Understanding POV

I am moving this to Novel Writing forum -- you will probably find more info, there.

When you say a 'third party point of view' I assume you mean Third person POV and that person is the main character.

Nothing wrong with doing a following chapter in Third person POV from the viewpoint of a secondary character, if that drives the story along - and that's what you're driving at with your question.

It's perfectly fine to present a scene (or, presumably several scenes) from a secondary character's point of view, but if you're asking if you should START the book in a secondary character's point of view, I'd recommend against it.

The main purposes of the first scene are to introduce the protagonist and his/her story goal or question, and to get the reader sufficiently interested in the protagonist and story goal/question that the reader will want to find out what happens to the protagonist next. If you start with a secondary character, you run the risk of the reader bonding with the secondary character instead of the protagonist. You may also have a hard time presenting the protagonist's goal and story question, if the scene is told from the POV of someone other than the protagonist.

JD

You mentioned JK Rowling. The first chapter of Harry Potter was not in Harry's POV, even though the rest was. The first chapter introduced many of the main characters, including Harry Potter, who was only a baby.

Sorry, but your explanation has me even more confused. You say:

This character is used to set the tone of the first scene, introduces the main protagonist, and provides insight on the secondary supporting characters. But, even though he is never seen directly by the reader; never speaks dialogue directly to another character; he does interact with one specific secondary character through a relationship that all the other characters understand

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Okay, so you've got a starting scene with the narrator and .... who? He's not interacting with the protagonist or even secondary characters, and he's not actually ACTING (b/c the reader never "sees" him and he never speaks to any character). He's just sitting there, telling the reader stuff? If that's the case, you've got a classic "sittin' and thinkin'" situation, not a scene, adn that's a problem, regardless of whose POV you're in.

A scene is a unit of conflict. It has two characters in a struggle, opposing each other in some manner. A scene requires action, not necessarily of the James Bond variety, but of the "two characters doing something," variety, and talking is a form of doing something, so the scene can be two characters talking, rather than competing in a race or fighting over a gun. One character wants something, and the other character wants something incompatible with the first character's goal, and they struggle (physically or through words) to achieve their goal.

Start with the protagonist acting, no introduction, no telling the reader backstory by a narrator who may or may not be reliable. Jump right in and show the reader the protagonist in action and let the reader figure out what the reader believes about the protagonist. Character is revealed through action, not through a narrator telling the reader about the character.

One other thought: what you're doing sounds a little like the literary device sometimes called "bookends," where there's a story inside a story. There's a narrator in the first chapter or prologue, who's saying, essentially, "I'm going to tell you a story," and at the end the narrator, in a final chapter or epilogue, says "That was my story." Usually, there's some lesson to be applied to that narrator, based on the middle story. Princess Bride is an example (although, personally, I never really saw the point of the bookends). I think Danielle Steele has used the technique, with the heroine at age 80-something introduces the book, and then the entire book is essentially a flashback of the heroine's life, and then at the end we see the heroine at 80-something again, and we see her differently than we saw her in the first chapter, now that we've experienced her life story.

That can work, obviously, but I still think you'd need to have the bookended narrator interacting with someone in the beginning, not just speaking invisibly and directly to the reader, telling the reader the backstory, instead of showing it in the course of the story.

JD

Post it and we can tell you if it works. It might. It might not.

Post it and we can tell you if it works. It might. It might not.

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That's a good idea. Put the opening 2,500 words or so in the Share-Your -Work forum. If nothing else, it would help at least me to understand what on earth you are trying to explain, Rgllthunder, even though I may not be able to answer you.

Tolkien, as I recall (and it's been a LONG time since I read his books), writes in omniscient POV. The narrator is, in essence, Tolkien himself. There's no narrator character, apart from the author, who somehow has a relationship with the characters in the story. It's Tolkien telling the story and stopping occasionally to make comments.

That's a perfectly legit way to tell a story. But your question mentioned the POV of various characters, and I had the impression you planned to tell the story, after the first scene, from individual characters' pov (ie., third person limited POV). If that's not true, and the entire book is omniscient, then you're all set.

BTW, for a more contemporary example of really well-done omniscient, check out Terry Pratchett. He is the omniscient narrator, telling his stories, and he often starts out (for example in Going Postal) by telling the reader about something that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the ultimate story, although he eventually gets around to the relevance of the introductory narration, somewhere near the end of the book. I think he may be able to do that in part because he has a strong reader base, who trust him to bring the story around to the beginning with a nice "aha" moment, and readers might not give a new author the leeway to do it. Also, he starts some of his books in a more traditional way -- Night Watch is an example -- still in omniscient, but featuring the protagonist in action and conflict.

Bear in mind, too, that omniscient is a very difficult POV to carry off well. You might want to check out past threads with such things as "headhopping" (which is the misuse of POV), omniscient POV and third person limited POV, where others have also commented on the difficulty of doing omniscient POV well. There's a recently started thread on the topic now, entitled "third person limited?"

But, as others noted here, it might help to post just a few paragraphs of your opening in SYW and get some feedback on the specifics, rather than trying to discuss it in the abstract.

JD

Omniscient is very difficult to pull off. As the narrator, you must take care to keep a distance and tell the story in a non-biased, totally reliable way -- no keeping information from the readers, no uncertainty.

Aha! Now I see what you're doing. Sort of. The bulk of the story feels omniscient, told by an omniscient narrator (not the same as the original narrator), but it starts differently, in FIRST PERSON POV, not third person, either limited or omniscient.

You end up with a hybrid POV, and you risk breaking the initial promise to the reader about the story. The initial promise, as it's currently written, is that the story is in first person, narrated by a wise rat, who is the protagonist, in which case the story events will be limited to what the rat could know, and the story will be ABOUT the rat, showing how the rat's life has changed as a result of his struggles over the course of the story.

After that, the story as written became ambiguous as to POV. Technically, you could say it was still first person, and the narrator is on scene, but is observing from afar. But because the "I" disappears so completely, it may be forgotten by a reader, and the scene comes across as omniscient, through the POV of the author, not the original first-person narrator.

So, I guess the question is -- what's your intent? Is this a story being told by the rat, so that the only things that can be presented are things the rat is present for, things the rat could see/hear/feel/etc., without ever going inside the heads of the characters? Or is it a story being told by an omniscient narrator (the author), who has access to the heart and mind of the characters? If it's the latter, it would be easy to tweak the first few paragraphs a bit, commenting on how an unnamed rat (the original protagonist) views the world and, in particular, how a rat views cats. Which leads into the appearance of the protagonist.

There's a lot to like in the lead-in paragraphs, the way it lets the reader know that the protagonist is a cat, and establishing a world view, but I think you could keep much of that material in an omniscient narration (third person, not the rat's first person pov), and thereby maintain a consistent omnisciency. Or, alternatively, keep the whole thing in first person, with appearances by the narrator and reminders from time to time about where the rat is in the scene, how it knows what's going on, and so on, but without getting inside the heads of the other characters. Except then, really, readers will expect the rat to be the protagonist of the story or at least to have something at stake over the course of the story.

One thing to watch for, whichever way you go, is infodumps where you give too much backstory in big chunks. Keep the action moving and weave in little bits of backstory as you go along. But, again, there's a lot of good stuff there. I'd even go so far as to say that this does seem like the type of story where omniscient would work well, despite its challenges.

JD

the rat is used to pass information on to the reader where it would be impossible for the main protagonist to know

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See, that's where I'm getting confused. If the story is generally told in omniscient, you're not restricted to information the protagonist knows. The omniscient narrator simply steps in and says "here's the information I want you to know." No need for the rat.

How is having the rat speak in first person different from having the omnsicient narrator mention the rat and tell the reader what the rat is thinking?

Bottom line: Generally, you want to start with the protagonist, the character who drives the action and changes over the course of the story. If you start with another character, other than perhaps the narrator, there should be a strong reason to do so, and you'll still risk alienating readers.

JD

Seriously, a children's story? How? It reads like Dostoyevsky. And switching from 1st to 3rd is too much. No child under 12 is going to comprehend that story at all.

That is not a 'hook', I'm afraid, Rollin'thunder. It's not even a Chapter goal question, and it never even lingered in my mind.

Rllgthunder said:

The 'hook' is that this initial character's introduction is designed to place a simple question in the readers mind; Am I one of those 'special few' who are willing to look a little closer at what is about to happen to the main character's fate?

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Just one last thought (from me, anyway) -- I can't remember where you are in terms of having a first draft done. If you haven't finished the first draft of the entire manuscript, then print out all the suggestions here (and the ones from SYW) and put them aside until you have a first draft completed.

It's not at all unusual for a writer to start the story in one place and then get to the end and realize the story started too soon or too late or in the wrong POV or with the wrong character, and the first scene will get rewritten or tossed completely at that point. So, to make it "perfect" now, before you've got a written ending, may well be a waste of time and angst.

Alternatively, if you do have a complete first draft, take a look at your very last scene. One very reader-satisfying way to present a story is to have the first scene and the last scene mirror each other in a number of ways. It can be some combination of POV, character, language, setting and action (and probably other aspects of storytelling too, but I can't think of them right now).

The first scene presents the story question, and the last scene answers it. The first scene shows the protagonist in crisis, and the last scene shows the protagonist having surmounted the challenges of dealing with that initial crisis. Sometimes the first and last scene are in the same setting, with the protagonist viewing it differently because of everything she's gone through.

Anyway, if you don't have a last scene, set the beginning aside until you do. If you do have a last scene, take a look at it and see how it connects to the first scene, and that may help you decide what you need to do.

JD