Perspective. Point of view. These are the concepts that allow a reader to connect to a story on a deep, personal and emotional level. This idea was talked about extensively in my Harkness circle. The POV of a story is crucial to helping writers get their desired emotional response from readers.
Now I’m going to make an interesting analogy. I recently finished a show called Spy Games in which ten competitors live on a compound and get basic training on the most important skills of being a spy, then partake in fake missions set up by former spies or “the assessors” in a competition for $100,000. The skill the assessors stressed the most: situational awareness. A spy’s ability to get him or herself out of danger depends on how situationally aware he or she is. He or she can be great at deceiving people, picking locks, and/or decoding ciphers, but if they can’t retain information from a situation, or assess a situation to get out of it or avoid it altogether, then his or her chances of survival dramatically decrease.
Situational awareness for a spy can be the difference between life and death much like a writer’s chosen POV can be the difference between their readers’ connection, engagement, and understanding, or their readers putting down the book. A well chosen POV is the equivalent of superior situational awareness. POV allows the readers to become emotionally attached to or involved with the story and the characters. I guess you could say POV is what makes readers situationally aware of their literature and able to spy the nuances in every aspect of the writer’s literary depiction.
The Wannabe Spy
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