POV Tricks and Control

[sartorias]

David Jauss says about POV:

The effective author uses Point of View to control the distance between the reader and the characters to maximize the response the author desires--whether that be moral, intellectual, or emotional.

and

Within Point of View the author employs various angles of perception, utilizing degrees of depth within each angle

Comments

[msisolak]

I'm far more aware of POV changes when I'm in crit mode, which for me means after I've written. As I'm writing, I'm just... well, writing.

But once I've written or I'm critting someone else's work, I look at those POV changes quite carefully. For me, it's about smoothness as you angle the camera in for a close-up and then pull back. If you've drawn back to see the room or to focus on another character who is speaking, then before you can give me the POV character's thoughts, you have to anchor me back in the POV character's body or I'm a little jarred. Same thing happens when you draw back again. Focus on who or whatever it is before you let that person or thing do whatever.

Obviously, you're going in deeper when you're in a POV character's head, and not quite so deeply when you're skimming the surface of a
conversation or the description of a room. Although you can mingle the two if the thoughts of a POV character as he or she thinks about the room or the conversational tidbits.

So I guess I'm defining angle of perception as similar to camera work with its closeups and wide lens views, cuts and swoops. Even your example of Mrs. Dalloway can be seen as a wide lens view, whereby we acquire indirect information, versus the direct information we get from a POV character's thoughts.

Hrm. Did I say anything of import? :P

[sartorias]

This makes a whole lot of sense.

I think for a lot of us visual writers, learning how to turn off the excitement (and imagery) of a first draft and try various ways of seeing the text as a text, instead of reliving inside the story, is a huge part of the rewrite process.

Thinking about a camera is one way to "get at" POV. Another way I've seen is likening it to diving. Down at the bottom where it's murky is the inside of thought processes, and skimming over the top in the light and air is surface, even distance.