Changing Perspectives
Two writing prompts to encourage you to look at your work in a different way
Narrators
Whose perspective do you write from when you tell your stories? You might be drawn to first person, seeing the world through the eyes of your protagonist. You might be drawn to an omniscient third person narrator. You might make your viewpoint a spectator, or someone in the thick of the action.
Rewrite a part of your story from the perspective of a different narrator. Get in the head of a different character, or try an omniscient viewpoint. What changes?
Write from the perspective of someone who dislikes your main character
Write from the perspective of a chatty third person omniscient narrator, like the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett in his Discworld books
Write from a collective perspective, like Jeffrey Eugenides in The Virgin Suicides
Other Minds
Everything has a story to tell, not just humans. Write 500 words from the perspective of an animal, an object, a force of nature. How does your narrator see the world differently? How does it change the way you write?
Write from the perspective of a harsh sea wind as it batters the coast
Write from the perspective of a flagstone in a cathedral
Write from the perspective of a tiger… or an ant
Write from the perspectives of a forest fire and the things it consumes
As always, we love to read your writing, so please share it in the comments if you would like.
Oh I love this! It reminds me of a book I’m reading called, In the Absence of the Ordinary by Francis Weller and one of his practices in his book is to choose a place that means something to you and explore it in your mind and body, finding new things about it. Then, explore it from the place’s point of view! The point is to experience the essence of belonging everywhere you go. True Animism.
I Am the Wind
You call me cruel.
You pull your coats tighter, curse my name, and hurry from the cliffs as though I have come only to spoil your day. You build walls to keep me out and windows strong enough to silence my voice. To you, I am inconvenience. A forecast. A warning on the evening news.
You know nothing about me.
I was here before your harbours learned to hold ships. Before, your lighthouse stood with its proud white face against the rocks. Before your maps gave names to the headlands and bays I have sculpted for thousands upon thousands of years.
I remember when these cliffs were taller.
Every winter I return, not with anger, but with patience. I press myself against the stone, carrying grains of salt from the restless sea. You cannot hear the conversation between rock and water because it is spoken over centuries, not seconds. Yet every gust I deliver steals another invisible fragment. The cliff bends to time because I never stop asking.
The sea and I are old companions. She surges; I whisper where she should strike. Together we carve caves from certainty and arches from pride. You call it erosion. We call it creation.
The gulls know me better than you do.
They do not fight me. They lean into me with wings spread wide, allowing my invisible hands to carry them farther than strength alone ever could. They understand that resistance is exhausting, but partnership is freedom.
You could learn from them.
I have watched lovers promise forever on these cliffs. I have watched children chase kites that I happily lifted beyond their reach. I have watched fishermen return with empty nets and widows return with empty hearts. Your joys and griefs pass through me like drifting mist, yet I remember them all.
Sometimes I carry your laughter far out to sea.
Sometimes I carry your final words home.
When storms arrive, you believe I have become violent. The truth is simpler. The ocean has grown restless, and I answer her call. I scream because she screams. We are not trying to punish you; we are reminding you that this coast was never yours to command.
Even then, I leave gifts behind.
Smooth pieces of sea glass polished by endless tumbling. Shells carried from distant shores. Driftwood that once travelled farther than many people ever will. You gather these treasures without wondering who delivered them.
It was me.
And when dawn finally breaks after the storm, I soften. I slip through the marram grass and dance across the dunes. I dry the wings of exhausted seabirds and clear the clouds so the first sunlight can spill across the water like molten gold.
You call those mornings beautiful.
You rarely remember that I made them possible.
So the next time I catch your hair, sting your cheeks with salt, or force you to stop and steady your footing, do not think of me as an enemy.
Listen instead.
For if you stand still long enough, you may hear what I have been saying to these cliffs for millennia.
Nothing lasts forever.
And that is precisely what makes every moment worth holding.