Author Confessions: There’s More Than One Side to a Story
There is not a lot of room for polite discourse in our society. I was chatting with someone the other day and they were making some blanket statements about something but I urged caution.
When we speak but don’t listen, and we can’t understand why someone believes the way they do about an issue. Whether it is religion, politics, medicine… It’s easy, and wrong, to judge someone’s opinion without understanding the why behind it. Until someone can articulate the reasons behind their viewpoint, through respectful discussion can they even begin to see where their reasoning might be faulty. Or maybe mine is and I need to be brave enough to realize that. If I truly care about someone and believe my side of an issue is correct, why wouldn’t I want to understand why we are different?
We often look at the end position that someone makes but don’t take the time to find out how they got there. The starting point of any choice is helpful if we want to understand a position. It’s far easier to hurl insults and make things personal instead of genuinely caring enough to dialogue about something.
I can be set in my own opinions but I do often see the other position on things and can understand why someone makes that choice, whether it is to vaccinate a child or not, or to vote a certain way, or whether a particularly popular drug is a good option or not.
When there is an accident, the way someone views it might vary depending on what they saw and where they were. Were they in the car? Driver or passenger? Were they paying attention? What was the weather? If they were on the street, what angle did they see? Did they even see it happen or only the after-effect? Investigators will try hard to determine fault, if there is any to be had. Sometimes accidents are just that — accidents.
As an author, I prefer to write from two points of view (three if I’m dipping into the villian’s world, if there is one). I’ve read some books that contain novellas where the same story-line is told by different people. You get to see the behind the scenes and the story is vastly different even as the people intersect with each other. It’s a novel (pun intended) concept and takes skillful writing.
When there is only two points of view as a story progresses, the reader can sometimes spot the conflicts and challenges facing the characters before the characters fully recognize them. It created the suspense. If the characters refuse to work through the conflict, however, then there is no chance at that happily-ever-after ending. Along the way the reader might discover the persepectives of others on the plotline that develops, again, more than one perspective comes in to play.
Having more than one point of view makes a story interesting. Having said that, I have enjoyed some first-person point of view stories by Anita Klumpers and J. Chris Richards. I think that this works great for suspense because you don’t have any point of view that the main character which leaves the readers wondering just what will happen next.
Life is either suspenseful if we stick to one point of view, or we can get a wider persepective when we ask questions and start to understand where another person is coming from on any issue. It takes a curious mind, a humble spirit, and a teachable mindset to be able to engage in that. I think we ‘ve lost some of that in our society. There’s more than one side to a story and we are poorer if we don’t keep that in mind.