Point of View ~ POV

The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt it didn't matter.
Edward Albee

 POV or point of view, is the writer’s tool that is going to make or break your story.

The point of view in a story is the narrator’s voice that is telling the story. It is whose eyes the reader will be seeing through. Like Alice looking through the looking glass? Mad Hatter couldn’t tell you what Alice saw now could he?

In first person POV we will see through Jane’s eyes. What Jane sees, smells, hears, and especially what Jane thinks. (I think of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill house.) This is an excellent portrayal of first person POV. But with first person POV, you have limited yourself to only Janes thoughts. The other character’s being introduced to the story will only be a mirror of what JANE portrays them to be. Again read the above novel by Shirley Jackson and you’ll get the idea of how paranoid her main character sounds.

Now trouble arrives when you try saying that John heard a noise that sounded like glass shattering. You have now shifted POV’s and this can be a dangerous line to cross when making it clear to the reader that this is Jane’s story and not John’s.

When you’re a beginning writer it is fundamentally important to learn the craft of POV.

I’ll try to make this simple, as if POV is ever simple. It can get pretty complicated but I’ll give you the basics. First person, second person and third person POV.

In first person, we’re going to use the word I a lot because I am going to tell you the story from my POV. Like many blogs that are written in first person POV, we use the word I to show that this is my perspective and not yours.

POV is basically, inside whose head are you going to tell the story from? You need to understand this factor of POV if you are ever to be taken seriously as a writer. Not understanding this concept can make your writing look amateurish to say the least and also make it look like you haven’t studied the craft long enough to understand.

  

Second person is a little, no A LOT trickier. I’ll let you read about it here, since I still get confused with it myself.

Third person POV is the point of view that most authors use. It is much like the first person, except you’ll use he saw the road crack before them instead of I saw the road crack. It is essentially using ‘he’ instead of ‘I’.

Now the tricky third person pov is the ever-elusive third person omniscient. Though omniscient is on occasion used in the beginning of the story, the writer switches to third person to get a tight grip on the main characters view.

Unbeknownst to me, Marge didn’t like the day that was about to unfold.

OMNISCIENT POV: This is where the reader is in everyone’s head and not really clinging to one character and getting to know him/her. You virtually give up the characters by using this point of view because no one can carry this all the way through a story and make it a profitable best seller. If you know of one author that has, then do tell! You can start a novel in this way, but really we switch to maybe a third person POV

The pov is tricky in writing so if you plan on mastering the craft of writing this would be a helpful tool to practice, read others work, and implement it into your own writing. By reading what others have written before you, you’ll get the idea of POV and you’ll also recognize WHEN the shifts occur and how to masterfully shift pov yourself.

The exercise I like to practice with most? Say we have a prompt of 500 words. Write the exercise in first person. Try the same story only switch to third person. Write it again in third person omniscient. (I NEVER tackle 2^nd person and that is why I won’t touch the subject!)

Show your writing group your different pov’s of your stories. You ARE in a workshop right? After all my blogging about how important it is to surround yourself with other writers? SHAME ON YOU!

Your writing group will be able to help you see the difference, feel the difference and master the different ways to serve the POV to your reader. There isn’t enough room in a 500-word-blog to give you ALL of the details of POV, but trust me on this one. This is one tricky part of the craft to master. But once you have it licked, your writing will shine like the morning sunrise!

For further reading:

Grammar Girl

Suite 101

Book Bites:

The Power of Pointof View by Alicia Rasley

Rivet your Readers with deepPOV by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

Monday Monday...POV shift

My past is my wisdom to use today. . . my future is my wisdom yet to experience. Be in the present because that is where life resides.
Gene Oliver, Life and the Artistry of Change

***

Well as you know yesterday was Father’s Day. I didn’t get to see my dad but I called him just to let him know I was thinking of him. He received my card (Sunday’s poem) on Thursday, thanked me and he went on to have a nice day.

Steven got a tee shirt from Adam with all the Marvel comic heroes (and maybe some villains) on it and as he still loves comics, he loved the shirt. He also got a call from Bio-kid, first time in thirteen years, which I know made him happy. We went to church, and went to lunch afterward at a place of his choice, and Taco Johns was his choice.

All in all, it was a nice, sunny, windy Father’s Day.

I’m reading a book called Rose Madder by Stephen King. I’ve read it before but as in all of Kings novels, these need to be read more than two or three times in your lifetime. Being a writer it is sometimes hard to put on the ‘just a reader’ hat and I’m always dissecting elements of the book as I go along. Maybe this is why I read it two and three times, so I can really grasp the full story.

I think in this book, rules are broken but handled with delicate care as only a master crafter of writing can do. He jumps POV, and as you know POV is point of view. The book begins with Rose getting beat by her husband on a daily basis for too many years until she finally leaves.

She goes to a battered women shelter eight hundred miles away. Then there is Norman the battering husband. As we’re reading Rose’s POV and are virtually living in her head, the story shifts to Norman back home, wanting revenge because she left. This part of the story is in italics, so we know Norman from Rose.

I’m not going to tell you all of the things Rose does but really this book is all over the place. She leaves and a walk down the street can take three pages until she finally makes it to the bus stop. Like I said, King is a master. It lends to the story because we are deep into Rose, when Norman the madman, sits at his desk, seeking revenge.

Literally gripping storytelling. Is POV shift okay in a story? Apparently when done craftily it can be pulled off with style. A new writer should never attempt this because a lot of the times you lose a part of your story, but in Rose’s case, this was done thoughtfully as the story progressed because we the reader are thinking, “what did Norman do when he found out Rose left?” It works because not only is it what Norman DID when she left, it is what he DOES!

Weaved into the story, Norman’s POV is as important as Rose’s. We need both sides of the story and Mister King can make you squirm in your seat awaiting the next page.

Just as in any holiday, Father’s day to me is seen from my perspective, and Father’s have their own perspective. Shifts in POV, virtually imperative to making some stories work. :)