Showing Point Of View through a Concrete Example, New Ground

In a series of craft notes, we’re illustrating Point of View. If you want to see the first step in this process, click here to see Alice Munro’s version, in First Person Informant.

We're getting close, so bear with us -- one mystery left in this series of craft for readers and writers

Freedom of Free Indirect Speech

Free Indirect Style, the contemporary 3rd person POV.

Free Indirect Speech is a merge of Third Person Limited and Interiority, where the reader organically separates who is narrator and who is protagonist. This is in the midst of a bald structure that avoids italics, quotation marks, tags like “He thought,” and even full sentences. It was possibly used first by Jane Austen.

Let's take an old-fashioned and mannerly diction from Robert Louis Stevenson's, “The Suicide Club.”

Here is the original:

Altogether, the Prince was disappointed by the bearing and conversation of the members. “It does not seem to me,” he thought, “a matter for so much disturbance. If a man has made up his mind to kill himself, let him do it, in God’s name, like a gentleman. This flutter and big talk is out of place.”

Here is the way we would have seen it written in the 50's, with updated punctuation and adjectives:

Altogether, the Prince was disappointed by the heated chattering of the club denizens. It does not seem to me, he thought, a big issue. Christ, if a man has made up his mind to kill himself, let him do it with some kind of dignity. This jabbering is about something that is none of our business anyway.

Here is the free indirect style (as defined by James Wood):

The Prince was disgusted by the loud, magpie chattering of his fellow club members, children, idiots. Pointless. Holy Christ, if a man has made up his mind to wipe himself out – his call, his choice. Chickens in the coop, and not their business at all. Sickening.

Note how the narrator takes the highest level of interiority on (“Pointless.”), and then interior monologue takes us deeper into the Prince.

THANKS FOR BEARING WITH ME AS I ILLUSTRATED THE SECRETS OF POINT OF VIEW.

IF YOU'RE A READER, YOU NOW KNOW HOW JANE AUSTEN AND EDITH WHARTON USE THE SAME TOOL KIT.

IF YOU'RE A WRITER, I EXHORT YOU TO TAKE THE FIRST PAGE OF A FAVORITE SHORT STORY, AND REWRITE IT IN ALL POSSIBLE COMBINATIONS. LEARNING BY DOING IS A GOOD TRICK TO BUILDING UP WRITERLY MUSCLES.