A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW

This Sunday our oldest son returns home from a four week tour of Europe. He went with a church group from Christchurch to attend World Youth Day in Madrid, they have also visited London, Paris, several smaller towns in France and Spain and are now in Rome.

In typical male teenage fashion his communications have been brief and often monosyllabic: "London is fantastic" or "I ate escargo in the artist's quarter". What he liked about London and whether or not he enjoyed those escargo will have to wait until I see him in person. I suspect I may need to tie him to the couch and beat it out of him, but I will at last know!! His most informative comment has been "The Eiffel Tower is a blot on the landscape". I do wonder if that is related to his fear of heights. Personally I like the Eiffel Tower and was hoping for some memento from it.

The thing is, we all have our own point of view. We all see things differently. And that translates to our writing. Supposedly there are only eight different stories in the world. (I have heard of varying numbers on this, but all of them are small.) So how come we don't get bored reading these same stories? Because they are all told from a different point of view. By this I mean the author's point of view, not the character's.

We all have different world views which colour our renditions of similar plots. We have different life experiences, faiths, beliefs etc and these emerge in our writing without us even trying. Our personalities live between the lines of our writing.

I'll leave you with two photos from my son, as they were the inspiration for this post. The first is Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square. Now I have photographed this many times but never had I thought to do it this way. My photos always included the whole column and a lion or two as well.

The second is St Paul's Cathedral. The first time I looked at this photo I thought how it was crooked, that he was too close, and the angle was all wrong. But on second glance I feel in love with his different 'point of view'!