Two perspectives

Use of perspectives

History museum expert Barbara Franco describes how good storytelling techniques can improve a museum exhibit. She illustrates the point when she says "good labels raise questions and get people thinking." The voice telling the story makes a great difference. First-person encourages the reader, audience, or visitor to the museum to listen and relate to a person, the speaker, not just to the recitation of facts.

An example of a first-person story is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. There is also a "third person" perspective in which the main character is seen from the outside and the inside at the same time, heightening the reader's involvement in the story.

Mixes of viewpoints and voices assist in telling extremely complex stories. Franco says it this way: "Audience research has shown that visitors are more willing to deal with difficult topics in exhibitions if they are given multiple viewpoints and are able to hear different sides."

"Addressing the unfamiliar is one way to foster critical engagement," says Joshua Brown, filmmaker and historian. A good storyteller gives the listener or reader a sense of making order out of chaos. So the good storyteller must give the reader a good dose of feeling the chaos, and there has to follow enough order made out of the chaos to give the reader the satisfaction of a good story.

Ever seen something like this in the playground? 

A pupil a (let’s call him Bob) is playing football. He’s just lost the ball, and is really annoyed with himself. He chases after the ball, and in the process barges through a classmate, Sally. Sally, naturally enough, begins crying.

Sally runs to the teacher, and tells her that “Bob hit me!”. The teacher calls Bob across. Bob is furious, shouting that ‘I didn’t do nuffink!”

The truth is that they’re both right! From Sally’s point-of-view, a naughty boy ran across for no reason and hurt her. But Bob was so busy thinking about the ball that he didn’t even notice he’d bashed Sally!

Let’s study an example in detail, for a story The Burglar.

There are two characters in this story, the burglar and the old lady. If they were telling a friend what had happened, they would have very different recollections of this event. The burglar would probably feel embarrassed by the way he was caught; the old lady might be frightened.

We could tell this story in the thirdperson, like this:

Alternatively, we could tell the story in the firstperson:

With ‘one story, two perspectives’, you could tell the story in the first person from two different points-of-view. The first half could tell the story from the burglar’s point of view; the second half is the landlady’s version.

It gives you the chance to show off your clever prose style. You can write the one of the characters using short, clipped sentences, and make the second version full of complex sentences ,semi-colons, colons and brackets.

As with non-linear stories, you have the chance to develop irony. In ‘The Burglar’, what the burglar says is amusing once you know the old lady’s version.

http://www.baldworm.co.uk/Story_structure/two.html