Getting a little perspective
I’ve been thinking a lot about perspective lately. It seems to be following me around like an ghost, appearing where I will least expect it: lectures, poems, research, a story (or two) that I am working on (or, thinking: really, they are the same thing). It’s made me stop and consider: how do we determine perspective? What happens when we cahnge it, alter it, reconsider its use?
Last week, I told a group of students that perspective was essential in their stories. Who was telling the story? Why? And what does their perspective – observations about the world around them, biases, judgments – tell us about their character and about the story? And I realized, these were the exact questions I was asking myself in research for a new novel. I was enthusiastic about the material, but had not yet found that elusive door into the story. I could not hear the voice of the main character, and was plateauing without it. Whose story is this?
It surpirsed me, then, when a few days later the same concept appeared in my poetry. I was working on a suite of poems, each individually inspired, but with a common thread running through them – perspective. I paused. The poems were ostensibly about one thing, but were actually questioning the sightline, the perspective.
This morning I started a draft of a new short story – a genre I work in in fits and starts, when the muse descends- and it happened again. Perspective appeared, forcing me to look at it in a new light. Whose story is it? How does it shape the outcome, the language, the meaning?
Lecture to research to poems to short story. Perspective has been following me, nudging me, reminding me to look at it – and at each project – with a cool, fresh eye. These projects have voices, and the voices demand to be heard.