Point of View with Tendai Huchu

I recently attended a writing workshop with author Tendai Huchu. The workshop focused on Point of View in writing and encompassed many genres. Tendai had generously read extracts from the participating writers and led a fascinating and free-flowing discussion around his observations of these, including reading the extracts aloud with impressive gravitas and drama.

Tendai emphasised the analysis of costs and benefits an author must undertake when deciding the position they will write from. Writers (and readers) must ask: what’s at stake for the narrator and can we rely on them? How are they qualified to tell the story?

The discussion took in first-person narrative, second-person narrative, third-person / omniscient and the rarer communal point of view, as well as the degree of reliability in the narrator. That many contemporary books tend to be written in the first person, allowing a high level of intimacy with the narrator, rather than the omniscient third-person narrator as was typical of classical literature, was suggested to embody a modern distrust of authority.    

Tendai also spoke about his career as a writer and the importance of reading in your genre, to ensure an understanding of what has come before and where new work fits in. He spoke of his own challenges in identifying the Point of View he should write from in a recent project and how he found a simpler, clearer way of writing in the option he ultimately chose. His advice to new writers was to push through to finish a project, avoiding too much stopping and restarting. I particularly enjoyed his suggestion that a writer’s style consists of what they’re not good at. This can be the aspect of craft they’ve been forced to work on, and can therefore ultimately be an aspect most likely to stand out in their writing.

What will I take from the workshop? That there is no perfect Point of View to write from; all Point of Views are limited and the choice is always whether we are willing to accept the cost of writing from a particular perspective. And perhaps to break a few of my own writing habits, including to have a little more fun with the unreliable narrator, as opposed to writing from a character who is doing their conscientious best to be reliable.  

Tendai Huchu, who also writes as T.L. Huchu, is the Zimbabwean author of The Hairdresser of Harare, The Maestro and The Edinburgh Nights series. 

Claire Wingfield is the author of Saving Francesca Maier and 52 Dates for Writers. She also works as an editor and literary consultant, often assisting authors with publishing their work. See www.clairewingfield.co.uk for information about her editorial and publishing support services for writers.