The Perspective Character

The single most essential choice that any writer makes, in beginning to write, is the choice of primary perspective character. Frequently, editors complain about stories in which the protagonist does not do anything, but you would be surprised how frequently stories turn up in slushpiles which actually have no perspective character, just a mish-mash of names that are difficult to relate to, and, consequently, action which is a headache to follow.

Before anyone objects that stories frequently follow more than one character, and that some particularly complicated stories seem to be from more than one heroic perspective (is War and Peace, for example, the story of Prince Andrei, or of Pierre?) I should make it clear that just as an advanced musical composition may be able to support more than one melody line, a complex novel may include two, or three, or more perspective characters. Each of these characters must, however, have his or her own plot. The plots may interweave and meet up from time to time, but if you have multiple primary perspective characters fighting over the meager stakes of a single archetypal story, you will end up with mess and confusion.

In general, I think it is a mistake for beginning writers to try to write complicated, multiple perspective stories first; usually the result is a sort of saggy-baggy caravan full of parts that don't fit, with a resolution that doesn't quite come together. (There are few published examples of this kind of writing – editors generally have a good eye for it – but if you ask around the local high-school you should be able to find some admirable examples.) Mastery of the simple, single perspective story teaches the art of plotting, and hones the skills necessary for handling a larger plot and character volume. Write the Hobbit first, then Lord of the Rings. Or Crime and Punishment, then The Brother's Karamozov, if you prefer.

The perspective character is the character that shapes and defines a story, and it is the reader's point of access to the narrative. They determine how all of the other characters will look and behave throughout the course of the story. Take, for example, any of the simple fairy-tales that post-modernists (usuaully bad post-modernists...) take such delight in rewriting. Looked at from the perspective of the Wolf, the Wood-cutter is a terrifying threat the stalks the forest, pulling wolf-cubs from their lairs and making hats from their pelts. The Grandmother is a ghastly mouthful, an indigestible old woman who grumbles and gurgles from within the stomach, but she must be swallowed if the real treat is to be ingested. Little Red Riding Hood, of course, is the prize.

The perspective character does not have to be a good person (though heroic perspective is generally easier to write well than villain perspective) and the audience doesn't even necessarily have to want them to win. No one is plumping for Iago in Othello, although Shakespeare makes the villain, and not the namesake of the play, the perspective character in this work. On the other hand, the main character may be both evil and sympathetic: Raskolnikov is a murderer, and he's proud as hell, but we love him. The tensions between the audience's desire to see him get away with his crime, our sense of moral horror at the murder of the pawn-broker's innocent sister, and our hope for his ultimate redemption from the interior demons plaguing him throughout the story provides a powerful psychological and archetypal brew.

There is a caveat here. The writer must be careful, if choosing a villainous perspective character, not to allow a moral vacuum into the middle of the story. Yes, some people do like movies where two different groups of gangsters go up against another, and all of the characters are really gritty and evil, and either the grittier, more evil group wins by out-sliming the other, or the slightly more benign group wins, because while they do steal, deal dope, and murder their enemies, at least they don't rape or skin small children alive. This, however, is bad form, and as soon as it goes out of style, everything in the genre will be forgotten. It is the equal and opposite counterpart to the sappy Christian angel stories where everyone turns out to be really good inside, and the only thing that's needed to overcome the problem of evil is love and self-esteem. Both are equally appalling, and for the same reason: they take place in a moral order that is devoid of the archetypal categories of good and evil, and there is, consequently, no meaningful human struggle at the centre of the story.

It is only through such a struggle that the reader comes to care about and sympathize with the perspective character, and that the work takes on the character of art – that it becomes universal and timeless, instead of trendy and niche-marketed. Without a struggle, there is simply no story. Sit down one day, if you really have nothing to do, with a copy of Margeret Atwood's Cat's Eye. Unless you are a pretentious, post-modern, feminist lit-geek (and yes, that is just as much a niche-market as the chain-saw-psychopath-gore genre), you will find this to be a fitting example of the story with no point. The protagonist is not engaged in an archetypal struggle. She meanders around, suffers excessively from nothing much, and finally accomplishes nothing of any import. Unless you are an ennui-drenched, spleen-ridden, victim-identified, aimless woman, it's almost impossible to relate.

On the other hand, if the character is engaged in a genuine archetypal struggle, the story will work. Even if the audience doesn't like Macbeth, and disapproves of his ambition for the throne, and looks forward to the moment when his head is severed from his body and lofted about Scotland, the play works. Why? Because the audience can sympathize with Macbeth's struggle, with his attempts to hold onto his morality, with his weakness before the iron will of his wife, with his reluctance to murder, with his guilt once he has done the deed. He is recongizably human, and he is obviously in control of the action of the story: he is not merely a hapless fool to which things happen, he is a protagonist, whose choices shape the plot. He is, in short, everything that a perspective character ought to be.

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