There is
never just one point of view. Every story has as many viewpoints as there are
people involved. Of course, a simple side character (an NPC in RPG lingo) can’t
tell the whole story, but that is not the point. You can tell the same story
from different points of view and you will tell different stories.
I’ve chosen
Sherlock Holmes as an example here, because there are a lot of modern authors
using the characters and the world.
There are
stories which are told by Sherlock himself - several stories Doyle wrote about
adventures happening after Holmes’ retirement are told from Holmes’
perspective, because Watson isn’t around. There are stories which are told by
Mrs. Hudson. There are stories which are told by Sherlock Holmes’ wife (Laurie
R. King has written a whole series about that). There are also stories focusing
on the Napoleon of Crime. Michael Kurland has written several novels in which
Professor Moriarty is the protagonist - an anti-hero much more than a hero, of
course. A short story published in ‘Victorian Villainy’ explains the one-sided
vendetta between Holmes and Moriarty.
One of the
most interesting books centring around Moriarty, however, is “The Hound of the
D’Urbervilles” by Kim Newman. Not only do the stories told in it skirt stories
written by Doyle himself, the first story, “A Volume in Vermillion” sets up “A
Study in Scarlet,” the first Sherlock Holmes novel, for example. Newman gives a
voice not to Moriarty directly, but to his second in command, Colonel Moran.
Sebastian Moran is less ‘smitten’ with his boss than Watson is with Holmes. He
recognizes Moriarty for what he is: dangerous, deadly, and utterly without
morals. Neither of them is hero material and Moran makes no excuses for it.
Moran’s prose is rougher than Watson’s (and he’s basically obsessed with women
and sex), but it’s fitting for the stories he tells. My personal favourites are
“The Red Planet League” (which tells a story of Moriarty taking personal
revenge on his ‘true’ nemesis - which isn’t Sherlock Holmes), “The Adventure of
the Six Maledictions” (which features a lot of penny dreadful characters and
trinkets), and “The Greek Invertebrate” (which gives a glimpse into Moriarty’s
family by introducing his two brothers, both also named ‘James’). Sherlock
Holmes features in the last story, but he’s only referred to as ‘the thin man
of Baker Street’ (to tell him apart from Mycroft, ‘the fat man of Whitehall’).
Moriarty hardly takes him seriously, he is after different prey when travelling
to the continent.
The stories
are full of action (after all, fights and assassinations are Moran’s job in the
Firm) and usually also amusing to read. Moran’s voice might be less polished
and sometimes plain outrageous for the time (like when he muses about his
sexual adventures), but it’s an honest voice nevertheless. It’s a fitting voice
for a man who spent 20 years as a soldier and is a little rough around the
edges in all ways. Moran’s descriptions of Moriarty aren’t all that positive,
but they feel honest. They are sharing rooms, so Moran has quite a bit of
insight, but at the same time admits that he barely understands what goes on in
Moriarty’s brain. That’s not his provenance, after all.
So, to go
back to the topic of writing a story from another perspective, what can we
learn from the many stories about Sherlock Holmes and his world not told by the
‘regular’ voice of Watson?
First of
all, chose a suitable character, one who can tell a lot about the story. Holmes
himself knows what is happening, of course. More often than not, he knows more
than Watson, but that can also take the thrill out of the story. Mrs. Hudson
should have a good idea about what happens under her roof, too. Holmes’ wife
isn’t your traditional late-Victorian woman who doesn’t even pretend to be
interested in her husband’s work, either. She works side by side with him and
thus has a very good idea of what’s happening, too. The same is true for
telling stories from the other side of the law. Whether Moriarty is an
anti-hero like in Kurland’s stories or an outright villain like in Newman’s, it
is interesting to see what he does, too. Someone in his vicinity, like Moran,
can thus tell an interesting story as well.
The second
thing is that every person has their own voice. Holmes tells a story
differently from Watson. Moran has a different voice, too, as has Mrs. Hudson,
as has Mrs. Holmes. The voice has to fit with the personality of the person
whose viewpoint you are using. Mrs. Holmes is much younger than her husband,
essentially a person from another era. She sees and understands things
differently not only than Holmes, but also than Watson did. Moran is a former
soldier and big game hunter. He sees things differently than Watson, even
though they both share the military background. Moran also is unashamedly a bad
person. He enjoys killing, stealing, and cheating at cards and he is not
ashamed to admit that. He likes to brag about the women he slept with or the
people or animals he killed (to him, prey is prey, not matter what it is).
As a third
thing, you also need to keep in mind what a viewpoint character can see and
know. It’s not a coincidence Watson and Holmes share rooms (and in Newman’s
book, so do Moran and Moriarty). Watson’s narrative usually seems a little less
informed once he has moved out of Baker Street again after marriage. The more
time the viewpoint character spends with the main character (if both are not identical),
the more they usually know. They are more likely to be there when things happen
that way, too.
What use can it be, though, to
try and tell a story from a different perspective? You will get a different
story out of it every time. Try to tell the same story from the perspective of
both the protagonist and the antagonist and you will be looking at two
different stories, at different things happening, at different outcomes.
Especially if it feels like your story is going nowhere, try to tell it from a
different perspective and see if it works better that way.
