Switching pov?

Hi guys this is my 1st thread. I'm hoping you guys can help me on this one.

I'm currently using multiple pov 3rd person limited, and i want to show the events that are happening on the antagonists' side. The events are quite short (but important) and it's going to be told probably only about a few times per chapter. That's why i don't think i really need to have a pov character on their side. So is it ok for me to switch to 3rd omniscient whenever I'm going to tell these events? And how exactly do i inform the readers that i did the switch?

 

I'd like to know as well. I seem to be struggling with this too.

 

Me too. This is exactly what I intend to do. I'm trying to look at my current WIP as a film, but I suppose that would make it strict omniscient.

I want to be able to switch between characters, but fear I won't be able to (or even want to) get into my antagonist's head the same way I will my protagonist's.

If I can't switch between characters then, at least to me, there's no point writing in third.

 

If you have a cleanly set up, 3rd person limited from multiple POVs and you need to go to the antagonist's side of things, then you need to cleanly go to that side. Switching to omniscient, mid-scene, is, to me, cheating in your POV. Your POV has constraints (they all have constraints in one form or another), that you need to work within. In China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, the whole book is 3rd person serial (like yours), and there are three parts where we slip into 1st person pov for a character called a garuda. It's a clean chapter break, even though these interludes are quite short. Just mixing them in would be giving up on discipline. In the books I'm reading now, The Expanse novels, again, 3rd person limited-close-multiple POVs. In one of the books we are taken aside for a few interludes to an entity that can't really be called a person or even a thinking being. It's a piece of technology, so I would argue that it's 3rd person omniscient for those interludes. But again, clean chapter breaks even though the interludes aren't even a page long.

 

So, in short, if we use chapter breaks to make things clear, we can switch from 3rd close to 3rd omniscient?

I want to keep the reader up to date on the antagonist's movements, but not necessarily get in his head. Correct me if I'm wrong, @Surcruxum, but I understand this is what you want too.

 

Can you explain to me what a clean chapter break is. I've seen the **** in the center with proper spacing, the plain spacing longer that paragraph spacing, and then using a new chapter to use a new pov. My husband says when looking at my stuff that I'm still not making proper exchanges when seeing these. He says that they are difficult and hard transitions.
http://jamigold.com/2013/07/7-methods-for-handling-point-of-view/ I found out some of those methods from this blog. But like I said my husband says what I'm doing is terrible writing at best. He was showing me better examples in Dune, but I'm still confused on how to carry it out in my story.

ETA: Like I wanted to use multiple 3rd person and 1st when times were needed for it. Like a chapter dedicated to one player. All my classes growing up focused on expository writing... :/

 

Mmmm... I don't know if DUNE is the best example. I mean, trust me, I'm of the age and of the era where as a Sci-Fi Geek Boy, DUNE was pretty much my bible, kissed and blessed if ever it accidentally touched the floor, but Frank Herbert is a grievous head-hopper, and DUNE is written in 3rd person omniscient, so it actually would allow for the latitude that the OP is speaking about.

 

Hubby says the head hopping is controlled by the use of italics in his writing. To show a character is thinking.
ETA: But once you pick a rule with italics you can't use it in any other way in the same manuscript from everything I've read. So thoughts italicized only, can't use italics in names or places or important ideas. It's to avoid confusion. I could be wrong. I've had to re-crash course myself through writing.

 

Tell the hubby that I respect his opinion and I can only imagine the flared eyes he gave that anyone would slight DUNE (as I said, I too was a disciple of the Bene Nerderist Order), but I think he's wrong about the italics being the fix. It's part of it, but not all of it. It's also picking your moments, knowing when to flip, and, while yes, Herbert ranks amongst the grand masters, he wasn't always perfect (has your hubby read Destination Void?) and regardless, it's still not directly related to the question the OP poses, which is wanting to know if/when he can step away from the chosen POV. The answer is yes, you can, my examples are above, but you cannot just do it mid-scene with no warning for the reader, nor can you just hodgepodge the thing and go willy nilly.

It's not easy sticking to your POV. I think it's actually one of the hardest things there is. In my own WIP, my second chapter (which is now my third chapter) was a stinking mess of mixed POV. It's an intimate scene (yes, in that meaning of intimate) and I wanted my cake and to eat it too because I wanted both characters to report their engagement in the same chapter, but I'm not writing in omniscient, I'm writing in 3rd limited with changing POV, just like the OP. I had to make a choice. Choices are hard. Choices sometimes suck. But they have to made.

 

Sorry not trying to hijack.
In mine like the op I want to veiw muliple view points of 6 main characters. 4 Protagonists and 2 Antagonists, not necessarily all in the same book. In the one, I'm writing only 3 protags and 1 antagonist.
In a few of my critiques, people seemed to notice this was what I was doing and didn't like it. Saying I'm jumbling pov styles even saying I'm too removed from the action in the emotional sense. Maybe it's because it's harder to bond with a character when they only have so much screen time. I've got at least 15 plus material for novels so the reader would be getting to know the entire cast over that course of time.
@Surcruxum Is this what the op wants to do as well multiple books to give the reader a chance to bond over a longer period of time? If so were in the same boat :/

 

Well, I can't speak to what your readers are telling you because I've not read your work. I can defo speak to my own where I didn't need anyone to point it out to me. It was glaringly obvious after having set that WIP aside for a while and then picking ti back up again. What I did, in the end, was create a new chapter and the two chapters have a point of overlap, the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two, which gave me the chance to tell both sides of the scene (in small part), and also forced me to focus more on each character in their respective chapters. In the end, fixing it made it better that the mixed mess I seemed to want to happen all at once. It let me show a small exchange of dialogue (the overlap is quite short) almost like a split screen. This let me show how Tevin was engaging the moment this way, and then Brenn was engaging the moment that way. And again, it forced me to dig deeper into each character. Why is it like this for him, but like that for the other? What are they each bringing to the moment?

 

Actually by a chapter dedicated to one player you mean using only 1 pov character for 1 whole chapter? If so, 3rd person can do just fine. No need to change to 1st. I use only 1 pov char for 1 chapter. What i want to ask is if i can do this: Jack's pov - omniscient - Jack's pov.

Actually that's why i decided to use 1 pov character per chapter and i also don't change the pov char for every chapter, (like AAABBC). Changing it too much will confuse the reader and probably distance them with the characters as well.

 

If the above constitutes a single "A" in your (AAABBC) chaptering example my answer is no, that's a simple error of broken POV.

 

This is what I actually switched to that got the crits about pov confusion and emotion removal. My draft was 3rd 1rst 3rd and then I changed over to what you are talking about but It seems I feel kind of damned. I felt I'd lost impact in my thought dialogue.

That's what I ended up going for too was 1 dedicated to a chapter. Sorry if I hadn't made myself clear earlier. But I still got called on head hopping which really sucks. Even if I did properly open with the character in question.
Maybe the question here we need to ask is how to properly execute it? Someone who has the experience to tell and show us an example? If you look at all of my older works I used either 1st person or third person, but back then I had been actively writing and practicing and hadn't actually understood what I was doing and got lucky. But now as I'm trying to learn the craft I'm finding myself confused and my college courses didn't help much either. (Most of the teachers were more interested in pushing agenda's and talking about the president at the time. My classes mostly turned out to be a waste of my time. I hadn't learned anything new and it was a repeat of high school.)

 

LMAO

Can you elaborate, I feel Like I missed something. Sorry btw, have a learning disorder... :/ Can sometimes make it a bit difficult to understand what I'm reading.
ETA: I've had to work twice as hard to stay at the same level as others.

 

Sure. What @Surcruxum means with his chaptering example is the following. I'm going to make up pretend names for the POV characters for each chapter:

Book Written in Serial 3rd Person Limited by Surcruxum

Chapter 1 - Adam's POV
Chapter 2 - Adam's POV - Omniscient - Adam's POV
Chapter 3 - Adam's POV
Chapter 4 - Ben's POV
Chapter 5 - Ben's POV
Chapter 6 - Charlie's POV

So, what I'm saying is if @Surcruxum is asking if he/she can do {Adam's POV - omniscient - Adam's POV} all in a single chapter (the red one), then my answer is no, that's not good. That's just breaking with the POV and giving up on working within the constraints that have been chosen.

 

Okay yeah I see what you're saying now.

ETA: I'm starting to feel like higher education is a joke. I learn more online in places like this that I have in class... It's like high school for adults out here....

 

I think I've seen in the internet somewhere that in Harry Potter Rowling changed pov from 1st person to omniscient to describe the events where Harry wasn't present. Keeping in mind that I'm not sure of this cause i haven't read it myself

 

Melville's Moby Dick also has a portion where the 1st person POV erodes for a moment and we get information concerning an outside character not readily available to the POV character. *shrug*

Is it a good idea to go 110 mph on I-75? No.

Do people ever go 110 mph on I-75? Sure.

Life is duplicitous.

 

I guess it's a matter of the execution of it. They got published, so the execution would suggest passable to a publisher if I'm not mistaken?

 

*shrug*

I don't like to talk in terms of "what can I get away with"? I just personally feel like that's not a good approach. I like to think in terms of "what can I do as well as I possibly can"? I could have given in on that one chapter between Tevin and Brenn. I could have said, "Wha-eva, my story, I'll do what I want!"



If I had done that, I would still have a mess of a chapter instead of two chapters that I'm really happy with.

 

I

Lmao I'ma go watch some south park and do laundry. (CUZ THAT EPISODE IS AWESOME)

 

Um, why would you do that?
If you start of limited 3rd you stay limited 3rd.
Otherwise it would be kinda weird to go from
limited to omniscient. It would be like going
from 1st to 3rd POV (and vice versa, though it
can work in limited capacity, if you know how
to work it).

So I am going to say, please don't change from
limited to omniscient. Head hopping is fine though.
Plenty of us are guilty of that and do it quite often,
just not POV shifts that can be jarring.

Good luck.

 

That's why I'm probably gonna do it anyway (unless i know the right way to do it later)

It sure is.....