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I wonder as I wander... POV musings
Edit/Quick Note: I'm going to be moving and house-petsitting at a place without Internet, so if I don't reply for a day or two, it's not because I'm not interested, it's because I've gone wireless. Woe. But I'll try to check in when I can. Thank you all who have contributed your thoughts; evidently I'm not the only one who's pondered this tricky topic!
I was recently beta'ing something for someone and I pointed out how her POV had suddenly switched from character x to y. When she wrote back to me, she said that she didn't understand why I was upset at the inclusion of character y's POV. This really got me thinking (surprise! lol). I'm a music history/theory major, not English. I couldn't punctuate dialog when I first began writing because I'd never written fiction. But my first beta was good at pointing out to me when I would suddenly switch POVs. Now when I did it, it was a mistake; I didn't know I'd accidentally written about something that character x couldn't know because s/he wasn't in character y's head. I was in both character's heads; hence the confusion. I've read some stories by people who I know know what they're doing, and they switch back and forth anyway, without visual paragraph indicators that say to me, as the reader, "Hey- I'm switching POV and I'm doing it on purpose." It made me cranky. I actually kept reading one story like this, but I grumbled out loud at the author as I did it, telling her she knew better.
I guess my question is this: is it 'old school' to feel that once you start your story in one person's POV that you should stick with it, even if it's difficult? Especially when you're really dying for your readership to know what character y is thinking, you just suck it up and keep going for the good of the story (and work harder to show it, which I think is the stronger storycraft)? When I look at people's stories in which the POV flits back and forth, there are usually other indicators that it's probably a relatively new writer. To be honest, when I see it, unless it's in a story by someone who I know has been writing for some time (at which point I either want to throttle them or think perhaps it was an honest mistake) I immediately think: "New Writer. Doesn't know any better." If it's in somebody's story who's been writing for a while, I think: "Lazy." Or, "Nobody has told the poor dear that you shouldn't change POV. If you *insist* on knowing what each character is thinking, use third person omniscient or whatever it's called." [please see part about not being an English major]
But is this kind of thinking passé? Is it a trend, using willy-nilly POV, kind of like writing in present tense instead of simple past? Of the things that really really jar me out of a story, besides homophonic errors, is POV switching. I feel you do your reader a disservice by suddenly jolting her/him out of one character and into another, but I realize that other people don't mind that at all! There are also people who are used to composing their stories as though taken from an RPG, in which wandering POV is required. You won't be surprised to hear that I don't read much of that.
For you grammatically-inclined people, what are the historical rules? Are you being lazy and a bad writer if you don't stick to one POV? Or am I simply a stick in the mud? Luckily there's enough fic for all of us, no matter our preferences.
I was recently beta'ing something for someone and I pointed out how her POV had suddenly switched from character x to y. When she wrote back to me, she said that she didn't understand why I was upset at the inclusion of character y's POV. This really got me thinking (surprise! lol). I'm a music history/theory major, not English. I couldn't punctuate dialog when I first began writing because I'd never written fiction. But my first beta was good at pointing out to me when I would suddenly switch POVs. Now when I did it, it was a mistake; I didn't know I'd accidentally written about something that character x couldn't know because s/he wasn't in character y's head. I was in both character's heads; hence the confusion. I've read some stories by people who I know know what they're doing, and they switch back and forth anyway, without visual paragraph indicators that say to me, as the reader, "Hey- I'm switching POV and I'm doing it on purpose." It made me cranky. I actually kept reading one story like this, but I grumbled out loud at the author as I did it, telling her she knew better.
I guess my question is this: is it 'old school' to feel that once you start your story in one person's POV that you should stick with it, even if it's difficult? Especially when you're really dying for your readership to know what character y is thinking, you just suck it up and keep going for the good of the story (and work harder to show it, which I think is the stronger storycraft)? When I look at people's stories in which the POV flits back and forth, there are usually other indicators that it's probably a relatively new writer. To be honest, when I see it, unless it's in a story by someone who I know has been writing for some time (at which point I either want to throttle them or think perhaps it was an honest mistake) I immediately think: "New Writer. Doesn't know any better." If it's in somebody's story who's been writing for a while, I think: "Lazy." Or, "Nobody has told the poor dear that you shouldn't change POV. If you *insist* on knowing what each character is thinking, use third person omniscient or whatever it's called." [please see part about not being an English major]
But is this kind of thinking passé? Is it a trend, using willy-nilly POV, kind of like writing in present tense instead of simple past? Of the things that really really jar me out of a story, besides homophonic errors, is POV switching. I feel you do your reader a disservice by suddenly jolting her/him out of one character and into another, but I realize that other people don't mind that at all! There are also people who are used to composing their stories as though taken from an RPG, in which wandering POV is required. You won't be surprised to hear that I don't read much of that.
For you grammatically-inclined people, what are the historical rules? Are you being lazy and a bad writer if you don't stick to one POV? Or am I simply a stick in the mud? Luckily there's enough fic for all of us, no matter our preferences.
no subject
Ah! I thought of one. The last scene of Chapter Four of my current fic begins with Arthur Weasley's POV as he finds and comforts his unhappy wife in the middle of the night. Ginny enters, surprising them, and there's dialogue, in which Ginny expresses great frustation. The scene takes place inthe kitchen at the Burrow, and Ginny serves herself a glass of milk during this scene, giving her business with which to punctuate her dialogue. As we move toward the close of the scene we get this:
Ginny brought her glass to the sink, and washed it, putting it down on the drainer. Going through all those Muggle motions instead of just sneaking in a nice Tergeo was kind of soothing.
Now, I could have stuck with Arthur's POV there, by simply omitting that second sentence, but look at all the things that sentence tells us about Ginny's frame of mind: That the simple physical activity is soothing to her, that she thinks of it as a Muggle way of doing things, that she's not above using a bit of clandestine under-age magic for that kind of thing, and has made a conscious effort to do otherwise because it's soothing.
Did I break the rule there? I certainly did.
But did I gain more than I lost in the process? I definitely think I did. I think the scene is richer, and Ginny more human and likeable, because I broke the rule.
And the mental whiplash would surely have been much worse if I'd given us a scene break just for those two sentences, or even for the three or four short paragraphs, including that one, that close out that scene.
I'm fascinated by this sort of thing, so it's a pleasure to be able to discuss it substantively.
no subject
I'm certainly having fun! I'm going to be offline a fair bit this weekend, but I'll be checking back in to see what people have to say. Everyone's entitled to his/her opinion; I'm mostly intrigued in what those opinions are. I'm not an opinionated person by nature, so this is a rarity. :)
Glad to hear you're writing another long fic! I'm working on two exchange fics. Well, one I'm actually writing, the other one is merely percolating thus far.