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INTRODUCTION
THE FLY is an unobtrusive spy, who sees and hears everything – but who’s own presence is so small as to be insignificant. Taking note of only what a fly might witness (what a hidden camera might see, a hidden microphone might hear), this unusual viewpoint requires the total avoidance of inner thoughts, emotions, explanations, opinions and interpretation – unless expressed in dialogue.
If you think there is just no way you can write without interior thoughts, narrative commentary, or emotions – read on.
A quick review of viewpoint: viewpoint is so basic to the writer, some of us never stop to think about it – yet it’s a fundamental tool for structuring prose. If you’re looking for a way to develop your voice, finding a viewpoint that feels natural is a must. Experimentation with viewpoint can lead to achieving a distinctive prose style.
Poets should not stop reading! Poems have viewpoints too. And Fly On The Wall works very well in short concise pieces.
Viewpoints can vary from intimate to distant depending on the degree to which they get inside, or stay outside, the main character’s head. Influenced by journalism and film, Fly On The Wall is, technically, a distant, or external, third-person viewpoint.
Intimacy or distance
Intimacy refers to how much the writer lets the reader see of the main character’s (or narrator’s) thought processes and emotions. Obviously if you tell the reader a lot about what a character is thinking and feeling, the viewpoint is intimate. If you withhold this information and just show the character’s reactions, the viewpoint is distant. For example, intimate:
She looked at the bright window and thought of the sun like a warm hand on her back. Unhappily moving towards the desk, she remembered her obligations. Her aged father who she loved and respected was depending on her to support him.
Or distant:
She opened the curtains. Sunlight fell in a patch on her desk. Sighing, she sat down in front of a photograph of a man in a hat who held a little girl by the hand. She studied it for a moment, then turned on her computer.
You might chose intimacy to suit your subject matter, or your voice. Some writers find their natural voice coming out effortlessly in a character’s thoughts. Others are attracted to the coolness of distance.
The fly’s advantages
As far as I’m concerned, the greatest advantage of Fly On The Wall is that it suits some writers. I have seen new writers literally take off when presented with Fly On The Wall, as if it were the viewpoint they had always longed for. It has the neutrality of journalism with a flat, unbiased and contemporary feel. It can also be very dramatic, because there’s a necessity to rely on showing rather than telling, relishing the dramatic moment.
A fly in the ointment
One reason to be wary of Fly On The Wall, is that you can easily lose focus, especially in a lengthy piece of writing. Because the reader is not ‘seeing’ the world from one character’s idiosyncratic point of view, it’s hard to establish reader sympathy. If there’s more than one character, it might be difficult for the reader to tell who the main character is. Some writers so drown their Fly On The Wall in concrete details, the bold effect of the viewpoint is overwhelmed.
My advice would be to start experimenting with Fly On The Wall in small doses. It’s perfect for powerful, short prose. Although it seems the least ‘poetic’ of prose styles, it works very well as a single paragraph prose-poem.
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EXERCISES
#1
Imagine you are looking at a newspaper photo. All you can see is what’s in the photo. You don’t know and cannot tell the reader anything else. Write in present tense. This is a frozen moment in time. There should be no action. Don’t use any metaphors or similes. Don’t use any imagery at all. Chose one of these captions to accompany your photo:
Lone farmer’s vigil outside Parliament
Couple escape wreck in road rage crash
Russian workers enjoy a new prosperity
Ecstasy
Child in the ruins of war
Or make up your own caption. This is a good way to write about political or moral issues (notoriously hard to tackle in fiction or poetry) because you can say powerful things by relating an intense or poignant scene objectively.
Re-read what you’ve written. Be wary of using too many descriptive words, especially abstract words. A camera can see a chopping gesture, but it can’t see a callous gesture. Make sure you have not included any thoughts, opinions, emotions or interpretation. Ask: ‘Could a winged insect (or a camera) see that?’
You can stop here, and turn it into a poem, or prose poem, or you can list five sounds (direct speech, or sounds from the material or natural world that a microphone at the scene would pick up) and feed these sounds into the text.
You can stop here, or develop into a film. As your characters start moving make sure you refrain from adding thoughts, opinions or emotions, except in dialogue. If you chose to sustain this writing, you might try to occasionally freeze the frame, so you continue to hold and describe single images.
#2
For your second exercise, describe a family photograph. As in the exercise above, all you can see is what’s in the photo. Write in present tense again and follow the directions given for the first exercise. This time, imagine that the photo, or snapshot, is lying face down in front of you. On the back of it, someone has written one of the following:
Tommy’s christening
Uncle Wilf in uniform
Betty and Lil on holiday
First night in Ibiza
Christmas Day, 1963
Or make up captions from your own life. If you have emotional issues you want to write about, try approaching them from this unemotional Fly On The Wall point of view. Proceed as in the first exercise.
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