Unconventional Viewpoints
Looking beyond simple forms of perspective
We usually boil point of view down to a few basic forms like limited, omniscient, 3rd person, 1st person, or free indirect discourse. But really, POV is unlimited, fractured, and full of possibility. A viewpoint can be real, or completely imaginary. There are an infinite number of ways to slice up reality beyond the standard set.
I’m not going to say much more. The exercises speak for themselves.
» 🪦 Streak Saver Exercise: What the Narrator Can’t Process
Setup: Think of a character who notices the world differently than most people do. Show them entering an unfamiliar setting.
🎯 Goal: Make the reader experience the space through this character's specific perceptual filter.
🚧 Constraints:
The narrator consistently over-attends to one category of experience or under-attends to another.
The narrator never comments on or explains their own perceptual difference.
Write half a page or more.
Modification: Have a second character refer to something their perceptual bias would normally cause them to miss.
Reflection: What does a consistent perceptual filter give the reader?
» Streak Saver Exercise: The Obvious Blind Spot
Setup: A character is talking about a relationship they consider to be one of the best things in their life. They are sincere. They are also wrong.
🎯 Goal: Create engagement by making the reader recognize that this relationship is unhealthy, imbalanced, or destructive, while the narrator remains genuinely convinced it's wonderful.
🚧 Constraints:
The narrator cannot express any doubt about the relationship. Every statement must be positive.
The evidence that contradicts the narrator's assessment must come through concrete details.
Write one page.
Modification: Remove all adjectives and adverbs that evaluate the relationship positively.
Reflection: What kinds of details did you find most effective for carrying information the narrator doesn't recognize?
» Streak Saver Exercise: The Sliding Lens
Setup: A character is sitting in a public place and receives difficult news on their phone. Others are present but unaware.
🎯 Goal: Write a passage that begins with the character but pulls outward until the reader is seeing the character from the outside.
🚧 Constraints:
The passage moves in one direction, from close to distant.
The transition must happen across at least four distinct distances: deep thought, sensory awareness, immediate surroundings, wider scene.
Write half a page to a full page.
Reflection: What does the reader gain or lose when you increase distance from a character in an emotional moment?
» Streak Saver Exercise: The Pattern Instead of the Scene
Setup: Two characters have a long-running routine together that has lasted years. Something is about to change.
🎯 Goal: Make the reader feel the weight and texture of the routine so when the passage ends, the reader anticipates the coming change.
🚧 Constraints:
No specific scene. Every sentence describes a routine,
Use habitual markers: “would,” “always,” “every Tuesday,” “never once,” “sometimes,” “on good days.”
End with a single sentence that shifts out of habitual mode into a specific scene.
Reflection: What kept the passage interesting without any single event driving it forward?
» Streak Saver Exercise: Contradicting Interiors
Setup: Two characters are doing something together but misunderstanding something about the other.
🎯 Goal: Make the reader see clearly what both characters are getting wrong about each other.
🚧 Constraints:
Alternate between the two characters' perspectives three times.
Each character must misinterpret something the reader knows because they've been inside the other character's head.
Write one page.
Reflection: When might preserving one character's mystery be more effective?
» Streak Saver Exercise: The Technically Truthful Account
Setup: A character is describing an argument and telling the truth about everything except one thing being left out deliberately.
🎯 Goal: Write the account so that a reader on first reading accepts it as complete.
🚧 Constraints:
The omitted fact never appears in the passage.
The narrator cannot lie. The concealment is achieved entirely through what is not mentioned.
Write one page.
Reflection: What's the difference between this kind of withholding and simply not giving the reader enough information?
» Streak Saver Exercise: The Epistemic Bridge
Setup: A first-person narrator's oldest friend walks into the room. The reader does not know this character yet.
🎯 Goal: Introduce this character to the reader so that they feel like a real, known person.
🚧 Constraints:
The narrator cannot describe the friend as though seeing them for the first time.
The reader must learn at least three significant things that emerge from the narrator's natural associations, reactions, or habits.
Write half a page.
Reflection: What strategies did you find for conveying information the narrator already has without it feeling like the narrator is explaining for the reader's benefit?
» Streak Saver Exercise: The Talk of the Town
Setup: A close community or institution has been watching one of its members with interest.
🎯 Goal: Immerse the reader in the community's collective curiosity and the observed person's externality. Employ a first-person plural "we" narrator that feels like a living thing.
🚧 Constraints:
Narrate entirely in first-person plural. The narrator is "we" throughout.
Step around the observed person's voice. Only the collective speaks.
Write one page.
Modification: Include one moment where the collective "we" fractures and disagrees without falling into individual perspectives.
Reflection: How did the "we" voice change the kind of information you could include?