A Self Made of Words: Crafting a Distinctive Persona in Nonfiction Writing

Point of View

{ 23 How should I present it? What point of view should I use? Such overarching questions arise whenever I think about writing a piece, whether it involves a memorable incident, like my vertigo attack, or an explanation of presentational strategy such as you’re reading right now. If it’s the story of a personal experience, something that I observed or was involved in, the first person singular, “I,” comes to mind, for it’s the most natural point of view to use with such material. And it projects the impression of a genuine and sincere persona. It’s also the most intimate of the perspectives, so it’s quite appropriate for a personal essay since it allows foraccess to inner thoughts and feelings, as you can see in these opening sentences from Nancy Mairs’s “On Being a Cripple”: The other day I was thinking of writing an essay on being a cripple. I was thinking hard in one of the stalls of the women’s room in my office building, as I was shoving my shirt into my jeans and tugging up my zipper. On the other hand, if you’re writing a how-­to piece or an explanatory work, you might do better to engage the perspective of your reader by using the second-­ person singular point of view, addressing “you,” as in this paraPoint of View 24 } graph and the following sentence about “how to tie a slipknot for kntting” from the Internet Web site, “Howcast ”: So you’re staring at your un-­ knitted ball of yarn wondering, “What have I gotten myself into?” Fear not, a simple slip knot is the first step in any knitting project, so after this lesson you’ll be an expert in getting started. As in the preceding sentences, the second-­ person point of view suggests a solicitous persona, eager to be of help, and is particularly useful if you want to establish a more direct relationship with the reader than is possible in first-­person singular. The second-­ person perspective can also be used for personal stories if you wish to make a striking departure from the usual first-­ person perspective, involving the reader more intensely than otherwise. Suppose, for example, that I had begun my vertigo story like this: “Imagine how you might feel if the room started to spin shortly after getting into bed and resting your head on the pillow.” An opening sentence like that one in second-­ person singular might draw you in more quickly than the one I previously used in first-­ person singular. Then I could easily shift into first person or move back and forth between the two in a mixed perspective: That’s what happened to me a few years ago, and you can hardly imagine how it frightened me, for the incessantly spinning room made me think I might be losing my mind or having a fatal stroke like the one that killed my wife a few years before. { 25 But perhaps the subject matter and purpose call for something that seems to be completely impersonal, such as the third-­ person singular, in which both one’s self and one’s readerare ignored on behalfofan apparentlyobjective presentation, as in this sentence and the rest of this paragraph.This is the point of view that prevails in newspaper accounts, specialized articles, technical reports, and the like, which aim to create the illusion of objectivity by eliminating any reference to the subjectivity of the writer or the reader: The patient reported that his bedtime began as usual, when he lay down and rested his head on the pillow, but then it seemed to him that the room started to revolve, slowly at first, then so fast he evidently became quite dizzy from the spinning. Now that you’ve seen how the presentation ofan incident and the nature of your persona can change from one point of view to another, you should practice using alternative points of view by revising the first few sentences of your memorable incident in twodifferent ways: (1) in a mixed perspective combining first-­ person singular and second-­ person singular and (2) entirely in third-­ person singular.Then write a few sentences reflecting on what you consider to be the relative advantages and disadvantages of each presentational mode. ...