To the Point of View
by Jenna Petersen
The following is an article from my MySpace "Reader/Writer" series of blogs, a question and answer post I do at least once a week at MySpace.
I have a question about POV. I have been advised as a beginning writer that I MUST write in limited POV - one character’s POV in each scene. However, in most of the romance novels that I read the POV jumps from character to character through the scene, sometimes jumping even in the same paragraph. These are big time authors that are using this technique. So my question is, is it true that as a beginning writer I HAVE to write in limited POV? Is there a good reason for this rule?
Oh… must. Lord above, I hate that word when it comes to writing. It’s insulting! That’s right, I said insulting! Like there’s some formula where you can just plug words in the same way as someone else did and… tada! You have a book. A publishable book! I mean, please, how silly! I don’t write my OWN books the same way every time (I have a pretty solid base, but every book has been different in some important way), let alone think that everyone else should write them the same way!
So, I beseech you all, if someone says "never", "always", or "should" when it comes to process… think hard! Because I will wager they’re selling you some kind of swampland. You know what way you SHOULD write? The way that makes you excited! The way that fits your characters! The way that drives your story to the place you want it to go! The way that makes you finish the book.
Now that I’m off that soap box, let me address POV. It’s one of the most hotly debated topics around. Everyone and their dog has an opinion about it. Lots of people don’t even fully understand it.
Okay, so let’s define it. POV stands for Point of View. When you’re in a character’s point of view, that means you can give their thoughts, their feelings, their observations, as well as describe their actions, etc. If you’re not in a character’s point of view then you might be writing about their actions, their visible reactions, their statements, but you won’t be able to explore real feelings without them being verbally (or nonverbally) expressed. So, for example.
Edna stared at Kevin. Her hands shook with the power of her anger. How dare he do this to her? And then to stand there, so calm. So… unmoved as he tore her world into shreds with just a few words.
Okay, so in this admittedly crappy example, we are in EDNA’s POV. The sentence "How dare he do this to her?" is called Deep POV, it’s being directly in the head of the person, putting their thought onto the page without adding, "She thought". The deeper you can be in POV, the closer your reader will be to the character.
Now note in this example that we also get a glimpse of Kevin’s feelings. Edna sees that he is calm. He is unmoved. This is still her POV despite the fact that she’s describing him. She might be wrong (and given that we’re talking romance, she probably is wrong). If we were in his POV in the same set-up, we might read:
Edna stared at Kevin. Her hands shook with the power of the anger that lit in her eyes. He fought to stay calm, to not reveal to her how much it killed him to tear her world into shreds with his words. If he was going to keep her safe, he had to make her hate him.
Same sentence, even some of the same words, but in his POV we can still see Edna’s anger, but we’re feeling his reactions.
So why does POV become such a volatile topic? Because it’s all about reader comfort and everyone has their own opinion on that. When every character in a book has a POV (the hero, the heroine, the hero’s mom, the villain, the cousin, the butler, the cat)… it can get very crowded. It can work, but it often takes a very, very deft hand to make the pieces fit and keep the reader from being confused. Same thing when the POV switches multiple times in a chapter. It takes a very talented author to keep the shifts from feeling awkward and to ensure that the reader isn’t left going… "what??"
There’s also one other reason multiple POVs are looked upon with harshness. Sometimes it can just be lazy writing. Let’s take Edna and Kevin. If I wrote the sentences with both their POV, it might go something like this.
Edna stared at Kevin. Her hands shook with the power of her anger. How dare he do this to her? And then to stand there, so calm. So… unmoved as he tore her world into shreds with just a few words.
Kevin fought to stay calm, to not reveal how much it killed him to tear her world apart with his words. If he was going to keep her safe, he had to make her hate him.
First off, this is just repetitive. Here’s Edna’s thought. Now here’s Kevin. They’re dealing with the same issue, so the issue gets repeated. Secondly… where is the mystery? The reader now knows everything. Versus, if you choose either one of the single POVs, the reader is more connected to one character. In the Edna POV, the reader will really FEEL her pain. The reader might even be angry at Kevin, they will stand alongside the heroine and wonder how he can be so cold to her.
In the Kevin POV, the reader will empathize with Kevin. They’ll know he’s trying to protect Edna, that it hurts him to hurt her, but that he feels unable to do anything less under the circumstances. They may wonder what Edna is thinking, feeling, what she’s holding inside and that could drive them to the next chapter or scene, hoping for the payoff in her reactions or what she does next.
But in the scene with both POV, nothing is kept aside, everything is just kind of spilled out there. The reader isn’t holding her breath for anything because she knows it all right there. She doesn’t have to empathize with either character because she knows how they feel right there.
Now there are plenty of authors who can pull off the multiple POV without letting the reader down. And I have absolutely used multiple POV in scenes (I almost always use multiple POV in love scenes, though I am a POV purist for all other scenes). But I think the biggest litmus test if you’re going to do it is to ask yourself the following questions:
Does using multiple POV make the scene strong?
Will using multiple POV confuse the reader?
Would using single POV drive the reader to the next chapter more than multiple
POV?
If you can keep your story and writing strong and still use multiple POV, then by all means do it. But if the story would be stronger if you kept one POV back… then try it! You may find you like it (I used to write with multiple and now I really love that single POV thing. I think I write better books with single). It’s all about the book.