|
|
Our Mission Our Promise The Imprints Author Introduction Book Production & Sales Working With Your Editor
Manuscript Submission Instruction & Guidelines
Comments From The Industry & Authors About American Book.
Company Information Press Releases Review Book Requests
Information for obtaining Subsidiary Rights & Use Permissions.
We Welcome Your Questions & Comments Please E-Mail Us Here
|
|
Point of View
What is point of view, and why is it important? All stories are told from a point of view (POV), you just may not recognize it as such. The important part of it is to be consistent in your POV. A novel written with a consistent POV is usually more interesting, and it, definitely, will appear more polished and professional. You may not know why, but a book written with a consistent POV, will just seem right. A book written by an amateur author, with a POV that drifts all over the place will seem poorly written. You may not be able to put your finger on exactly why, unless you have had some training, but you will not be comfortable with the book. POV errors are one of the worst sins of inexperienced writers. POV seems to be a hard concept for some people to grasp, but it is really very simple. For a story to be told, it must be told from someone’s or something’s viewpoint. Whose eyes, or better yet, whose mind is perceiving or telling this story. Your first reaction is probably, “I, the author, am telling this story.” That is well and good, but the author must have a “voice”. He or she must be speaking from somewhere. That is where POV comes in. Another way that I have heard it expressed is “Where is the camera?” The camera must be somewhere, and wherever it is, that is your POV. As you read through the rest of this, keep that camera analogy in your mind, it may help. There are basically four recognized points of view that can be used in telling a story, whether it is a novel, a short story, or a poem, or for that matter, even a song. · Omniscient · First Person · Second Person · Third person The first, and I suppose the most obvious, is called the omniscient POV. In this point of view, the author telling the story and the author is god. I don’t mean this irreverently. You must remember that, in fiction, the author is the creator of the characters, their thoughts, their actions, everything that they say and do, ultimately, comes out of the mind of the author. In the omniscient POV, the author sees all, knows all, and, sometimes, tells all. The author knows what all characters are thinking and can flit from the thoughts of one character to the next at will. The camera can go anywhere the author wants it to. The author can tell you what is going on in the next room while the characters are still in this one. In other words the author can tell the story anyway that he or she sees fit. It is the oldest method of telling a story, starting when the first storyteller spun a tale to enthrall a group sitting around a campfire at night. It is the method of story telling used by Homer. The problem is that the author or storyteller stands between the story and the reader. To often, the author is telling you what he or she thinks about what is going on. The reader cannot become deeply involved in the story, because the storyteller is in the way. The omniscient POV is seldom used in the modern novel. But to often, beginning authors fall into the omniscient POV by default. It is easy to drift out of POV and just tell the reader what you think he or she should know. The next POV is the first person POV. In this POV all writing is in the first person. “I” am the main character in this story and “I” am telling it. If Joe Hero is the main character, everything is told from Joe’s POV, in Joe’s voice and Joe speaks of himself as I, and he uses the personal pronouns such as me and my. The catch is, if Joe does not know something, the reader cannot be told either. You can only tell the reader what Joe sees, hears, feels, thinks and smells. In other words, the camera is in Joe’s head, and it must stay there. You can’t pull it out and look from somewhere else. What any other character sees, hears, feels, thinks, etc., cannot be told. The only thing we can know of what another character thinks, is by what he or she says or does to Joe. If Joe was hit on the head from behind in Chapter one, neither he nor the reader can know who hit him. Joe might run around trying to find out who hit him from behind, for the whole book. He might even find clues and suspect someone. Because of the clues that Joe finds, the reader may suspect who hit Joe, (not necessarily the one that Joe thinks it is) but the reader can’t really know, until Joe does. The reader, accumulating the clues that the author scatters about, might suspect who done it, but unless he cheats and jumps ahead and reads that last chapter, he or she doesn’t know. Does this make sense? It has been used in mystery stories for years. Some author’s believe the first person POV is the best, because it is the most immediate, and the reader can really become very involved with the story because of their intimate knowledge of and identification with the main character, but it does have it’s weakness, as I will get into later. The second person POV is just a variation on the first person POV. The second person POV has been used by some author’s with success. Melville’s Moby Dick was written in second person POV. In this method, the story is told from the viewpoint of a secondary character in the story, not the main character. It is a variation of the first person POV in that you must stay in one person’s POV, but in this case the secondary character is telling you what is happening to the main character. In Moby Dick, the main character, who the story was really about, was Captain Ahab, but the story was told to us by Ishmael, one of his crew. Second person POV is seldom used in novels anymore. Next, is the third person POV. Once again this is similar to first person POV, except that instead of writing with the pronoun “I” you write with the noun “Joe”, or “he” (or whatever your character’s name is). The same rules and restrictions apply. Throughout the whole book the author can only tell us what Joe sees, hears, smells, feels, or thinks. The author cannot tell us what anyone else in the book sees, hears, smells, feels, or thinks. Even if you feel it is important to the plot. If Sally has a secret in her past that Joe doesn’t know about, neither can the reader. You can’t cheat and have the author take us aside and say, “By the way Sally use to be a stripper.” That would be switching to an omniscient POV and that is a no no. We can’t know about Sally’s days as a stripper, until she confesses it to Joe. Joe can surmise things. For instance, he might think, “ Boy that Sally sure move nice. I wonder if she was ever a dancer,” or, “Sally sure is sexy, she dresses like a stripper.” Joe can also surmise what he thinks Sally is thinking, “Oh oh, I recognize that look, Sally wants to drag me off to bed, again.” But, you can’t say, “Sally wanted to go to bed with Joe.” As you can see, both the first person POV and third person POV place severe limitations on the author’s ability to tell the story. If the main character is not present, it didn’t happen. If something happens in another room, or another part of town, or in another town, that you would like the reader to know, the only way you can do it is to have someone who was there, tell Joe about it. Of course, there are other ways for Jue to find out about it, he can read about it in a newspaper, or see it on TV. And that, as I’m sure you can see, unless very well done, will really slow down the story, and bore the reader. If there is anything we don’t want, it is a bored reader. But, never fear, we have a solution. This is called the third person multiple POV novel. This is where you write in third person POV, but shift from character to character as the need arises. There are, also, rules to this game of musical chairs, or heads if you prefer. You have to stay in one character at a time. No bouncing back and forth, like a ping-pong ball. You will confuse the reader, and a confused reader is almost as bad as a bored reader. Most authors and editors agree that it is ideal to stay with one character for at least a chapter, longer if possible. This is especially true with your main characters. It gives the reader a chance to get to know, sympathize, and identify with the character. It lets you see things from their POV and get to know how they think. Many authors and editors do not believe that it is necessary to change POV, only, at new chapters, but all agree that changes in POV must be definite and easy to observe. You don’t want the reader to wonder and get confused. New novel writers should probably stick with the third person multiple point of view method. It is easier to cover all of the points in your novel with this method. Don’t overlook the potential of a single point of view novel, though. With careful planning and effectively written dialogue, it is possible to provide your reader with all of the information he or she will require to truly understand and enjoy the story. A Few rules to
remember: 1. Choose a POV for your book and stick with it. Never change to another method in the middle of the book. Remember whose POV you are in and don’t skip around from character to character. 2. Don’t ever tell the reader something that your character doesn’t or couldn’t know. In other words never drift into omniscient POV. 3. Don’t ever tell what the other character is thinking. You can have them react, or show expression that your POV character can guess at, but all information must come from your POV character’s view point. 4. Don’t switch POV to a minor character briefly, to tell the reader something that the main character(s) don’t know. If it is that important to the story, devote a chapter to the minor character, develop the character and give us the information that way. 5. Remember you are in your character’s mind; be sure they think and react in accordance with their own personality, not yours. 6. Like all phases of writing, being consistent with your POV requires discipline. Discipline yourself to review all of your work with POV in mind. Ask yourself, “Where is the camera?” and make sure it stays where it belongs. Look for those little slips that tend to drift into any ones work and eradicate them. If you do, your readers may not know why the book reads so well, but they will know that it is a well-written book. By Allan G. Macpherson, ABP Director of Editing
Services. © 2006 American Book Publishing™ *All other trademarks used by permission. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy and Trademark Use Policy.
|
