Some people insist that the only time POV should be changed is when there is a break in the scene, or better still a break in the chapter. But this isn't necessarily true. Many popular authors will switch POV in the middle of a scene or in the middle of a chapter.
Thank you! Too many people have tried to tell me this or insisted on this to someone else, but I've since notice pro writers doing it. Sometimes the story I want to tell needs more than one POV in a scene. I find the insistence that a story has to stick to one POV per scene or chapter in order to be good or logical very limiting. Sometimes I can work around it, but sometimes I can't and tell the story the way I want to and the way the story wants to be told. It's also driven me to learn how to use 3PO to get around it even though I know some readers don't like it and consider it distancing. I am not one of them; I love what 3PO does for me.
You're very welcome. Of course, the main reason why writers and editors usually insist on POV changes only at those breaks is because it's often done poorly when attempted mid-scene. That doesn't mean it can't be done, obviously, but as you've noted it isn't always easy to do. Glad this helped make you feel better about what you're doing though. :)
Very nicely done, thank you. The ways to make it clear whose head we're in seem to me to be paragraph-based, just as in making each speaker in his own paragraph.
Thank you so much for addressing this! I get so frustrated when people insist that POVs can't be switched withing a scene. I don't do it nearly as much as I used to (mostly because it can be tricky and take a while to figure out, especially if you're in a time crunch), but I'm a firm believer that if you use the right cues in the right places, you can switch however much you need to in order to get the story across. :)
. Thank you. I try to be very aware of POV, both as a writer and as a beta, but sometimes I'm stymied.
For instance, in the previous piece you linked to, the third person omniscient sample feels 'off' to me -- The coffee burned Jack's mouth, but he kept drinking, unwilling to answer Daniel's question. Daniel knew he'd been there during Jack's incarceration, but he still didn't know how he'd helped Jack and that bothered him. Jack wasn't giving anything up, and not because Oma erased Jack's memory; Jack just didn't want to tell him.
I could see it working if Daniel's POV was the beginning of a new paragraph. But putting both Jack and Daniel POV in the same paragraph, even with 3PO, feels wrong. The same way we start a new paragraph when we have a new speaker, why don't we start a new paragraph when we have a new POV? And, how can I tell if it's okay to use one paragraph, or should switch to another? .
Actually, the way I wrote this was that Jack's POV was used in the first paragraph, and Daniel's in the second. I didn't attempt to switch POV in the same paragraph. But this just goes to show how difficult it is to write a POV shift properly. And why, even if it can be done from one paragraph to the next, sometimes it's just better to only change POV at scene or chapter breaks - because it's that much easier for the reader to follow.
You should at the very least start a new paragraph when switching POV. And, certainly based on what the betas for my post suggested, having some sort of a bridging paragraph between the POV's may be even better. But the bottom line is, if it feels off to you as the writer or the beta, it's going to feel off to the readers as well. And then your best solution is just not to make the POV shift.
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Thank you! Too many people have tried to tell me this or insisted on this to someone else, but I've since notice pro writers doing it. Sometimes the story I want to tell needs more than one POV in a scene. I find the insistence that a story has to stick to one POV per scene or chapter in order to be good or logical very limiting. Sometimes I can work around it, but sometimes I can't and tell the story the way I want to and the way the story wants to be told. It's also driven me to learn how to use 3PO to get around it even though I know some readers don't like it and consider it distancing. I am not one of them; I love what 3PO does for me.
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Thank you. I try to be very aware of POV, both as a writer and as a beta, but sometimes I'm stymied.
For instance, in the previous piece you linked to, the third person omniscient sample feels 'off' to me -- The coffee burned Jack's mouth, but he kept drinking, unwilling to answer Daniel's question. Daniel knew he'd been there during Jack's incarceration, but he still didn't know how he'd helped Jack and that bothered him. Jack wasn't giving anything up, and not because Oma erased Jack's memory; Jack just didn't want to tell him.
I could see it working if Daniel's POV was the beginning of a new paragraph. But putting both Jack and Daniel POV in the same paragraph, even with 3PO, feels wrong. The same way we start a new paragraph when we have a new speaker, why don't we start a new paragraph when we have a new POV? And, how can I tell if it's okay to use one paragraph, or should switch to another?
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You should at the very least start a new paragraph when switching POV. And, certainly based on what the betas for my post suggested, having some sort of a bridging paragraph between the POV's may be even better. But the bottom line is, if it feels off to you as the writer or the beta, it's going to feel off to the readers as well. And then your best solution is just not to make the POV shift.
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