June 24, 2014  Prompt #53

It’s revisions week here at The Writeous Sisters, so pull out a rough draft. It’s time for a tune-up!

For this prompt, we shift point-of-view. While you might not incorporate anything you write for this prompt directly into your work, examining point-of-view can give you valuable insights.

Instructions

1. Choose a work you’ve written from a particular point-of-view. If possible, find a piece with two or more characters.
2. Rewrite it (or a section of it) from the perspective of another major character in the scene.
3. Does the work seems richer or more complex with the changes? Any new insights about either character?
4. Did the rewrite shift attention away from the focus, mood, or purpose you were aiming for or did it strengthen it?

Further Writing

• Try rewriting from the point-of-view of a minor character in the scene.  If there is no minor character, make one up. Could a child be overhearing an argument? Could a waitress be watching a brother and sister discuss their father?
• Try rewriting from point-of-view of an animal or an inanimate object. Often, such exercises quickly become contrived or precious but the point here is to deepen the overall piece. If you write a scene in a college cafeteria, for instance, try writing two paragraphs from the perspective of a metal fork and all the food and mouths it encounters.  While you probably can’t base an entire novel on this device (though perhaps a poem or flash fiction) it could be reworked into the thoughts of a character.  Could the confident, wealthy, country-club student suddenly have a revelation about society as he ponders the life of fork?