Craft 2: On Jumping POV
Since someone said about my last post on craft they looked forward to more... Don't worry--in no case are these pointers my own. I don't have the hubris to think anyone would be interested in what I think about writing. And trust me, I know I get it wrong. You can know the principles, applying them is still... well, not always easy.
This one is my second biggest craft Pet Peeve in reading fanfic, I'd say especially HP fic.
In my last post on the subject I mentioned a handbook I'd made of posts by an anthology editor. Btw, that Forum on AOL was erased, so AFAIK, my harddrive (and my friend's) is the only place you can find the below. This is from that "handbook"--the word according to Strange New Worlds editor, Dean Wesley Smith:
Maintain a solid viewpoint, and let the reader know exactly whose head we are in right from the start... To do this right, you MUST climb inside one person's head per scene and just stay there, only observing what that one character sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels. Every word of the story is that person's thoughts.
If you are in a character's head, looking out their eyes, never breaking viewpoint, you would have no reason to ever use the phrase "He thought." Never, thus you would never need to know how to put it in a manuscript. If you are trying to do that, you are having trouble with viewpoint and need to go learn that.
Sorry to be so blunt, but the truth. *g*
Dean
Elizbeth George, Write Away, page 77 (13 bestsellers, including Deception on His Mind)
Point of view will allow your readers to suspend their disbelief if it's used with consistancy throughout the book... of all the viewpoints [omniscient]... requires the most adept hand to keep the viewpoint truly omniscient and not just an excuse for an undisciplined sliding in and out of different characters' points of view.
Orson Scott Card, Characters and Viewpoint, page 155 (Award-winning author of the bestselling Ender Saga among others)
You can switch viewpoint characters from time to time, but trading viewpoints requires a clear division--a chapter break or a line space [hit enter twice - in manuscript format marked with three centered asterisks]. The limited third-person narrator can never change viewpoints in mid-scene.
Renni Browne and Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print, page 36 - 39 (two pro editors who have worked for major publishers)
Some authors get into trouble with their point of view because they are trying to track the emotions of everyone involved in the scene. After all, the easiest way to show how someone feels is through interior monologue--get into his or her head and tell your readers what's there. So when you have several characters in a scene, there's an understandable temptation to simply write interior monologues for all of them.
And it's a temptation we hope you'll resist. For one thing, shifting the point of view back and forth is likely to do more damage to the flow of the scene than the various viewpoints are worth....
It's usually a good idea to establish the point of view in the first paragraph of a scene--even the first sentence--in order to orient the reader... When you make the point of view character clear at the beginning of a scene you get your readers involved early--and your scene off to a quick, sharp start.
The only exception--and just about the only time it's effective to mix points of view in a scene--is to start out in omniscient narration and then ease into a specific third-person point of view.
Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, page 128 (literary agent and former editor)
[W]hen writers such as these employ viewpoint switches [to great advantage], they never switch in midsentence, midparagraph or midchapter, as amateur writers do. Instead they only switch viewpoints in conjunction with a clear break, such as a line, chapter or book break... Additionally, the switches are truly integral to their story... Many amateur writers, on the other hand, switch viewpoints solely because they like the idea, because they think it adds spice. In general, I would strongly recommend beginning writers not employ multiple viewpoints; developing one good viewpoint can be hard enough, even for the most advanced writer... What most writers don't understand is that, if they feel compelled to switch, often the reason behind the compulsion is that the original viewpoint character is not that interesting to begin with.
======================
One last pointer--this I copied down as a writing exercise from I don't remember where--one in writing Omniscient. But it's also useful in ticking off to yourself what a limited POV is NOT so as to avoid POV jumps.
Btw--I was guilty of one of the below BIG TIME and finally got called on it when my first chapter of my WIP finally got betaed--that chapter had been validated by a moderated archive, but not betaed. So it's not like I'm not sometimes guilty of this. Holding POV can be hard.
Hallmarks of Omniscient
1) Enter each characters' mind (within a scene)
2) Interpret events
3) Describe unobserved incidents
4) Provide historical context
5) Reveal future events
The writing exercise btw was to write about a large gathering like a wedding and include at least 3 out of the 5 hallmarks of omniscience in the story.
Oh, which one was I so guilty of? Number 3--and I knew it. But at the time, I was writing that first chapter just for myself having suffered writer's block for two years. I had no intention of posting it--and the hat trick seemed cool. Then I posted on FFN just to see what reaction I'd get. Then I got reviews, then I wrote a second chapter and...
Well, for good or ill, here I am...
Omniscient POV is notoriously hard to do well--and rare. Instead, what I do often see in fanfic is third-person limited with jarring POV shifts--especially in love scenes. Because writers seemingly cannot *resist* telling us how both Snape and Hermione feel simultaneously (or Draco and Hermione if that's your ship).
Frankly, I'm not too wild about how JKR gives us almost always only Harry's POV throughout all the books, then does something like "Spinner's End" in Half-Blood Prince which is Objective POV (we never go into anyone's mind) without Harry present. A pattern of rotating or alternating viewpoints established early is a different story.
Oh, and just to show I don't just gripe about HP--one of my pet peeves regarding POV in Trek around the end of my time there was how everyone and their mother was writing in second person, present. Mind you, even I wrote one like that. When done well, it's great for showing a damaged, disassociated character. But for a while, it became a stylistic fashion (Hell, rut) and you saw it *everywhere.* Because people new to writing love being different (and yet following each other like sheep)... even when good old third person limited past, single character would really be the way to go.
An Addendum
Given some responses below I want to clarify something--I don't mean I'm against playing with POV. That, after all, is a lot of the fun of fanfic. When editors warn you away from other than plain third person single, limited, past tense, it's because those other POV's are more challenging for a new writer, and if you're trying to sell...
If I include both Trek and HP, these are the viewpoints I've written in--not including drabbles:
Third Person, Past, single
11 stories (including my HP short story, "Janus")
Third Person, Past, rotating multiple
3 stories
Third Person, Past, dual
2 stories (including my WIP, Book of Shadows)
Third Person, Present, single
1 story (HP ficlet, "Silver Age")
First Person, Past, single
5 stories
First Person, Past, single (unreliable narrator)
1 story
First Person, Present, single
2 stories (including my HP vignette, "Gambit")
Diary Format, single
1 story
Dramatic Monologue, single
1 story
Second Person, Present, single
1 story
So, trust me--it's not that I'm saying only third person will do. I could even say I've taken a stab at omnniscient if I included a little three-part drabble series I posted to grangersnape100 and a drabble on my LJ. Just please--if you're not writing omniscient and change POV's--for the love of God don't do it within a scene. As annietalbot commented below, the scene marker is your friend!
This one is my second biggest craft Pet Peeve in reading fanfic, I'd say especially HP fic.
In my last post on the subject I mentioned a handbook I'd made of posts by an anthology editor. Btw, that Forum on AOL was erased, so AFAIK, my harddrive (and my friend's) is the only place you can find the below. This is from that "handbook"--the word according to Strange New Worlds editor, Dean Wesley Smith:
Maintain a solid viewpoint, and let the reader know exactly whose head we are in right from the start... To do this right, you MUST climb inside one person's head per scene and just stay there, only observing what that one character sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels. Every word of the story is that person's thoughts.
If you are in a character's head, looking out their eyes, never breaking viewpoint, you would have no reason to ever use the phrase "He thought." Never, thus you would never need to know how to put it in a manuscript. If you are trying to do that, you are having trouble with viewpoint and need to go learn that.
Sorry to be so blunt, but the truth. *g*
Dean
Elizbeth George, Write Away, page 77 (13 bestsellers, including Deception on His Mind)
Point of view will allow your readers to suspend their disbelief if it's used with consistancy throughout the book... of all the viewpoints [omniscient]... requires the most adept hand to keep the viewpoint truly omniscient and not just an excuse for an undisciplined sliding in and out of different characters' points of view.
Orson Scott Card, Characters and Viewpoint, page 155 (Award-winning author of the bestselling Ender Saga among others)
You can switch viewpoint characters from time to time, but trading viewpoints requires a clear division--a chapter break or a line space [hit enter twice - in manuscript format marked with three centered asterisks]. The limited third-person narrator can never change viewpoints in mid-scene.
Renni Browne and Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print, page 36 - 39 (two pro editors who have worked for major publishers)
Some authors get into trouble with their point of view because they are trying to track the emotions of everyone involved in the scene. After all, the easiest way to show how someone feels is through interior monologue--get into his or her head and tell your readers what's there. So when you have several characters in a scene, there's an understandable temptation to simply write interior monologues for all of them.
And it's a temptation we hope you'll resist. For one thing, shifting the point of view back and forth is likely to do more damage to the flow of the scene than the various viewpoints are worth....
It's usually a good idea to establish the point of view in the first paragraph of a scene--even the first sentence--in order to orient the reader... When you make the point of view character clear at the beginning of a scene you get your readers involved early--and your scene off to a quick, sharp start.
The only exception--and just about the only time it's effective to mix points of view in a scene--is to start out in omniscient narration and then ease into a specific third-person point of view.
Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, page 128 (literary agent and former editor)
[W]hen writers such as these employ viewpoint switches [to great advantage], they never switch in midsentence, midparagraph or midchapter, as amateur writers do. Instead they only switch viewpoints in conjunction with a clear break, such as a line, chapter or book break... Additionally, the switches are truly integral to their story... Many amateur writers, on the other hand, switch viewpoints solely because they like the idea, because they think it adds spice. In general, I would strongly recommend beginning writers not employ multiple viewpoints; developing one good viewpoint can be hard enough, even for the most advanced writer... What most writers don't understand is that, if they feel compelled to switch, often the reason behind the compulsion is that the original viewpoint character is not that interesting to begin with.
======================
One last pointer--this I copied down as a writing exercise from I don't remember where--one in writing Omniscient. But it's also useful in ticking off to yourself what a limited POV is NOT so as to avoid POV jumps.
Btw--I was guilty of one of the below BIG TIME and finally got called on it when my first chapter of my WIP finally got betaed--that chapter had been validated by a moderated archive, but not betaed. So it's not like I'm not sometimes guilty of this. Holding POV can be hard.
Hallmarks of Omniscient
1) Enter each characters' mind (within a scene)
2) Interpret events
3) Describe unobserved incidents
4) Provide historical context
5) Reveal future events
The writing exercise btw was to write about a large gathering like a wedding and include at least 3 out of the 5 hallmarks of omniscience in the story.
Oh, which one was I so guilty of? Number 3--and I knew it. But at the time, I was writing that first chapter just for myself having suffered writer's block for two years. I had no intention of posting it--and the hat trick seemed cool. Then I posted on FFN just to see what reaction I'd get. Then I got reviews, then I wrote a second chapter and...
Well, for good or ill, here I am...
Omniscient POV is notoriously hard to do well--and rare. Instead, what I do often see in fanfic is third-person limited with jarring POV shifts--especially in love scenes. Because writers seemingly cannot *resist* telling us how both Snape and Hermione feel simultaneously (or Draco and Hermione if that's your ship).
Frankly, I'm not too wild about how JKR gives us almost always only Harry's POV throughout all the books, then does something like "Spinner's End" in Half-Blood Prince which is Objective POV (we never go into anyone's mind) without Harry present. A pattern of rotating or alternating viewpoints established early is a different story.
Oh, and just to show I don't just gripe about HP--one of my pet peeves regarding POV in Trek around the end of my time there was how everyone and their mother was writing in second person, present. Mind you, even I wrote one like that. When done well, it's great for showing a damaged, disassociated character. But for a while, it became a stylistic fashion (Hell, rut) and you saw it *everywhere.* Because people new to writing love being different (and yet following each other like sheep)... even when good old third person limited past, single character would really be the way to go.
An Addendum
Given some responses below I want to clarify something--I don't mean I'm against playing with POV. That, after all, is a lot of the fun of fanfic. When editors warn you away from other than plain third person single, limited, past tense, it's because those other POV's are more challenging for a new writer, and if you're trying to sell...
If I include both Trek and HP, these are the viewpoints I've written in--not including drabbles:
Third Person, Past, single
11 stories (including my HP short story, "Janus")
Third Person, Past, rotating multiple
3 stories
Third Person, Past, dual
2 stories (including my WIP, Book of Shadows)
Third Person, Present, single
1 story (HP ficlet, "Silver Age")
First Person, Past, single
5 stories
First Person, Past, single (unreliable narrator)
1 story
First Person, Present, single
2 stories (including my HP vignette, "Gambit")
Diary Format, single
1 story
Dramatic Monologue, single
1 story
Second Person, Present, single
1 story
So, trust me--it's not that I'm saying only third person will do. I could even say I've taken a stab at omnniscient if I included a little three-part drabble series I posted to grangersnape100 and a drabble on my LJ. Just please--if you're not writing omniscient and change POV's--for the love of God don't do it within a scene. As annietalbot commented below, the scene marker is your friend!