What I think is amazing is that I never even thought about this rule until this year. I think when I was last writing fiction, in college, er, 20 years ago, I always wrote short pieces from a single viewpoint. But here in fan fiction land, I stuck my neck out and made a lot of mistakes, including POV switches, present-tense stories, and all of that.
Beta-reading other people's work brought me to my senses. A single viewpoint for a short story makes it so much easier to create a feeling of integration. There is better dramatic tension.
When I beta-read, I generally don't demand that other writers stick to a single POV throughout a story. I'm okay with POV switches in sections or chapters. I think the main thing is to create transitions that make the POV switch clear without just slapping up a heading, POV SWITCH HERE!
A single POV per story is my new ideal, though. It does something else for the story that I desperately need. It forces the writer to make the characters DO things. If you can't hear their thoughts, how can you know what motivates the non-POV character? That is a big plus for me.
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Beta-reading other people's work brought me to my senses. A single viewpoint for a short story makes it so much easier to create a feeling of integration. There is better dramatic tension.
When I beta-read, I generally don't demand that other writers stick to a single POV throughout a story. I'm okay with POV switches in sections or chapters. I think the main thing is to create transitions that make the POV switch clear without just slapping up a heading, POV SWITCH HERE!
A single POV per story is my new ideal, though. It does something else for the story that I desperately need. It forces the writer to make the characters DO things. If you can't hear their thoughts, how can you know what motivates the non-POV character? That is a big plus for me.