Who’s on First…or Third?

 

The comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello did what has been recognized as the best comedy routing during a radio broadcast in 1946.  It was called Who’s on First and it holds up today as being just as funny as when it was first broadcast.  Costello wanted to know the name of the ballplayer on first base and Abbott said “Who” and it went downhill from there.

As a writer you, at some point unless you’re writing magazine articles, will have to decide if your character is on first or third.  Not base, but will the story unfold from the first or third person. It’s a monumental decision for a writer and it has a ripple effect throughout the entire project.

If you choose the first person then everything is revealed through one person’s eyes.  The reader sees only what the protagonist sees. When your protagonist is inside the house, he/she cannot see what is happening in the back yard, the garage, the hardware store down the street or in the Kremlin although some action in all of those places may have an impact on your character and the story.  That’s the rule.  However, rules are made to be broken.

Even if you are writing in first person, you don’t have to limit it to only ONE first person’s point of view.  If your protagonist is a housewife in Snake Navel, Arkansas and your bad guy is a spy in the Kremlin, tell a part of the story from his POV.  Nothing wrong with that.  It’s like two trains on parallel tracks both heading in the same direction, just make sure they reach their destination at about the same time.  Now it’s not who’s on first but how many on first if you do it right.

Just around the corner from first base is third.  Who’s on third?  I don’t know was his name in the comedy skit, but you know the name or names of those who are in your third person narrative. With third person narrative you have much more leeway to go places and do things that your housewife from Snake Navel can’t do.  Instead of everything beginning with “I did this or that” you can be the person who drifts overhead of the action, looking down describing everything that is going on. You are not limited by time, space or eyes.  You are the know all, see all, tell all narrator.

Go to the book shelf and pick up the last book you read. Take a look at it and try to imagine it written in the opposite person.  Does it work? Is it better?  Worse?  Do the same thing with the project you are currently working on. Don’t rewrite it, but spend a few minutes imagining it from another person.

And of course, it had to happen.  I saw a photo recently that was taken from the first base dugout during a ball game. There was a runner on first base.  The shot was taken from is back. The name on his shirt? Hu.  I know the announcer couldn’t wait to say, “Hu’s on first.”

Hu Currently Plays for the L.A. Dodgers