The Writing Experiment by Hazel Smith

Let’s look at this diagrammatically. I’m using a diagram with two points
of view here, but it’s probably most stimulating if you have three:

Example 5.15:Two different focalisations

Point of view 1 Point of view 2

sensing sensing

incident thinking thinking differences/

similarities

feeling feeling

The two points of view focus on the same incident (at the left-hand side of
the diagram), but there can be differences and similarities (at the right-
hand side of the diagram) at the level of sensing, feeling or thinking about
it. Sophie and the board member both perceive that there is a problem and
that Sophie is likely to lose her job, but they conceptualise the event in
opposing ways and have diverging emotional reactions to it. The board
member has little understanding of—or interest in—contemporary art
and therefore dismisses Sophie as having her ‘head in the clouds’, while
Sophie thinks the board members are so conservative that they are unable
to see that she has been quite successful in running the gallery. Sophie’s
emotional reaction is also more intense than the board member’s because
she has much more to lose. A good example of an incident narrated
through multiple focalisations, which are simultaneously similar and
different, is Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride (1994). Here the appar-
ent resurrection of Zenia from the dead is shown from the perspective of
three friends, Tony, Roz and Charis, who are lunching together, and who
have hated and feared her. These accounts all converge, but emphasise dif-
ferent perceptual, emotional and conceptual aspects of the situation.
When you are writing about an incident from two different points of
view, you can use the third person for both but imply contrasting per-
spectives. If you do this, you will be using one overall narrator, but that
narrator will be projecting two perspectives. That way you project into the
characters’ minds, but you also have the freedom to comment on their
actions or thoughts, or to use words which are not entirely their own to
express their point of view. For example, you can write from a child’s point
of view, but use some words which a child would not use. You can partly

100 The Writing Experiment