The Point of View questions thread

I'm already looking at a story that had done this, it's not a book but a movie. The Place Beyond The Pines. If you haven't seen it I won't spoil it for you, but I'm looking at how the movie accomplishes that idea. Although, writing it is definitely a whole other beast, so I'll check that book out. Thank you.

 

I think it’s be tricky but doable. The biggest issue you may have is making the different perspectives sound different. Even with an omnipotent narrator, I expect to get at least a flavor of the character through it. You mentioned you’ll be doing it in first person, so I’d expect even more contrast in the sections. You should check out Faulkner’s “As I lay dying.” It has multiple narrators and even one who dies.

 

I agree with @Gary Wed that multiple perspectives are deliverable via multiple limited.
Not to hijack the OP but I have a story that starts out with a wayward teenager kidnapped from a ranch. The MC becomes her father a retired CFO of a cartel that robbed oil refineries in Mexico where some money had disappeared when he did.
My POV will change several times but I want to avoid head hopping as that gets hard to follow.

 

I don't think 'tricking' the readers is a good idea and I personally become attached to a certain character and if the next character isn't strong I'll close the book. Some people like feeling one stepped removed from the characters and it is also a writing device to encourage the readers to focus on something else other than the characters like the setting, plot or themes. In the theatre, the play The Caucasian Chalk Circle was written to do just that and they achieved this by having different acts playing the same character throughout the performance. Some people love Games of Thrones for it switching characters, I didn't.

It also depends on what your going for.

 

Hi!
Just a little question : I'm writing a novel about a girl who has super power, but it works with her mind. My question is : Is it better I do it in a first person POV or can I do it in a third one? Because at the beginning I need people to understand how her mind is working...
I've done a chart but I need more good or bad sides about each point of views. Can you help me? Thanks! =)

 

Good idea for the close third. I'm a little sleep deprived so I only thought about an omniscient one =)

 

If I wanted to emphasize a time change, like a couple hours passing within the same chapter/scene and also keeping the same POV and character while I do it without saying something like, "A few hours later. . ." or "A couple hours had passed. . .", how would I accomplish this?

 

• ...by lunchtime...
• ...by dinnertime...
• He looked up to see the weather girl. Evening news already?
• He filled the waiting by organizing his books. When he'd finished arranging them by author name, he tried size, then color, then genre. The sun had gone down by the time the phone finally rang.
• Two macchiatos later...
• Four password changes, ten "no such thing as a stupid question" stupid questions, and one long conversation about Babylon Five later, his shift was finally over.

 

These examples nailed it.

The thing is, they may seem contrived when you're writing the story, but they will seem smooth to the reader. If you are specific as to what marked the passage of time (as in ChickenFreak's examples here) the passage will register with the reader. I might not pay attention to 'a couple hours passed' but I will certainly notice the weather girl, or the two macchiatos.

 

Hi All,

To begin with - I am aware not to mix POV's in same sentences/paragraphs. I change POV per chapter, so it isn't the basic usual POV issue. I am aware not to mix POV's randomly, and I am not using any omniscient narration.

I continue to get extremely confused at the whole narrator/character overlap. Half the material I read seems to interlink the narrator AS the character, and half they are clearly separate - 3rd person or 1st person.

Half the writing advice from googling is that your narrator is separate from your character, half that the narrator is inside the character at the time.

Is it just style? Can it be either? Is a particular style more likely to cause reader uproar?

One part I continue to get stuck with is character thoughts vs narrator statements.

The narrator can ask questions, make observations of situations etc, but so can the character. More annoyingly, if the narrator is inside the character, there is no difference and it is both.

Maybe it is the genre and theme I read or just my interpretation, but I have never read a book where there is an active narrator - instead, it is a "real-time" (in past-tense) telling through the character, and the character and narrator feel identical when I read the book. I tend to avoid any book with "let me tell you a story"/"Call me Ishmael" stuff. Just don't like it. It gives zero immersion.

Alongside this - if I write each character as a narrator (they are one and the same) that means with each differing viewpoint I should have their voices and quirks change.

Because most advice online is ONE external narrator "sitting on the character's shoulder" (unless you want to do the "untrustworthy" or "imperfect" narrator) across ALL characters, even with multiple POV.
Usually, this narrator is telling the story "through the eyes of the character". WHY?! Why have a separate external narrator tell the story from the eyes of the character? Why not just make the character the narrator? They are so close they are practically the same - regardless of 1st or 3rd person. Other than the "he", "she" which determines an external difference from "I". Also, there's the whole "the narrator only knows what the character knows". It just seems that they are practically one and the same other than how pronouns function (he and she, him and her). We don't call ourselves "he" in 3rd person, as it denotes 2 people, and one is stating the other's actions, I get that, but novels intertwine so closely, I genuinely read most books without ever seeing the character/narrator split. It just flows as the character.

I am finding the entire thing confusing as it seems all are viable, but all are contradictory, and nobody seems to have noticed all methods are used and work...

Many novels now do NOT use italics to denote character thought. Furthermore, some novels don't even have the "he thought/wondered" etc. They delve directly in.

i.e. "Dave arrived early at the train station. Louise was not here yet. Would she come?..."

I could argue, vehemently, that the "Would she come?" could be either Dave's internal thought or the narrator posing a question. Lastly, either way - does it really matter? Quite frankly I would read this and assume it was Dave - have done since I learned to read. But since writing, I have realised many are reading through a "narrator" of sorts as a separate person, and many questions and thoughts are the NARRATOR guiding the plot, not the character.

Maybe I am retarded, but I never, ever, realised this until recently, but still cannot read a novel in that manner. I still just assume it is the character. Sure, it is told through a narrator, in that there is narration. I just always immerse so deeply as to instantly mesh the thoughts into the character - never the "camera sitting on the shoulder, seeing through the character's eyes".

Any guidance? Because I am getting feedback of how my character and narrator are chopping and changing, but I just don't see it. My brain literally is not seeing an issue, and when I compare my sentences to published works, uses the same sentence structure and formats. But, as I am not a professional writer, I instantly assume I am wrong and need to learn what it is I am doing wrong.

 

https://www.britannica.com/art/narrator

"Narrator, one who tells a story. In a work of fiction the narrator determines the story’s point of view. If the narrator is a full participant in the story’s action, the narrative is said to be in the first person. A story told by a narrator who is not a character in the story is a third-person narrative."

Harry Potter is 3rd person. I never once felt I was being told a story by some dude next to Harry, but as Harry, despite the "he" and "she"


" Narrators are sometimes categorized by the way in which they present their story. An intrusive narrator, a common device in many 18th- and 19th-century works, is one who interrupts the story to provide a commentary to the reader on some aspect of the story or on a more general topic. An unreliable narratoris one who does not understand the full import of a situation or one who makes incorrect conclusions and assumptions about events witnessed; this type is exemplified by the narrator of Ford Madox Ford’sThe Good Soldier. A related device is the naive narrator, who does not have the sophistication to understand the full import of the story’s events, though the reader understands. Such narrators are often children, as in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The protagonist of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is the paradigm of the self-conscious narrator, who calls attention to the text as fiction. "

Every novel I have read with multiple POV's, I never thought the narrator was naive, or incorrect, but the character was. Other than pronoun sentence syntax - "he and she" which separates the two, and makes the character "external", I just assume everything is pretty much the character. Any thoughts or posits or exposition - is the character and their knowledge, not a separate entity feeding off from them every now and then - but also laying down their own stance.

I always assumed it was the characters thoughts and knowledge and personality and voice.

 

Hello Everyone!
So I've been working on a novel, and when I'm not here procrastinating, I'm often on YouTube procrastinating... by listening to authors who blog about writing and publishing. One of my favourite bloggers often goes into mistakes that new writers make--which was.. having to many POV characters.

I think I may be guilty of this. She suggests that new writers limit themselves to 4 or 5 POV characters. So my question is: What are your feelings on this? and How many POV characters do you have or use?


If this has already been addressed elsewhere in the forum; I apologize. Please redirect me there. =)

 

My advice is stick to the Main character as much as possible (protagonist) and only switch POV when it is necessary

 

I believe for a novel, sticking to the minimum of POV characters is wise. You want the reader to identify with them, and if there are too many this gets difficult; not impossible, mind, just dependend on the skill of the writer.

I am writing (connected) short stories and a novel (connected to the shorts). My novel has two POVs. My short stories are standalones and told by one POV each, though a lot of them are written from the POVs of the novel. My hope is that the connection will become apparent if the reader reads them in the timeline

 

One of my novels has six POVs—roughly 90% from the protagonist, 9% from the deuteragonist, and 1% divided among four other characters.

Because that works for the story. And automatically following any "rule of thumb" other than "what works for your story" only weakens the story.

 

I think if you're skilled and have characters with very different personalities you can pull off quite a few POV characters but that does mean you don't get so close to one or two - which is fine. Mine only has one because it's a very personal story and it's her story really, not anyone else's. We do see how the entire situation and her actions affect everyone around her but it's very indirectly.

 

I have 3 POV characters whose personal stories are all closely linked. I find too many POV can make relating to individual characters difficult and switching between POV can interrupt the flow of the story.

 

III

 

Thank you all for your replies. I am feeling bogged down as of late, and seem to be second guessing everything I have written. When I write, I picture everything as a little movie in my head as I try to weave it all together... I sometimes have little scenes with alternate POV characters for only a few paragraphs when my MC isn't present. So I guess I am wondering if I need to cut out or rework these scenes or if this is normal. I am wondering if I am confusing exposition with narrative in these areas. Is it possible to have narration without POV? I am having trouble defining my question here...

 

Three of my earlier novels had four or five viewpoint characters (you should probably only have one main character, but viewpoint might alter in various kinds of work). Another of my novels had two, 95% of the space dedicated to the main character as viewpoint. The remaining thirty or so novels have one viewpoint character, even though half of those are in limited 3rd person.

As a general rule, you will want to limit the main characters to ONE. If employing some form like multiple limited 3rd or limited omniscience, as few viewpoint actors as you can limit to. As well, generally speaking, you give more space to a main character as viewpoint. There are plenty of exceptions to all of this, but in those cases it is apparent why.

Lots of writers (almost always new ones) want more than one main character. It is odd that new writers like that idea (particularly in romance), given it's nearly impossible to pull off, giving the new writer just one more hurdle to jump.

 

If you are diving into a head for the convenience of tidbits of info and minor incursions, it is highly likely that all you're really doing is head hopping and ought to cut it out. WE READERS DO NOT HAVE TO KNOW EVERYTHING. Ambiguity is often the best thing possible.

Then again, you mentioned exposition, and confusion, so let's do some thinking here. Always ask yourself who the view is. Any exposition is going to come from some source (Who is telling me this?). If it feels like the author is telling us the content, that author is the viewpoint (a generally frowned upon omniscient view, and not one of the actors.)

If you are in view, that means that all epistemology resides from view. NOTHING exists unless the viewpoint actor is concerned about it, at that precise moment. As well, the source of us knowing it is the viewpoint, PERIOD. If a tree fell in the forest and the viewpoint is not concerned about it, NO DICE. Thus, what is the exposition all about, when you mention that word in conjunction with viewpoint actor? To me it means that for some reason the viewpoint has it on his mind, precisely at the moment you expose it. If you mean content that just happens to fill us in, that is likely author intrusion and in most cases it has to go.

Not sure what you are asking, but it is extremely easy to know what an actor is thinking without telling us what he or she is thinking, if that helps any. I never have any trouble doing that via other means.

On the other hand, you might be asking if you can write omnisciently, such that the external narrator is dominant and never dives into any head at all (the external head is the only one we get). Definitely that is something we can do, but I strongly advise against it, particularly if you are asking the question because that will be a very hard sell.

Let's backtrack a tad. All of this depends upon your viewpoint approach, which is never taught in school, incidentally. Consider, for example, what it means to be in 3rd limited view. That means that only one person is the window into the work. That person is the only one who can see, hear, smell, taste, feel or think. Everyone else is either in front of him, in back, to the left, right, up or down or in his imagination. He is the center of the universe (yes, in 3rd person). This grounds the work and sets the stake, as well as defines the limitations. We are assisted in stakes and we are gravely assisted in voice.

Now, if you choose to make someone else the viewpoint, usually you wait until it's a good time, like a chapter break, and then we treat that person with the exact same respect.

In some forms, this varies. For example, in limited omniscience, we have an external narrator who passes down view to one actor. That actor passes it back up and the external narrator can then pass it to someone else. Some choose to make that external narrator very human with a strong voice. Others might choose to only allow that external narrator to pass down to one person, through the whole novel. Others might choose to write it objectively, never visiting any head, like a reporter. The forms are many, but the issue is one of design, intent and control.

In today's genre market, most tend to employ either 1st person or some form of limited 3rd writing. If they choose omniscient writing, the best of them tend to go for a strong and identifiable external narrator, and a limited pass off to viewpoint actors. Typically, new writers love the flexibility of some form of omniscient limited work, but for all the wrong reasons. Experienced writers can, of course, do whatever they choose. My advice, since you are still figuring this out, is to go with either straight limited 3rd or some form of multiple limited 3rd application, and skip the omniscient telling altogether.