Peter Turchi: Don’t Stand So Close to Me (or Him, or Her) (July 2018)

One of the most common choices of point of view, often referred to as “close third person,” essentially tells a story through the thoughts, experiences, and understanding of a single character. Another is what Turchi refers to as “sincere first person,” in which the reader is never meant to doubt or question the narrator, but is meant to accept the narrator’s version and interpretation of events. This lecture considers the opportunities created by establishing distance between the story and its first-person narrator or point of view character, complicating the narrative surface, making the reader’s experience more dynamic.