First Person

Nancy Bilyeau has a nice discussion here of the power of point of view - and a particular look at first person.  The Ax and the Vase happens to be in first person, and admittedly that was the result of a lot less critical consideration on my part than hers.  I'm a "pants-er" writer, far more intuitive than process-driven, though I can attest to the extent administrative expertise does come into play in working out a novel.  First person in my case was born out of a first sentence long, long, long since a darling sacrificed to the greater good of the story - and very not on the order of "Call me Ishmael."  In fact, for some time, I left VERY wide open the possibility that I would rewrite in omniscient - but it never ended up happening.

First person is, for a historical novelist, almost necessarily an anachronistic conceit to begin with.  Journaling is a fairly recent innovation, and even the famed diarist Samuel Pepys wasn't narrating a movie within his own mind.  First person is a manner of telling which foists on a character a way of thinking which, through much of history, would almost literally have been unachievable for most people.  It is a modern manner of self-consideration, a modern linguistic style.  And yet, as Ms. Bilyeau (should I call her Nancy?  We do Tweet one another from time to time, but I hardly consider that sufficient introduction to presume upon her like we're personal buddies ...) points out, it is invaluable in constructing a character's voice, an immediate and extraordinarily clear form of communication.  For that if for no other reason, as an author, I considered it completely valid, even as I considered it disingenuous as far as "authenticity" ... as I said in the author's note linked above - historical fiction depends as much on its fiction as its history.  And conceit is a form of fiction.

Bilyeau's The Chalice narrates an aspect of the Tudor period hardly done to death in historical fiction:  the realities faced by a nun now turned out of her living, after The Dissolution of the Monasteries.  The fact that this experience is somewhat unexplored demands an intimacy in order to bring an audience unfamiliar with the period into a particular setting.

For my purposes, first person was also crucial in providing a very specific PERSPECTIVE on Clovis - a king whose legend is not uniformly forgiving, and whose actions not always sympathetic.  First person provided me the opportunity to ignore dissent and questions about his history, to justify and even to manipulate what could be seen by a reader, to allow me as an author freedom of movement in areas where objectivity would actually have been a restriction.  For The Chalice, first person provides strength to the voice - for The Ax and the Vase, it provides exactly the biased POV required to form a character entirely on his own terms.

Clovis is no hero in my mind, yet my sympathy for him as his author *had* to be complete - and is so still.  There is much to admire in this figure - I believe both personally and historically - but the extent to which that is authorial bias, and expediency, was best synthesized with the compromised perspective of this limited point of view.  There is, it must be said, much to question about Clovis's conversion and career as well.  Indeed, the very point of just how mercenary his actions were could be addressed in his own telling - the extent to which Catholicism was attractive for practical reasons, as well as the extent to which its influence upon him was genuine, deeply felt.  Like any human being, the balance between expediency and inspiration varies - with time, with relationships (Clovis had a very longstanding relationship with Bishop (Saint) Remigius of Rheims, who was not famed for his falseness by any accounts I found), with immediate experiences (the moment of baptism, I imbued with a powerful sense of spirituality - a literal transportation, for a man making a commitment both unprecedented and epochal in its eventual ramifications).  Like any human being, Clovis justifies selfishness as serving something beyond himself - in his case, the very kingdom of which he considered himself steward and defender.

Point of view can be one of those aspects of a story an audience - and, sometimes, even an author don't think about too much.  If the intuition is right, the telling will assert its own means.  In the case of Ax, this was essentially the case - I did consider it explicitly, but it wasn't something I spent a great deal of time - nor questioning - working out.  It came to me the way it came to me; I allowed room for things to evolve or change - but, eventually, the rightness of the POV asserted itself, and I was grateful and did not look back.  As willing as I am to kill my darlings, I actually don't interrogate them very much at all.  Editing is not a case of sweating the means, but a polishing, a refining - and, certainly, a cutting-away of what is not necessary.  Indeed, there was much cut out of the first MSS which some of my readers hated to see go.  I didn't.  There was good writing, yes - but it wasn't NECESSARY writing (even the entire *characters* I cut!) - and that was that.  Once an agent, and eventually an editor, get their hands on it, Ax may yet see a bit more change from its existing form - though presumably far less drastically than The Great Revision of 2012.

Bilyeau points out the heart of first person - it allows us to identify with a character across so many divides - time, gender, experience of all kinds.  Transcending all the mechanics and even the art - THIS is the very essence of the novel - not of "story telling" nor any other form of literature, though brain studies show we firmly experience those entertainments we watch and read, as if personally.  A novel is immersive beyond even a movie - two or even three hours can be long, and immensely gripping - but a novel takes hold of us even when we must put it down.  It takes over for days, weeks even, and resides beside us as long as we read it.  This is why, when we love them, we love them SO much.  This is why when we dislike a novel - the repulsion can be as emotional as the love is on the other side of the coin.  It's possible to respond neutrally to a novel, sure - but isn't that a fairly bad response for something that takes so much effort, something that can take so much time ... ?