Group Hug: Playing with Point of View

The Three and I played around with point of view for a couple of hours the other day. We wrote a huge amount—more I think than we ever have during group before—and we didn't get done with everything I had planned. It was a good thing (for us, at least) that the moms all got caught in traffic.

The Warm Up

Start by choosing a character name from a random name generator. (This took us a while. The random name generator kept generating dumb names. Finally, L suggested Maple, and we went with it.) Spend five minutes writing a brief bio of the character. You can write anything you want about the character, but the character must be contemporary (living in the here and now), and you must include what kind of music the person likes. 

These are not the yummy cookies
M made. We ate all those.

No sharing yet! When the five minutes is up, choose a second randomly generated name. Spend five minutes writing a brief bio of that character, with the same restrictions as before. 

Once both characters are done, share. (This is also when we ate cookies and drank cocoa or tea and chatted for a while about point of view, which I covered in the last post.)

Third Person Limited

Once you have your two characters, it's time to put them together. Here’s the scenario: Your characters are in a car together, driving down the road. They’re arguing about what kind of music to listen to. Who wins and gets to listen to the kind of music he or she likes?

He like jazz; she likes Nine Inch Nails.
But they're going to be even more
incompatible when he wrecks the car.

Write the scene in third person limited. That means pick one character and write from his or her perspective using the pronoun he or she. Remember that limited means you only know what that character knows, but you have some flexibility in terms of what you can describe in the world. (You can write about what that character looks like, for instance, without having her look at herself in a mirror.)

Spend 10 minutes writing. Don't share yet!

First Person

Now, go back and write the scene again—the same scene, part of the scene or a continuation of the scene—but this time from the first person perspective of the other character. Remember that you can get closer in this time: How does she feel about what’s happening? What does she think about the music? What is she going to do once she gets out of the car—and how does all this affect her relationship with the other character?

You have 10 minutes. Don't share yet!

Third Person Omniscient

Okay, I'll admit it: We shared after writing in first person. We had totally run out of time. If you're doing this on your own, though, or you have more time than we did, you'll write one more time.

He can't believe the woman inside the
car just said that about the guy's
taste in music. 

This time, write the scene from the perspective of someone outside the action, either as a god-like narrator or as someone who hasn't been seen or mentioned before and who the other two characters don’t know. Keep the focus on the two characters in the front seat, not the emotions of this uninvolved observer. Ten minutes.