thrihyrne | I wonder as I wander... POV musings

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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.

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I think changing POV like that is ONLY acceptable if it is clear from the start that the POV is changing (paragraph transitions, etc.) -- SOMETHING to indicate we are changing characters. Written in third person, that is OK. But never in first. Sorry. I'm not a writer, my grammar is terrible, but even I think switching POV's is just plain lazy.

*HUGS*

Myself, I don't care very much about shifting POV, it doesn't throw me out of a story. I know I do it, usually because I want to know what person B's reaction is to what person A has just said, and naturally I assume the reader shares my interest! (I wouldn't shift POV within a paragraph, though, because that's just confusing. And I probably wouldn't flit around for the same reason.) I suspect I don't mind reading in this way because I watch a lot of television, and you're usually trying to follow multiple POVs there.

I had a lot of fun writing one piece where the POV shifted in just about every scene, and I was all ready with a defence on the lines of: "Oooh, but it was intentional and it's thematically congrous"... but nobody commented on it.

Other things throw me out of a story, usually to do with voice, particularly dialogue that doesn't sound right. I'll forgive many technical sins if the characterization and the emotion are right.

PS A certain pair of twins were on the BBC's late night political chat show This Week last night, and you can watch the programme here. They were on at the end, if you want to skip through.

It depends for me. If the PoV switch happens often throughout the story then it's ok and if the writer can pull it off! Sometimes it just hurts the flow of the story.

If the story is written 90% in a character's PoV and then we get a sentence or paragraph in another PoV, then I consider that a mistake.

If the story is in Ron's PoV and a sentence is thrown in, like say, "Ron's knees ached." I think how could Harry know that, unless Ron told his or a preceding action showed Harry that Ron's knees hurt.

It's considered bad form to switch POV mid-scene, but alternating between POVs when scene/chapter breaks make distinctions between the sections obvious is acceptable. That's the standard answer.

Some authors do break this rule of thumb. Mary Doria Russell comes to mind. She caught lots of criticism for doing so in The Sparrow, but then again her Threads of Grace was just a finalist for the Pulitzer, so I guess she got the last laugh. ;)

If you want to err on the side of preferred practice, though, POV changes should only occur, if at all, at the division points where section/chapter breaks are clearly marked.

Having had a lovely beta work a very long story of mine where I committed this very sin several times, I think my response is this:

It's important to keep a point-of-view that's consistent enough not to confuse a reader. That said, it's not the be-all and end-all, and provided you clearly inform your reader whose POV you're in, and don't make those changes often enough to be wearying, then that rule can be less important than what you can tell your reader that you couldn't have if you'd stayed in one place.

In short, observance of the rule should be in service of telling your story effectively. Where the rule and effective storytelling are in conflict, the rule should lose.

Of course, as Dennis Miller says, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

I think there are ways of doing it so it's obvious you meant to, and why. It can be very interesting, in a story, to go from one head into the other and see things a different way; it can also be quite moving, as you realise what character A is saying comes acrosso completely wrong to character B, or whatever.

Accidental slips can be awful, but as usual, ain't no rule in writing that someone can't break to good effect.

I love your musings. They are so thoughtful and interesting! :)

I have a couple of stories that the POV changed, but it was because the story just had to flow that way. I definitely knew what I was doing and put in paragraph breaks - **** - to show that something shifted.

I'm working on a story now where I've done this, but it's important to the story. I need the readers to understand why a certain character is acting a certain why.

But as a rule, I try not to do it. It can get confusing. I'm not the greatest writer in the world, I write for fun and enjoyment, so I try not to get caught up in the rules. My beta slaps me sometimes for not paying attention to rules, but that's okay, I kind of like it! ;)

i tend to agree with you unless (and i believe someone said this before me) the entire story is meant to change perspective and POV from time to time. i have read stories where the writer intentionaly started with one character's POV, then went to another character's POV, then back to another character's POV, and so on, and so on. i think pieces like that can be quite interesting because it's actually more of a character and perspective study, when done correctly. something like that can actually be used to help build understanding and umpathy.

switching POVs suddenly, without any warning or provacation, is jarring and can disturb the flow of a piece, tho. i think it needs to be fairly clear from the beginning if a person intends to do that, otherwise it feels sloppy.

Well, as you know I very often switch POVs in the course of a story, but I do it usually by chapter (once or twice I've done it by sections, in which case the sections are typographically set off by lines or asterisks or some such). That kind of shift doesn't bother me as a reader at all; it's usually quite clear at the beginning of the new chapter or section that it's now from someone else's POV. [To give examples of my fic you might know where I do this, Better Than Revenge and Courting the Lady both switch by chapter, and Herbology does it by section.]

Now, switching POV in the middle of things is much more bothersome to me; it's jarring. It's like being calmly lying on one's beach chair and suddenly having an unexpected wave dashed over you. My feeling is that if the author wants to be able to show what all the different characters are thinking/feeling at any given moment, the proper POV to take is third person omniscient, rather than the third person limited. [Passages was in third omniscient, basically.] If the reader has been going along seeing everything from Hermione's POV, and suddenly there's a paragraph from Ron's POV, for instance, I see that as an artistic failure.

And RPGs, or RPG-style fic -- nope. Can't really hack those. They're like chatrooms which I also have never been able to effectively survive; I simply can't keep track of what's going on well enough to participate.

This topic has come up in my circle of friends and writers recently. The general opinions came down to two thoughts on the matter; Change of POV is ok if there is a line break/segment break indicator to clarify it AND/OR that it is more acceptable in romance/sex scenes. The thinking being that an omniscient POV can actually make a romance/sex scene more enjoyable and fulfilling and that stopping to break a scene with a segment line can be a distraction.

For me, it comes down to good writing. A good writer can get away with more because I'm just going to be pulled into the story and I could care less about technical things. However the same technical issues might become a distraction in a story that I am less interested in.

I don't really see POV as something that has a right or wrong answer, not in the same way there is a right and wrong way to use punctuation. It's a style choice - and some people are better at it than others.

As a writer, I'm still working my way through this. I have one beta who will nail me on it if I do it, and another beta who likes to know what both people are thinking. If I write a POV change there is still a consistency to it. I'll write an alternating Harry and Ginny POV, because the whole story is from them, but I wouldn't suddenly throw in something from Arthur's POV. KWIM?

Bit of ramble there...heh :)

Switching POVs doesn't bother me as long as it's clear from the start that's what the author intended, with different sections/paragraphs from different POVs. But reading a story where it's ONLY from one POV and then to suddenly switch for just one thing in the middle of the story is very irritating. I like a little bit of consistency.

*shrugs*

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.

I change POVs ALL the time, within one chapter, no matter what voice I'm using (most especially with my Theodred/Boromir stuff). I am very careful to make sure that it's obvious I've switched POV, though, because it's terribly confusing when that break isn't clear. I do try to steer clear of doing it within a paragraph, because it's much harder to delineate one POV from another. It's something I've always done, because I am nothing if not all about the introspection, and I want inside everybody's heads. :)

I think that the party line is "stick to one POV within a chapter", but as I'm also not an English major, I don't know that for certain. And you're right, it does seem to be a bit trendy to jump around inside of everyone's heads. I don't think it's necessarily the sign of a bad/lazy writer (well, I wouldn't, would I? heh), but I do agree that bad writers seem to switch POVs like clumsy partners at a square dance.

And another Pulitzer Prize winner, Larry McMurtry, leaps his POV all over the place in Lonesome Dove, and I honestly never noticed. Until I did, and then I thought, "Wait. Has he been doing that all along?"

I would call switching POVs an advanced technique useable by those who know what they're doing, which is the same opinion I hold about present-tense, 3rd-person omniscient, and a number of other things that new writers try and fail at. Fan fiction as a whole tends to be very basic, transparent writing--easy to read, easy to write, but sometimes a little bland (most genre writing also falls into this category). One of the things I love about book-verse LOTR writing is the ability to stretch a little without being called on it.

you know...I think the switching POV was something that made me vaguely...well, not uneasy...but made me feel like there was something off about that story.

I have always tried sticking to just one point of view when I write. Sometimes, I have not succeeded. It's difficult enough in writing slash sometimes to identify the character's action/speech when you have two (or more - and don't get me starte on that) he's or a couple of she's in the scene.

The biggest exception to this rule was in writing a story with two other lovely ladies. We tended to shift perspective as each of us took a character in the scene to concentrate on...even though the shift was not indicated by anything other than a paragraph break.

I think that POV shifts just have to fit in with the flow of the story. Just like anything, it can be done well, and it will appear seamless...or jerky jumps in POV can drive me out of the rhythm of the story and make me put down the book, or click out of the story.

You always come up with such great topics of conversation, ya know!

*huggles*

Switching POV's during a scene is a no-no in my book.

I don't see anything wrong with it.

If it's done well, I shouldn't even be able to notice it, and it should make sense as part of the story. Only when mishandled does it turn the narrative to shite.

Same with any writing trick or technique, I guess.

:)

this english major and one-time writer HATES head hopping. it should be banned. of course, i'm talking the mid-scene sudden "hey, how they heck am i over here" variety. the usual shift between the *two* (and most writing should involve just two) main characters at scene/chapter breaks is acceptable. novel length expected and welcome. shorter short story length, you should pick a character and stay with them.

head-hopping is simply a sign of weakness on the part of the author not being able to effectively write, or trying to convey too much. it is a bad habit that should be broken early on. you loose tension by revealing all points of view, not to mention you confuse/annoy/piss off the reader.

there are authors -- huge bestselling authors, no less -- i refuse to read because of constant head-hopping. i remember making it to page five of one book and having to throw it across the room because i got the POV of the f**ing dog in the middle of a paragraph that already contained 3 POVs. laziness, weakness and crap.

I vote for "no POV-switching within a scene." It'll make me click the back button, seriously.

Multiple POVs in a fic are fine, though, when demarked by a new scene. I think of it as another issue than the one above.

I think multiple POVs are an old-fashioned thing - I'm reading an E.M. Forster story where he does it constantly, even within a paragraph. Can't say I like it much, but he's dead, so I can't make him toe the line, either.

As with most other literary techniques, I think a lot depends upon the skill with which a POV shift is done. But generally a shift in mid-paragraph in an otherwise straightforward piece of prose will be read (by me, anyway) as clumsiness rather than intent.

I'm all for omniscience myself.

Is it a trend, using willy-nilly POV LOL. I couldn't help it. this line just cracked me up.

I've read a few fics where the POV changed and then back and changed again. I think it went well though, as there was clear indications the POV had changed, exp. a new paragraph. To change POV in the same paragraph I think would get confusing. And I believe I do the same thing at times.

I know I tend to change verb tenses at different times. I have a hard time with verbage, some times.

I personally find maintaining a single POV a great discipline.

Instead of switching and changing between character's POV, and frankly confusing the reader (I once read a 1000 word story with 5 different 1st person POV), a single POV allows focus.

A single intense POV shapes the story and encourages innovation, finding ways to tell your story with in the constraints you've set. It also allows you to shed dead weight, lose non critical elements of the story, which can be explained or rerepresented later. You need to decide which character's POV most clearly aligns with the purpose of your story.

I personally like to restrain myself to a single POV per chapter, though I occassionally stretch to two. (Clearly differenciated).

That said, I have broken the rule on occasion, specifically when I purposely allowed the POV to follow a stream of events, much like a movie camera sometimes does (The movie "Love Actually" is a great example)

2c ZA

I reckon I'm of the 'stick with one POV' camp. Not against a justified switch if it's warranted or well marked, but I suppose that's purely subjective. I do find mid-paragraph switches jarring, as well as POV's that flop about repeatedly. I enjoy telling the story from one character's point of view, and I don't always want the reader to know what the OTHER character(s) are thinking.

When I was writing my first multi-chap, I went to great lengths to keep each chapter's POV from one character only, no matter how difficult it was. There was one chapter where I switched the POV's between three characters to tell a scene from each character's POV; I warned of it at the beginning of the chap, and used paragraph breaks. No one really complained, and I sort of like how it turned out. Later in the same fic, I think I used three chapters to describe the same sequence of events from three different POV's.

Thanks for this, luv, even though I'm well behind the pack here...

Go read Willa Cather's Neighbor Rosicky, a short story. My training was always show don't tell, watch your POV's. I love how she tells all over the place and switches POV in mid paragraph sometimes. My thought is you can get away with anything you can actually get away with.

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this isn't a thorough or eloquent 'english major' response, but...

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POV

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