, waiting for this exact moment. For Charlie, this day was far from his worst day ever—it was his best day, golden with potential.

Charlie knew he should keep quiet, but he couldn't help it. He laughed out loud, then stopped and licked his lips. Revenge was sweet.

See how our perspective has expanded? Using the omniscient point of view we could expand it even further. How about adding this twist to the plot:

Of course, neither one of them could have anticipated how trivial their argument was soon to become. Charlie never would have expected to be out-villained by a girl, and Jeff, well Jeff would never know what hit him.

See how the narrator knows everything, even when the characters in question only have limited knowledge of what is happening? The omniscient narrator is not confined to one character's view point, therefore she can move easily between as many characters as necessary.

This is a very difficult point of view to use well. There's a reason we so seldom see the truly omniscient narrator in literature, and that's because the story can become muddled and the reader might fail to care about
any
of the characters when his allegiance is spread so thin. In the above example, who are you rooting for? Jeff? Charlie? The unnamed female? Obviously, this might become clearer as the backstory and plot are revealed, but the danger is that you won't end up rooting for anyone, and you'll find it easy to walk away from the book.

This is certainly not always the case. Robert Cormier used the third-person omniscient narrative voice beautifully in
The Chocolate War
; which I quoted earlier. Cormier uses it to add complexity and suspense to the story as each character's fate is drawn into question. The omniscient point of view can work well for suspense because the narrator can hint at trouble ahead that the characters themselves might still be unaware of.

Another book popular with teens that uses the omniscient point of view successfully is Douglas Adams's
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
In this book the omniscient voice adds to the humor as the narrator jumps from the viewpoints of his characters—Arthur Dent, a muddled human being dragged into an adventure he wishes he wasn't having, Ford Prefect, an alien who was stranded on Earth for fifteen years posing as an out-of-work actor, and the various creatures they encounter, all of whom have strong opinions about Arthur, Ford, and earthlings in general. The omniscient point of view gives the author a perfect platform to comment on human behavior, and it adds to the humor of the book.

One final example of an author who uses the omniscient point of view is Paul Fleischman, who does so beautifully in his book
Breakout.
Fleischman adds his own unique twist by telling the story in chapters that alternate between a strict third-person narrative telling the story of teenage Del, a girl running away from her foster parents who gets stuck in a traffic jam as she's trying to escape, and a first-person omniscient narrator where a grown-up Del, also stuck in a traffic jam, imagines herself floating up out of her car, able to look into all the other cars and lives on the freeway.

It's important to note that even in a book as complex and varied as
Breakout,
the author is consistent within each section. When he writes in third person, the teenage Del must guess what other passengers stuck beside her are thinking. She knows only what those passengers tell her about their lives. When he writes in the first-person omniscient voice, he does not lapse into third-person narrative or suddenly switch narrators so we hear a different voice speaking to us.

Consistency is key when it comes to point of view. Decide whose eyes you are looking through, then stick with them.

SECOND-PERSON POINT OF VIEW
_

There's one last point of view we
haven't discussed yet.
Second-per-son point of view raises the question, "What if the eyes you're looking through are your own?" Not you as the storyteller, but you as the character? In second person, the reader is also the protagonist.

Here's how the passage we've been discussing would look rewritten into second person: Version five:

You walk down the hall, feeling good about the day. It's one of the first spring days and you've just found out you made the track team. You open your locker, reaching for your math book, and a note falls onto your sneaker. You pick it up. The paper is torn and crumpled as if someone had trouble fitting it through the slots.

"What's this?" you wonder out loud.

Then your blood runs cold.

I know all your secrets.

The words are scrawled across the page. Can they possibly mean what you think they mean? You look around wildly, but no one else is there. The hall is empty. Eerily silent.

Your stomach turns and suddenly you know the truth. Life will never be the same again.

This type of narration has been used successfully in the suspense/ thriller genre, and it works well for shorter passages, but it's difficult to sustain in part because of the repetition of the word "you," which has the same effect of calling someone by his name over and over again. It's also hard for the reader to suspend her disbelief since clearly she knows that she isn't the person you're describing and these events did not happen to her. As she reads your story, she might very well be thinking, "I would never do that!"

However, even second person can be used successfully. Author A.M. Jenkins used second-person point of view in her novel
Damage
about a high school football star suffering from depression. The use of second person echoes the emotional distance that the character is feeling and enables teens to relate to his mental state in a way they might not be able to if the author had chosen a different point of view.

Second person requires a lot of effort from your reader, and it demands even more work from you. If you decide to tackle this point of view, make sure you re ready to put in long hours making sure the words you use are good enough to overcome the barriers that second-person point of view puts in place between your reader and the suspension of disbelief. It can be accomplished to great effect, but choose wisely!

FINAL THOUGHTS ON NARRATIVE

VOICE AND POINT OF VIEW
_

Choosing which point of view to use can be difficult, but it will always be necessary since every story uses narrative voice and point of view. No exceptions. If you're writing a novel, someone is telling

the story, even if that someone is you. Remember, the keys to using both effectively are:

• choices

• consistency

• finesse

Right from the start you must ask yourself what kind of story you're telling and what kind of tone you'd like to create. Do you want your narration to sound confessional? Contemporary? Then try first person, past or present tense. Is the setting an important part of the book, creating a strong mood that pervades the novel? Give third person a try. Do you need to portray broad, panoramic events that equally involve many characters? Experiment with the omniscient point of view.

Whichever choices you initially make, don't be afraid to abandon a point of view and start over using something else, even if you're far into the writing process. I once rewrote an entire novel from third person to first person after the first draft was complete! It was a time-consuming and tedious endeavor, but I had to make the choice that was best for my book. Sometimes what's best doesn't become clear until far into the process. When I was finished, I had a stronger book with a character who was more relatable than before.

No matter what, be consistent with the choices you make. Third person might have been the wrong choice for that novel, but I used it consistently throughout, and when I changed the book into first person, I was consistent with that, too. I didn't allow myself to write one section in third person and then slip into the character's own voice to tell about something else. Switching points of view breaks the spell of the novel, confusing the reader and drawing attention to the mechanics of writing.