CREATIVE WRITING BUILDING BLOCKS
Tense and point of view: PART ONE
This month, writer and tutor Ian Ayris turns his atttention to two vital choices that need to be made when you begin to write your stories
In this series we have examined the Building Blocks of Structure, of Setting and of Character. You could see all the aforementioned as planning or preparation, if you like.
I prefer to see them as images and ideas coming out of the mist, revealing as much as they think I need to know.
You see, where our stories come from, what they mean, who the characters are, why they do what they do, we never quite know, at first. They come to us as and when they come to us. They are not ours to control. The best we can do is to listen, to catch a glimpse. Our only job is to give birth to these stories in the clearest words we know, let them go and await the next one to form. Stories are always an incomplete representation of their truth – for we have only words to tell them. And words are never enough.
Still, words are all we have.
So, let’s move onward to the Building Block of Tense and Point of View . . .
So, Tense and Point of View – what are they?
As mentioned earlier, we have looked at the Building Block of Character – the
who
of the story, and we’ve looked at the Building Block of Setting – the
where.
We have also looked at the Building Block of Structure – giving us the
what
and the
how.
But we still do not have the
when.
This is where the Building Block of Tense comes in. We also need to know a wider point regarding the
who.
Not the main character
who,
but the
who
that is telling the story – through
whose
eyes, so to speak, is it being told. This will lead us to the Building Block of Point of View.