“Nothing bold or magnificent is built form fear.” Paul Sabine
What a powerful statement! And yet, in our writing, how hard it is sometimes, to be bold—to break out of our preconceived ideas of how a story should go.
Here’s a POV exercise from Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin that may help wipe away away cobwebs and unleash your boldness:
“Think up a situation for a narrative sketch of 200-350 words. It can be anything you like, but should involve several people doing something. (Several means more than two. More than three will be useful) It doesn’t have to be a big important event, though it can be; but something should happen, if only a cart-tangle at the supermarket, a wrangle around the table concerning the family division of labor, or a minor street accident….
“Please use little or no dialogue in these POV exercises. While the characters talk, their voices cover the POV, and so you’re not exploring that voice, which is the point of the exercise.
“Part One: Two Voices
“First: Tell your little story from a single POV—that of a participant in the event—an old man, a child, a cat, whatever you like Use limited third person.
“Second: Retell the same story from the POV of one of the other people involved in it. Again, use limited third person.
“As we go onto the next parts of this exercise, if your little scene or story runs dry, invent another one along the same lines. But if the original one seems to keep turning up new possibilities in different voices, just go on exploring them through it. That will be the most useful, informative way to do the exercise.
“Part Two: Detached Narrator—Tell the same story using the detached narrator or “fly on the wall,” POV.
“Part Three: Observer-Narrator—If there wasn’t a character in the original version who was there but was not a participant, only an onlooker, add such a character now. Tell the same story in that character’s voice, in the first or third person.
“Part Four: Involved Author—Tell the same or a new story using the involved author POV. Part Four many require you to expand the whole thing, up to two or there pages, 1,000 words or so.”
Playing around with exercise and taking it as far as you want to go can be fun. It encourages us to trade places with characters in a sketch and lets us explore different approaches within the framework of a simple story—this can be a good way to jog a few fresh ideas loose. Write on!
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