The Power of Perspective
Guest Blog by Steve Nallon
Welcome back to our Book Week Scotland guest blog series! Today, we're delighted to introduce Steve Nallon, the author of the young adult Swidgers series.
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E.M. Forster observed in Aspects of the Novel that if the king died and then the queen died that is a story, but when the king dies and then the queen dies of grief what you then have is a plot. His point was that it’s the causal relationship between events that define the nature of a plot. However, what Forster didn’t say was how that tale of the king and queen should be told. From the perspective of their son, the prince, or their daughter, the princess? Or even the court jester? And there are other key questions. Should the tale be communicated in first person, third person or even second person? Is it to be told with hindsight or as if it were happening in the moment? Are events to be imparted exclusively through narrative description or might some aspects be told through letters or diaries? All important questions, not least because such choices are usually made well ahead of any actual narrative composition.
For Swidgers, I chose a first-person narration by William, the coming-of-age hero of the tale. William can’t know what is going on in someone else’s mind or how they are feeling, but, as we all do in life, William can interpret looks and tone of voice. And if he’s wrong, that can be acknowledged as the story progresses, for a key life lesson is that we must all learn to reassess what we thought was true but turns out not to be. Another reason I chose first person is that Swidgers is a mystery tale adventure series – the reader essentially sees what William sees and discovers the plot’s many secrets at the same time as William. Indeed, the reader might even work things out before our intrepid hero, for the clues are there if you know how to look.
There are practical problems for the writer using first-person narration or such as unintentionally slipping into moments of omniscience. Story gurus call this the ‘over-powering’ of your narrator. There is also the issue that unless the narrative is being told in present tense the narrator is likely to know what the secrets are. In my Swidgers series, I tried to turn the retrospective nature of the narration into a positive. In an early chapter in The Time That Never Was, the first in the Swidgers series, William writes, “As I got dressed that morning, I had no answers, but there’d come a day when I would. Forgive me, I jump ahead again. Better to tell my tale as it happened and not as it came to be understood. And I do this as much for myself as for you. For isn’t it sometimes in the very telling of our story that we come to understand it?” Put simply, I made the very telling of his tale part of the character arc. Becoming a storyteller was casual in William’s own development. And that’s the important personal journey I wanted our hero to share with his readers.
