I wrote a book where each character alternates per chapter and it's first person. One of my goals was to show how everyone thinks they're right. Several of the characters didn't like each other but when read individually they had their own well thought out reasons for their actions. I enjoyed writing it and think the approach is educational.
Ever read The Seekers By Erin Hunter? It has 3 beings of POV. She (lol) does it in chapter one chapter is one the next is another POV.
I have written a book with two first person perspectives - what I have yet to decide is whether or not on rewrite to write them alternate chapters or one take one half of the story and one take the other. I still have to work out the last chapter and which perspective to take it from at present it works in third person. The Hardy Boys have a series of books told first person alternating perspectives and it depends on the individual writer but some of them work exceptionally well, the chapters are told from Franks perspective, then one from Joe's perspective. I have enjoyed reading them. Although struggle getting used to the making Aunt Gertrude, Aunt Trudy and her being so trendy.
I've been reading The Writer's Digest Writing Clinic: Expert Help for Improving Your Work, by Kelly Nickell. The book contains the following paragraph. * * * "And you will let me borrow them, won't you mother?" Gail offered Nora her most winning smile. * * * The book claims the above takes place in Gail's POV. I don't really understand why that is. Is it because Gail "offered" Nora so and so? Does the act of offering mean the story is happening from Gail's perspective? Similarly: * * * Nora laughed at Gail's childlike play. * * * The book says the above sentence is in Nora's POV. Again, I'm not really understanding the reason for that. Why is it in Nora's POV just because she laughed? Is it because the sentence states what she's laughing at? Thanks people.
The first one could be a little ambiguous. If it had been: "And you will let me borrow them, won't you mother?" Gail offered Nora a winning smile. I might say that it was from Nora's point of view, because Nora, not Gail, can see Gail's smile. But the original phrasing suggests that Gail has a sort of repertoire of smiles, and that she's producing the one that she knows is most effective. So it works for me as being from Gail's point of view. The second, yep, seems to me to be from Nora's point of view, because she's the one observing Gail's actions. ChickenFreak
Essentially, the one who is making judgements or who is interpreting events is the POV. In this case, "offers" isn't as much of a POV indicator as the fact that Gail thinks her smile is her "most winning," although yes, "offers" does tell the reader about the motivation behind that particular action. "She smiled," is neutral. "She offered him something" assigns a motivation to the action, and is therefore most likely her POV. Motivations are at the core of POV. If you're just describing movement -- he smiled, she laughed, he walked across the room, she picked up the vase from the table -- then you're being neutral. If you assign a value or a motivation to something -- she smiled welcomingly at him, she laughed politely, he rushed for the door, she grabbed the vase -- then someone is judging the events. Often, it's the character doing said event. Sometimes it's an observer, which can be interesting because you can create unreliable narrators that way, just by having them misinterpret events. Sometimes the author's voice is the one interpreting events. In the examples you mention, there is a clear person who is interpreting the events for the reader. Which is nice, really, since most writing books don't contain useful examples like that. If it makes you feel better, POV, like everything else to do with writing, gets easier the more you work with it. If you're having a hard time with it now, keep working at it and you'll improve. (And eventually you'll get to the point where you're catching minute POV shifts in published works, which is neat. Of course, at that point you'll also be annoying your writer friends by catching POV errors in their manuscripts which they can't see. Such is life.)
In both of those sentences the POV is that of the narrator, and there's not enough information provided to know whether it's first or third person. The book may have had more context than you're sharing with us here, but just going on what you presented, the POV is that of the narrator.
Thanks for the replies everyone. Here's what HeinleinFan mentioned: I wasn't aware that even sentences like "she grabbed the vase" imply someone is judging the events. In that case, it feels like there's a very small number of actions that can count as being neutral. And then this quote: That's what I was thinking. The thing is, let's say in the Gail and Nora examples, how do we know it's not Nora judging that Gail is "offering her a most winning smile"? In that case, it would be in Nora's POV. I've always known about POV, but I never knew it was so strict?
I consider describing someone's thoughts to be a POV shift, though, it is not usually easy to tell with just one sentence. Actions are usually neutral, even with modifiers. However, in both examples, the POV is a bit ambiguous. Gail offered Nora her most winning smile. In this case, Gail intentionally shows a smile that she thinks would win someone's favor. You can interpret this as Gail's POV because only she would know for sure the kind of smile she is offering. "Most winning smile" can describe Gail's thought on her own smile as the one smiling. Alternatively, there is always the possibility that the POV belongs to Nora. If Nora knew Gail well, for example, then Nora would perhaps be able to tell that Gail is offering her most winning smile. "Most winning smile" can also be what Nora thinks of Gail's smile as the one seeing the smile. Nora laughed at Gail's childlike play. The same case applies here. "Childlike" describes what Nora thinks of Gail's play, so you can say it is Nora's POV. On the other hand, "childlike" can also be what Gail thinks of her own play, so it would be from Gail's POV.
@marcusl: It's true, most of the time when actions are described, the writer is interpreting the action for the reader. They may not be aware that's what they're doing, but if you're "grabbing" something then you're taking it quickly, with the implication that the emotion behind the action is higher. If I take the change from the cashier, that's pretty neutral. If I grab the change from him, I'm being rude or I'm angry or I'm in a hurry to leave. You see the difference. This is why there is no such thing as "No POV" stories. There are omnicient POV stories, where the author is the one doing all the interpreting of events, but it's really hard to write a story where every action is written neutrally. This is an example of such a scene, by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman, as an example of what not to do when writing. As you can probably tell, while the authors have pretty much succeeded at describing the scene neutrally, this sort of thing isn't useful or much fun for the reader. As a reader, I want the author to emphasize the important things in the scene; the people having sex are presumably more plot relevant than the desk in the corner, and should get more description. I want to know more about the characters' motivations, their emotions, their appearance. All of that means that their actions are being interpreted, and the result will be a character-centered interpretation (1st or 3rd POV) or the author's own POV (omnicient POV). Also, the instant some actions are emphasized over others, somebody is making a judgement or interpretation. If there are numerous people fighting in a room, and suddenly the story "zooms in" on one particular woman with a thonged warhammer on her wrist and determination in her eye, it's because she's important. Maybe she's about to smash the POV character in the face. Maybe she's the one driving the plot, and the author wants to show how awesome her fighting skills are. But the very act of focusing on that one person instead of on the whole roomful of people is the author making a judgement call. This is also why storytelling is distinctly different from making lists, or writing obituaries, or writing on twitter. The skills are different. Part of the art of storytelling is knowing when you can and should focus in on some smaller detail in order to move the story along, and when you should twist around some neutral action to show how a character is reacting to it. Also, re: point of view being strict Yes, point of view can sound complicated. But like anything else, you get better with practice, and (fortunately) a lot of this POV stuff gets absorbed through reading. After you've read enough, you get a pretty good feel for how the scene should be described in order to fit your chosen POV. (And you get better at writing multiple POV books, where several characters, each with their own biases, do the interpreting for the reader.)
When writing scenes, is it best to stay in the perspective of one character? For example: "Bob couldn't tell what Sarah was thinking. Was she angry? He could never tell. She was always a closed book." Or multiple perspectives? Example: "Bob could never tell what Sarah was thinking. Little did he know, Sarah was actually very upset with him."
It depends. The first example you gave is limited-third and the second example is omniscient-third. Picking which POV type to use depends on what type of information needs to be conveyed in your story and on what style you would like to convey said information. If you want the readers to remain with one MC the whole time, learning new info as the MC does, you want first-person ("I") or limited third. If you have, say, lots of information that you need more than one character's focus to convey, then you'd be better with third-omniscient.
Well I'm going to have the story switch to other scenes occasionally with different characters, so I wouldn't want to do first person.
If you switch between several character's POV, chances are you want third omniscient. Multiple MC POVs with first-person have been done, but you have to make it super clear at the beginning of each chapter who that chapter is about -- the only times I've seen it done are in chick lit novels that center around a group of friends where the chapters rotate from girl to girl. And, I mean, it can be done, but rarely. Even if you use third-person with a different character per chapter, keep each section limited to the character you're on. Does that make sense? Let's say Chapter 1 is about Bob, Chapter 2 is about Susan and Chapter 3 is about Sara -- in Chapter 1, don't talk about Bob and then go "meanwhile, Sarah thought this..." Whichever MC you're using for a given scene, stay with that MC until you're on a different scene with a different focus MC. Otherwise it will seem detached and weird, and we won't feel connected to any of the characters.
Yeah my thing is I want to have connection to the characters, and I feel like I'd have more connection with singling on one character in a specific number of chapters than I would with 3rd person omniscient.
My advice is write in third-person limited, where you only see one character's thoughts. You can switch between different characters at chapter breaks or whatever, but try not to do it in the same scene.
This. I recently went through a thread that I wrote a year ago. It was written as 3rd person intimate - but it switched abruptly into 3rd person intimate of a different character. As I read it, I was thrown for a loop at the switch. I can only imagine what the reader might feel with this.
In a third person limited, when the p.o.v. character splits but the scene continues is where a chapter break would be in order to alter narrative perspective . Case in point: My flesh eating ghoul has raped and pilliaged for 3500 words before fleeing back to his lair. When the Doctor (really a Japanese Vampire in disguise) tends to the wounded, I can not expose his inner plot to kill the survivors without a chapter break in the 1000 word ending ?
Scene break, not necessarily a chapter break. Though, it may feel awkward if your entire novel is written in a limited, third person of a ghoul, and only 1k words are written outside that perspective. If you're giving a two-perspective sort of story, and the Japanese-vampire-in-disguise doctor's story really matters, it should have more focus than 1k words to be effective, most likely. So, yeah, a scene break is what you need, as scene breaks and page or chapter breaks are different things, so it's not an either/or situation. If you've been going with an alternating chapter format, one from the ghoul, one from the doctor, then consider just having a short chapter, as there's really no rule against it and it may be less confusing than a scene break having to re-establish the pov into a new character right at the end of a chapter.
I see people using different pOVs without a blank space between them. But wouldn't that interrupt the scene? What would be the right/professional way of shifting then? so many writers seem to do this way and I don't like to read it because sometimes I have to go back to see who's head i'm in
Exactly. If you're having to spend effort figuring out who's even thinking something or what details are from which character's perspective, then the writer isn't doing their job. That's why the scene break is a simple, but elegant solution, as it clues the reader into the possibility of a switch in pov or perspective. Note that it's only a possibility, as the writer still has to ground the opening of a new scene in the pov and perspective, of course. And if the writer is working in an omni, third person pov, it may be perfectly acceptable for them to be giving various perspectives and it not technically being a pov shift/break. Though, there's a reason it's often done by amateurs and these days, at least, rarely done by professionals.
Hey, my prof. just assigned a paper where we had to think of a person who annoys us and then write a paper about ourselves from their POV. Only like a page in length, but I'm having a really hard time doing this. I've tried it as a monologue by the person, and now I'm trying it as a narrative, but it's just really frustrating me. Any suggestions?
Write it as a scene where they interact with you: where do you encounter them as they annoy you? Pick the moment you're most annoyed with them and turn it around to see why they're doing what they do.
