Point of View

This week is point of view or POV for short. You want my point of view about the state of this country? I’ll gladly give it to you. Oh, that’s not the POV you want to hear about is it; you want the POV in writing.

Recently I have noticed the biggest problem for new writer’s is not getting the story out, it is keeping the story consistent.

Consistency in POV and consistency with tenses. Sure I see alot of grammatical issues being tossed out there as a new writer, but POV is one tough element of the craft that needs to be honed and mastered.

Mastering the POV will help in keeping the work consistent.

We at f2k, have an exercise this week in POV and when asked to shift pov, alot of people will write the same exact paragraph and switch the POV from “He said” to “I said”. To me, shifting the point of view changes the perspective and the ‘who’ is seeing what and from whose point of view.

Here’s an example of something I’m working on: Two pov’s and different perspectives arise.

POV 1 ~ First person
As I hover over my lifeless body lying below me, I wonder where I am. The aroma of a fresh garden surrounds me making me feel like a weightless cloud. I want to yell down to myself, but I can’t seem to communicate from here. I walk slowly toward the endless portal that awaits me. I float like a feather on an endless air drifting into the unknown. No claps of thunder, no bolts of lightning, just eerie warmth surrounds me. A gravitational pull sucks me like a huge non-existent vacuum of space and time. I turn away from the light and try in a motionless effort to reclaim the body I left. Suddenly, I awaken to the trickle of an ice cold shower that releases me from the warm safe haven. I scan the bathroom and wonder how on earth did I get in here?

POV2 ~ Third person
Look at her, a lifeless form in need of assistance. She has left her body only to discover the realm of the unknown. The bright light that has hold of her won’t let her go. She can wriggle and worm all she wants but it is pulling with an endless flux of gravity. She knows this is the end of the line, the place she’s heard about but never wanted to be at the cusp of her youth. She's grappling with fear yet releasing herself without a fight, letting herself drift into the aromatic garden that waits. As moments pass, time is of the essence.
She needs to be revived; it’s not her time. Wait; look; she’s in bathroom shower. How on earth did she get there?

The same paragraph but from different perspectives, and two different pov’s. This shift sometimes confuses new writer’s because they can’t see from anyone elses eyes. They are looking at the paragraph and thinking they need to write the exact same words but change *I* into *She*. When I shift pov, I see from someone else eyes.

I think we need to look at perspective as much as POV. Work on the POV, sifting through all the knowledge you can and try this exercise from a writers POV and I can bet you’re perspective will change too. You’ll be seeing through different eyes in no time.

Now get moving, Write Right!

To Outline Or Not to Outline?

The outline usually begins with an idea that you have. You write it down then the thought flourishes as more and more is added to the idea. Outlining enhances the creative juices within you.

Outlining is just another term used for organizing. Through outlining you can see what you need to put where. If writing a story, you’ll need the basic idea, but as the story begins to flow, you’ll need to remember things about the character(s), home, place or year. With the outline you can logically place the facts, have them on hand as you do your research, then go about fleshing out your story.

All stories are created from one main source, your mind. A writer creates with words so it is vital to write those words down. If a story comes out of just one word, start jotting down the ideas so you can understand them better.

As in all writing, whether a story, article, essay or novel, you will have a beginning middle and end. With the outline you may want to take notes as to what you will have in the beginning, this is the ‘draw the reader in’ phase. You’ll set up the problem that will eventually be resolved. This is the foreplay.

Your middle will have what is keeping your reader reading, all the juicy surprises, arising conflicts, and climaxes. The outline will be a time-line of actions for you to remember.

The end will near and as you head back down the slope you will give the reader a resolution, the happyily (or not so happy) ever after.

With an outline you will be able to visually see what happens in Chapters 1-5 because you will note the high points and use them as guides. It will also help with consistency. You can have Bill die in chapter four, but you might accidentally mention him as being alive in chapter ten. The outline helps you in your consistency checks.

So what are we going to do writers? Are we going to free-write an entire novel and get lost and confused in the revision stages? Maybe, but it is much wiser to have an outline to lead you down the journey of completion.

Consistency

"Like the winding stream, writers need to know where to take the reader, down the consistent path." ~joni

Consistency is another attribute necessary to pulling off a story. We need to be consistent throughout our work so the reader doesn’t get confused. This isn’t the same as staying focused (although that helps a lot.) Consistency is where fact meets fact.

Say you’re writing a period piece of the roaring twenties. You will need to make sure that your scenes fit that era, and don’t accidentally toss in that, "She sat tapping on the keyboard all day." It is things like this that will have your reader doing a double take and say, "I thought this was 1925?"

You should never have cause to make your reader double back searching for birthdays and ages, and times of day. With consistency they will already know the time of the day that she had her first kiss, or the time his dad bought the young boy his first car.

These things might seem minor to you, but to your reader it is giving them a solid foundation of your character to hold onto. Flashbacks help a story, but if you miss the consistency check, you are certainly in trouble.

You need to be consistent in your language, consistent in terms, consistent in style. You can’t write short and to the point one-minute then lapse into a prose style the next. You can’t shift tenses or points of view; instead you need to be consistent throughout the piece.

Now long time published authors, I have witnessed, play with the tenses just to fool you, but they are masters at their trade. It is wise if you are new to the publishing world to write consistently so that your followers know your style, follow it compulsively, and look forward to the next installation of your work.

People have a tendency to like the ordinary and expecting you to write one way in one book and the same in the next and the next. They will become your followers and the ones that will promote you to "The most published author’s" list. Sure they expect the unexpected to happen in your spiritual novel or horror story, but they’ve come to love your consistent writing. That is what is going to carry you from one novel to the next.

When you read Stephen King and Dean Koontz, you know their style (although both are different, they are both extremely good at what they do.) They know what you want as writers. They feed off of knowing you, the reader, better than you know yourselves sometimes. They give you a tiny taste of what you can expect in the very first chapter and what happens, you pig out on the entire meal, over-indulge yourself into some hefty reading and wind up reading the whole book! (This is true of all novelists also, although I am a die hard King and Koontz fan.)

Know the reader; give them what they crave. Remember it is consistency that put the above authors where they are today. Without consistency they would have been shelved (pun intended) years ago.