Maintaining Point of View Integrity© Laura Elvin
Jun 6, 2000
What is point of view? It's whose perspective you're in when reading a story. In the old days, we found ourselves, more often than not, in God's perspective ... also known as omniscient. Basically, this meant things like: Roger could leave the room and then we, the reader, would notice that a pair of shoes peaked out from under the curtains in the now empty room.
Although you'll still see omniscient now and again, it's become HUGELY more popular to just pick one character and stick to their point of view, meaning everything the readers sees and hears are things that that character is seeing and hearing. In longer works, you may find POV switching between two characters.... "The limited narrator can also change viewpoint characters. Not in mid-scene or even mid-paragraph, as the omniscient narrator does, but from one scene to another, as long as there is a clear transitional break." [Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card] But here we discuss short works of fiction.
I've gone along a lot of different paths when it comes to POV (point of view). There was a time I didn't even know what it meant (and yes, I'd been writing and submitting at that time). Then I moved on to a stage (thanks to the original critique groups I belonged to) where I learned what it was. But I got so intent on it, I was the POV Nazi. Since that time, I've settled in to a position just left of that Nazi.I still feel very strongly about staying in POV (I insist a writer at least KNOW what POV is and recognizes it), but I'm not as severe about the subject as I once was. I see POV switches in a lot more amateur work than professional work, but I notice it no matter where I see it because it's one of those things that takes me OUT of the story (never a good thing). The worst is when I'm reading a story and I have to keep going back a couple of sentences to figure out what's going on merely because the author has us jumping from one person's head (or perspective) to another. We're not talking about an author who uses (well) the omniscient POV; we're talking about someone who doesn't know WHAT they're doing and they just have us in too many heads at once. I recently reviewed about 20 stories on a website dedicated to ... reviewing stories . The most overwhelming technical error (yes, for now we'll refer to it as an error because I could tell by the way it was done they were not intentional breaks from the rules) was shifting point of view.
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Thanks for the feedback on my articles here. It makes a difference.Donna, no. I have The Essential Barker, but I've yet to read it. Currently I'm having a go at The Great and Secret Show, but I ...
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Short stories are generally too short to maintain more than one point of view. With a novel, a writer can get away with more, but even so, you must always be careful not to confuse the reader (especi ...
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Every writer needs to be aware of POV. Thanks for the article...well written and informative!
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No longer a POV nazi, eh? ;-) Inappropriate switches will definitely bring a critiquer (and no doubt an editor) out of a story fast. The casual reader too. And I suspect it does mark a writer as an am ...
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Like the way you write. Good advice, too. jerrib
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