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"Competence can be a curse. As a capable young woman, Casey Han felt compelled to choose respectability and success. But it was glamour and insight that she craved. A Korean immigrant who’d grown up in a dim, blue-collar neighborhood in Queens, she’d hoped for a bright, glittering life beyond the workhorse struggles of her parents, who managed a Manhattan dry cleaner."

You just don't read novels like that anymore, the story told by a god-like narrator who can jump between the point-of-view of the different characters. To my first-person memoir-addled brain, the technique seemed like a foreign language.

That's the fascinating opening of Free Food for Millionaires, an epic novel employing some unfamiliar writing tools that all writers should know. It's written by first-time novelist, Min Jin Lee, our special guest this week.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog: 

Your book uses a 3rd person POV that can take readers inside the
heads of any of your characters at any time, a novelistic device favored by the 19th century novelists that inspired you. How did you decide which character’s mind to enter from scene to scene? Any advice for young writers looking to use this powerful, difficult device?

Min Jin Lee:

It has been for the most part been abandoned by most literary fiction writers. The overwhelming majority of literary fiction today is written in first person or limited third person (which is a near variation of the first person point of view).

I wanted to learn how to use omniscient narration, mainly, because I loved the way 19th century novels read. I also liked how I felt when I read and re-read this form of storytelling. It was comforting to have an all-knowing storyteller, and I enjoyed having access to the thoughts of all the people in the room.

Your question about from whose point of view to tell that portion of story is an excellent one. In any segment of the story, first you have to choose the character(s) in that particular scene, where he or they are located, and what the central conflict is in that dynamic

Sometimes, it is fairly simple: two people, one locale, one main conflict. Let’s say, 1. you have Dick and Jane; 2. they are in the garage of their house: 3. Jane wants to take the station wagon to the picnic, and Dick prefers to ride his bicycle.
You can be democratic by switching between them with each new action or thought.

I fooled around with that kind of scene for a while. You can tell the story mostly in Dick’s point of view while you have Jane do most of the talking, and have her point of view interspersed. Obviously, you can increase the complexity to suit the needs of the story. What I think is empowering (by that I mean, you can do more things) is when you create patterns, the reader will follow you as long as you have a consistent internal logic.

Personally, I have some bizarre analogies about from whose point of view you should enter the story: Have you ever been at a dinner table where some people talk more than others? If you ever host a dinner (I am using the word host here loosely), you wouldn’t let just one person dominate the discussion, because it wouldn’t be fun for all the guests.

So, I guess, the notions of equity should come into play now and then, but more importantly, it might serve the reader to share the point of view of those are who the most interesting at the table. Also, who are you most interested in? I think all your characters should be worth knowing (to you and hopefully, to your reader), but what makes a character compelling is often the conflict between his actions and his thoughts.

You can have conflict within one character as well as conflict between two characters, as well as among three or more. The more conflict you have, the greater the interest you build, and the more interest there is in the overall story.

Omniscient narration is difficult, but it is absolutely doable, and very effective to tell a small or large story. I hope you will play with it, because there are many, many styles of omniscient narrators (cf. Balzac’s to Flaubert’s. Very different and both marvelous). And it would be great to discover yours.

The other thing that I have done is to type out certain pages of stylists I admire. Try to type out a page of Wharton, James, Flaubert or Eliot. Try Dickens or even a page of Tolstoy. Why not. I have learned a great deal from doing such exercises. They don’t take much time, and they are highly instructive.