So I'm practicing around with POV, and I wanted to share my process. First, start off writing from a prompt or an idea you have. Limit it to 1000 words or less. Don't pre-plan anything. Just start writing. Once you're done with that, save it as the "rough draft". Now, based on that rough draft, you're going to rewrite that in three different POVs. Here are the suggested POVs: - Third-Person Objective - First-Person Reliable or Unreliable - Third-Person Limited or Omniscient If you want to go further, you can do a fourth, which could be experimental (Second-Person, Stream of Consciousness, Epistolary). Anyway, just wanted to share. Also, share any exercises you have that helped improve your craft!
One teeny problem. They're not different points of view. They're different ways of presenting POV. Point of view is a very different thing. It's how that character views everything in their world. If you say, "Eric went out to the store for some candy," that's not Eric's POV, it's yours. And if you change it to "I went out to the store for some candy," it's still not Eric's POV. Making the narrator seem to be the protagonist at a later date simply gives the narrator a name. And one way or the other, that overview came from the narrator. Eric, the protagonist, lives in a slim moment of time he calls, "now." And in that moment he's focused only on whatever has his attention. He can see many things, and hear just as much. But unless it's what Eric is actively observing and reacting to it is not in Eric's POV. This article gives a better idea of what I mean. And this one shows one way of writing within his POV, no matter which personal pronouns you elect to use.
Blargh, you're right. Thanks JayG. The three suggestions I posted are mixtures of POV and Voice. I should have titled it "Three Stories in Different Modes".
Writing from three (or more) different POVs (actual) would be a worthwhile characterization exercise in itself.
I came from another 8 month hiatus. During my funk, I read an article about this author (can't recall who) that made multiple narrative modes of his novel. He basically rewrote his novel in first-person, third-person, stream-of-consciousness, etc, until he found the right voice for it. That was interesting... and time-consuming. But I wondered about it, which led me to write three short-stories, all with the same plot, but told in different views and different voices. It was an interesting exercise since it broached up questions on how much I knew about control. When I looked at my past works, I found that my POV and Voice was all over the place. And also, it made me wonder about what determines depth of knowledge of the narrator. I know that the first-person's knowledge is accessible as they go telling their stories, but for third-person, sometimes they go far into history or sometimes they just use what they have on hand (inferring knowledge from the current characters). I still need to learn more, but the juices are back. I can't guarantee that I'll have another hiatus, but I'm pumped.
