sholio | Let's talk about point of view!

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Let's talk about point of view!

So I'm at about 9000 words on the WIP-of-the-moment, and I've realized, as the plot evolves, that the viewpoint I'm in is probably not going to work for the whole story.

Which reminded me that I love talking about the writing process, and I haven't made a writing post lately.

The tricky thing is that the current viewpoint character (Sam Carter) is probably going to be perfect for about 80% of the story. It's the rest of it that is giving me fits. I could probably unfold the plot just fine in Sam's POV by leaving out big chunks of the self-indulgent and world-building stuff. *g* But it's fanfic, dammit. If I want to play in my AU world, I don't want to deny myself for purely mechanical reasons. And I want to tell those parts of the story, even if they end up not being wholly necessary from a strict exposition standpoint.

Re-reading some of my long stories (or parts of them) when I was redoing my website over the holiday was a bit of an eye-opener. I'm shocked at how much more careful I've gotten about viewpoint. In "That Which is Broken", I actually switch POV in the middle of a scene. (Bad writer, no biscuit!) In "Fading Sun", I narrate several chapters from Rodney's POV and then, inexplicably, switch to another character, and continue switching throughout the rest of the fic.

Fanfic, as a medium, is a lot more forgiving of that kind of thing than pro fic. I doubt if most readers noticed. Obviously I didn't notice myself when I was writing. Technically, I could just go on for another 5000 words in Sam's head and then hop into Character B when it becomes necessary -- I think the audience would forgive it. But I don't want to -- now that I'm aware of the issue, I'd like to do better this time around. So I'm dithering with various solutions, which basically are going to involve giving up on some of the scenes I really want to write, or massively rewriting some of what I've already got.

So, readers, writers ... talk to me about point of view! I'm really not fishing for solutions (I've got several of those, just have to decide which one hurts me less *g*) but I'd love to chat about what you think of a story's POV when you write and read. Does it bother you if a story suddenly hops narrators in mid-plot, or do you even notice? Do you prefer stories that stick to one character's POV, or stories that hop around, or do you care? Is the choice of narrators a major writing decision for you, or something that happens organically? Is it different for AUs vs. canon-based stories? Do you have any anecdotes about stories you wrote where the POV did something interesting, or stories you read that made you think about POV in a new way?

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Fanfic, as a medium, is a lot more forgiving of that kind of thing than pro fic.

Actually, I'm not sure about that. I don't even remember how often I've seen some variation of the "ZOMG you can't use epithets!!!1!1" rant, and yet Jim Butcher continues to sell millions of his books. Stephen Erikson changes the POV characters in his Epic fantasy saga all the frigging time. I've read books where the writing was so bad I seriously boggled over how they could have been published.

Parts of fandom don't care about style, true. But other parts will hit the back button if you so much as use the "wrong" metaphor.

Hee! Okay, let me rephrase. I think fanfic readers, in general, are fairly forgiving of roughness in style as long as the story is emotionally satisfying. Profic readers are probably likewise, but editors usually aren't (though some published fic definitely makes me wonder).

Ha. My very first fanfic is still stalled out because I didn't like the way I was handling the POV. I should get back to that. . .

Lately, I've been trying to keep close tabs on the POV characters, and keep things simple. But that that doesn't always work, as you already know. But I don't like switching POV just because it's convenient. So if I know I'm going to need multiple Points of View I try to come up with a consistent system -- like many novels I have read that switch POV every chapter, or every couple of chapters, consistently.

Really, when I'm reading, shifting POV does not bother me at all, so long as it seems planned, and logical, and not just because the author painted themselves into a corner.

I can agree to that! :D

POV is extremely important to me when I read a story, but I love reading stories where POV is presented in unique ways. I don't mind POV-hopping in a story (I'm a Robert Jordan fan - multi-POV is cake to me), but the change between characters must be logical and well-defined. No switching in the middle of a scene, for example - unless there is a very specific stylistic reason for doing so. If there is an obvious reason, I'm more than happy to go with the flow!

I love single POV for character pieces, but even a character piece with a multi-POV can be great if the writer does it well. In fact, I'll love just about anything that is well-written and well-planned, and I will admire the form just as much as the story itself! :D

One of my favorite novels that plays with POV in a fascinating way is "The Woman in White" by Wilke Collins. It is essentially an epistolary novel, but it's also a sort of "round robin", where the story is always moving forward in a linear time frame, but the character POV switches according to who was present for what part of the story AND how they recorded that part of the story. For example, in letters, or in a diary, or a date book, or a death certificate, or a gravestone, or notations in a church's census book. It is elegant and gorgeous and exciting to read.

Another use of POV that I like, especially in fanfic, is the creation of multiple stand-alone stories, each from one POV, that combine together to tell one cohesive story. For example, as in your case, if it is necessary to leave out a scene in one story because the POV switch is too disruptive, a companion story covering that missing scene can "add to" the original story and expands and even reinterpret it, adding layers of meaning. (that wasn't a suggestion - just an example. ;) )

In my own writing, I tend to let characters lead who have the most significant view of a particular story point. I do tend to switch POVs in most stories, reserving single POV for character studies or very in-depth character pieces, but I try to make those switches both obvious and necessary.

My current WIP (which will end up being my SGA Big Bang story) cycles through the POVs of all the main characters and several minor ones as the narrative moves constantly forward in time. This results in a lot of "missing scenes", where other characters are off doing something else during the time that the story focuses on that one specific POV. However, what unfolds during that particular POV is the most important moment of the story at that point, told from the viewpoint of the character living that experience.

Also, I think POV switching becomes more necessary with a larger cast of characters who are all off doing different things, whereas in a story with only two or three characters who tend to stay together for the most part, a single POV would be sufficient.

It's 3 a.m. here, so I should probably cease rambling. I'm so looking forward to reading everyone else's thoughts on this subject!!

As far as POV, I really don't mind more than one in a story if the switch happens at a break that makes sense, and if there's a reasonable limit. I recently read an SG-1 novel that had several robot clones (with tech from Harlan's world) and many chapters were from various Jack and Daniel robot POVs--it got confusing a couple times, and that was a case in which I thought it was overdone.

What I don't care for is when a story is from one character's POV but the author puts in narration about other characters' feelings and thoughts. I read that a lot in fanfic, and I understand wanting to add that input especially in a romantic scene, but it tends to throw me out of the story rather than draw me in.

I guess it's about the overall feel of the story, you know? Some work tightly focused on one character and limited to what he or she knows and feels, and some need more input either for plot or because the characters play off of one another. It would be an interesting experiment to write (roughly) the same story a few different times from one, two, and three or more POVs just to see how they turn out.

This is something that's really bugging me with my au_bigbang story. I'm planning on switching off between two POVs but I'm worried about how cohesive the story will be /rant

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If the POV switch adds information to the story/plot I like it better than if it's an excuse to see what the writer's other favorite character thinks about the main pairing (usually written as "ZOMG gossip squee").

astolat's Oblivious wouldn't have worked if it didn't change POV at the mid-point.

Agreed - I think "advances or enhances the plot" should be a reason for any POV switches.

Also, I'd never read Oblivious before - thanks for that! I've just bookmarked it in my favorites. It's an excellent example of a story that needs two POVs to get the ultimate point across: "That's not what's funny."

I know! That's one of my all-time favorite fanfic punchlines. Every time I remember it I have to go back and re-read that fic LOL.

As a reader, I do like POV allocation to be ... structured.

There should be some discernible pattern to how the POV shifts -- i.e., rotating POV between a small group of characters, with all of them getting roughly equal time throughout the story. Or sticking to one. Or alternating between two. Or a completely new POV for each section -- this can work in stories where the focus is on the world-building, piecing together a picture from how it affects various characters on the outside of the events.

Anything except "My story is all told from X's POV, except for this one bit where I have to drop into minor character Z's POV to cover this important bit that X can't be there to witness" or "I will alternate between A, B, C, and D, except in the last five chapters where I will completely forget that A had a POV at all" and suchlike.

Actually, after spending all these years immersed in fic and discussions about writing it, I'm amazed at how many pro-level short stories get published that seem to wander through multiple POVs. In fic, I'll back right out of a story with a wandering POV, and so I tried to figure out why it annoys me so much (other than ZOMG lazy writing!): it sucks all the tension oout of a story to know everything from the narrator's POV, in my opinion.

What a unique POV can give you is character: not what's there in the room but what that individual person notices and takes meaning from; not what Person B is thinking/planning but the gestures/words that resonate with the POV character; even the face of the beloved, through the lover's eyes - all of that really makes a story rich for me, and you lose so much of that when a writer doesn't understand how to use POV in a story. Of course, that implies knowing how to write multiple voices, too - shifting POVs never really works for me if the different voices all sound exactly the same.

And so, as

rydra_wong says, I'm perfectly happy to see deliberate changes in POV in a story, as long as there's a strong organic-to-the-story reason for doing so and it's done strictly, at logical points, and to some kind of an internal rhythm. I don't want to see so many POV characters that I say, "Wait, what? Who are you?" every two pages, or, as she says, have the shift happen just to make things easier on the writer.

And you know, I'm not sure I would have noticed POV, or known how it worked for me as a reader, if I hadn't logged so many hours thinking about it here. When everyone is reading the same texts about the same characters (broadly speaking) but those texts are produced by hundreds of people, I think you get a unique prspective on things like voice and POV...

I get titchy when the POV switches repeatedly within a scene - third-person omniscient is difficult to pull off well, and jumping between too many chars often feels like cheating to me. I usually find it more interesting to get one character's POV at a time; I like close POVs, with their potential observer bias.

But a single POV switch in a scene is a bit clumsy but not really off-putting, and I don't tend to mind new POVs brought in later; if a story switches suddenly I might blink a bit, but it won't put me off.

I used to switch POV a lot - usually by scene, though I've been surprised to read my earlier stuff and find that sometimes I started in 3rd person omniscient and then went close. More recently I've been writing fics from a single POV, but that's less a deliberate style choice, and more because I find it easier to only have one voice in my head at a time.

I have had stories that I ran into trouble and then switched the POV and then it worked. A lot of times when I'm coming up with a story I'll spend time thinking about who I want to tell it, because it makes such a difference in how it unfolds...

The more I think about writing the less likely I am to do it. There are so many rules and so many people to please.

Once upon a time a long, long time ago, I read – somewhere – that there was a rule which allowed you to switch POV mid-paragraph. I read the instructions and didn’t understand… 0_o I never found those rules again. Maybe I dreamt it?

Multiple POV switches in a paragraph, especially if it’s a short paragraph, can be very back-button enabling. But I’ve read incidences where there’s a smooth transition to a second character’s POV within a paragraph, which has worked. Generally, this has been where the first character has left the scene (either mentally or physically). I think that the trick is to then stay within the second characters POV for the rest of the chapter.

Multiple POV switches in a story, I think I’d try for 50/50 (not that I’d count words or anything). But I’d probably switch on a chapter basis, rather than a paragraph basis. And I’d start doing this style at the outset evenly, rather than: 40% Sheppard; 5% McKay; 5% Sheppard; 30% McKay; 1% Sheppard; 20% McKay….

These thoughts obviously work for the longer stories rather than the shorter stories.

Needless to say I have committed all the egregious errors out there and probably ignored what I’ve written above.

I once read a pov switch mid-scene that was so well-done that I only noticed it on second reading and because I was betaing. It was done in a way that the 'camera' slowly zoomed away out of deep 3rd, zoomed out of the room, then zoomed back into the other character. So apparently this stuff can work if it's not done abruptly. If it is, it completely tears me out of the scene, because my brain provides a visual of the scene.

Not really relevant to your problem here, but I found it interesting at the time. :)

I used to be a stickler for correct POV, to the point that I couldn't enjoy otherwise great fic; fortunately my two years of reading in Bones fandom, (where POVs were hopping all over the place like little bunnies) cured me of that. And I was really glad about that.

Hm, there was an interesting LJ discussion a few years ago, titled POV change, bring them on. Maybe I can find that again. Actually made me realize that I viewed POV a tad too rigidly.

Do you prefer stories that stick to one character's POV, or stories that hop around, or do you care?

I don't have a preference, myself, just as long as the POV doesn't switch suddenly in the middle of a scene. I think you could sell 80% in Sam's POV and the rest in something else, maybe if it's tied to the structure or something like that. I think a writer can get away with a lot if they're aware what they're doing.

random pov switching bothers me a lot, though I do appreciate stories with more than one pov--as long as it's not two scenes duplicated with the exact same dialog. I think it depends on how much intimacy you want to invoke in the reader, some stories work better when there are more than one POV, the reader gets the omniscient view of the story, and it's all about the big picture. Other stories that really delve into the characters generally benefit from a single viewpoint, or very limited switching.

I know what you mean about losing a chunk of story when you elect to use a single pov. It pained me so much to not have Rodney's take on East/West, but I think ultimately that story was far better for the near-suffocating John as unreliable narrator.

Does it bother you if a story suddenly hops narrators in mid-plot, or do you even notice?

My big thing, when reading (or even watching a movie or TV), is consistency. If I don't know whose head we're in, or how far out of everyone's heads we are, I feel lost.

That said, in fic I actually read (I don't finish the vast majority of the fics I open), this isn't usually an issue. An exception was one of

katieforsythe's Holmes/Watson fics. She's a wonderful writer, but in one of her stories she drops the first-person Watson POV to show Holmes visiting his brother, 3rd person Holmes POV. It was obvious she was doing it because it was fanfic and she could; but it's now the only thing I remember about that particular story.

Do you prefer stories that stick to one character's POV, or stories that hop around, or do you care?

As long as it's done logically/clearly (or unclearly, but for a reason) I don't care. Even omniscient-three-POVs-in-one-sentence can be fine, though I've never seen it in fanfic I don't think.

Is the choice of narrators a major writing decision for you, or something that happens organically?

It's a major decision, but sometimes it doesn't get made until fairly late in the game - I start writing just to get myself writing, and then figure out what I'm trying to do. Other times, POV is the whole point of a story.

Is it different for AUs vs. canon-based stories?

Nope. I do think you can get away with POV oddness in epilogs and prologs, FWIW.

My favorite fun-with-POV example is this passage from R. K. Narayan's "Swami and Friends":

My only issue with this is that it kind of lacks - respect? - for the kids.

I do tend to like stories that stick to one or two POVs during the story rather than hopping about willy nilly from several different characters POVs. I get attached to characters and want to hear what they're saying, thinking, feeling. I get frustrated when there's a dizzying change of POVs for several different characters, some of whom I don't even care about. (yes, Jim Butcher I'm looking at you)

As to where the switch occurs, I don't think it's a problem to have a switch in POV happen later in the story if it's logical and well-thought out.

Fanfic, as a medium, is a lot more forgiving of that kind of thing than pro fic.

Really? My impression is the opposite - fanfic is usually very tight third person, limited to one or (in longer stories) two of the main characters, and profic just doesn't limit itself like that. For a while there I read fanfic almost exclusively, and when I got back into reading profic, I really noticed how much more varied profic is when it comes to POV.

(Well. Maybe it's not that POV switches are less common in fanfic but that they're generally just written off as bad writing/an error in judgment? Because my impression is absolutely that there seems to have evolved a platonic ideal of POV in fanfic which is one character only, or at best switching between the two main characters in a romantic pairing.)

For my own writing, when it comes to longer stories I generally have one main POV and one or two secondary POVs, and I try to make the switches follow some kind of pattern. (I love patterns.) But I'm trying to become more flexible on this. Handling more POVs, including one-off single-chapter POVs, is one of the things I'm trying to teach myself. The important thing is, I think, to make sure you're not just randomly brain-hopping but that the changed POV actually matters to the story.

On the other hand, what I absolutely can't tolerate is switching POV mid-paragraph - that drives me batty and generally throws me out of the story. I've seen published fiction and fanfic both doing that, but I really hate it.

ETA: Meant to comment on this too:

Is the choice of narrators a major writing decision for you, or something that happens organically?

It's generally decided by the plot. For example, in the original thing I'm preparing to write right now, there are two major plot threads. One of them depends on the main character stumbling into a complex situation where his judgments about the other characters keeps shifting, and for full effect, I need to remain mostly in his POV. The other plot thread has a central moral dilemma that only one of the two main characters is aware of, so that's the POV I'm taking. On the other hand, that's only the main POVs - I'm definitely planning to add more to flesh out the world, make it broader and less claustrophobic. So that part is a deliberate choice, yes - I'm sure you could tell this story strictly from the two main POVs, but that'd make it a different story from the one I want to tell.

Edited 2010-01-31 16:08 (UTC)

I once had a zine editor laughingly point out that I had changed POVs--in the middle of a sentence! (What can I say, I was young...ish.)

In the last few years I've been writing a series of stories where, sometimes, I just need to tell the same story from two--or sometimes three--different POVs. I've really enjoyed that--and have gotten some great feedback from readers who enjoyed it, two. Not worrying about making things completely match helped a lot.

"I will alternate between A, B, C, and D, except in the last five chapters where I will completely forget that A had a POV at all"

That does work, however, if you've been a mean nasty author and killed off A (although it might be interesting to keep A's PoV anyway. Especially if you're writing Stargate so people suck at staying dead anyway) :P

Regardless, yes, exactly what you said. Multiple PoV's are totally fine provided there is rhyme and reason and structure and not just randomly switching for a paragraph where it looks accidental (or, man, I read a Jack/Daniel fic once that switched EVERY PARAGRAPH and rewound the action a bit each time. I think the goal was to enjoy the hot porny action from both perspectives, but it just drove me crazy. And drove me away).

Ha, yes. Dead characters are exempt from POV duties.

Mostly.

(Sorry for the two parts; this is a topic that really interests me.)

POV is profoundly important to me; it's part of how I place myself relative to the story. It's not just where the story is, or when, but who's telling it. That matters because who's telling the story also changes the meaning of certain observations (at least if the characters are written as characters rather than mouthpieces). I'm not just positioning myself in a given place and time, but behind the eyes of someone (or someones) particular.

It bothers me deeply if POV isn't handled carefully, though I'll forgive it in an otherwise enjoyable story. I greatly enjoyed both, but I seem to recall being startled by the switch in "That Which Is Broken" and feeling unbalanced by "Fading Sun" (though it's possible I'm assuming in retrospect).

That matter of balance is relevant to mid-plot switches. I don't inherently care whether a story is told from one POV or twenty, so long as each POV makes sense and so long as there is a reasonable balance or structured pattern. A story told 80% Sam and 20% other can be fine, if the switches are distributed reasonably evenly ... but if it's 80% Sam and then a break to 20% other, I get thrown off, because the "rules" established by the narrative itself have been broken. The reader should know what POV rules to expect before getting too deeply into a story.

(I hold profic to the same standard. There's a Cynthia Voigt story that's 90% or 95% close-POV of one character, with the second character disappearing for stretches in which he experiences quite a lot that would be dramatic if we saw it — such as slavery and enforced mining. Then the POV character dies and the narrative switches over to the second character for the very end, for the first time in the entire book. I gave the book a negative review at Amazon because of that switch. Sure, writers can experiment with structure ... but experiments can fail, and that one really didn't work for me. It just felt as if she'd written herself into a corner and couldn't be bothered to go back and give us other passages from the second character's perspective to fix the problem of narrative expectation.)

I don't see AU versus canon mattering, really; it's down to the individual plot. [TBC ...]

Is the choice of narrators a major writing decision for you, or something that happens organically? [...] Do you have any anecdotes about stories you wrote where the POV did something interesting, or stories you read that made you think about POV in a new way?

I often go into writing a story with an idea for POV, but it's primarily organic. From my own stories:
- "Remorse" was originally meant to be just Sam. As I started developing the idea, I saw that Rodney would need his own say, but it didn't work to thread him through the first part for a few reasons. First, the second part would be only his, which was unbalancing; second, the first part is entirely about the reader knowing the changes in him but the other characters not, so the perspective had to be outside him to really bring out how much of that change others could see (or fail to see) in this situation; third, his perspective would be much more emotional and snap the almost callous tone, which mood helped enforce the environment he was in; and fourth, I wanted to make it clear through use of the non-Rodney POVs that some of the possible explanations, such as a virtual environment, can be ruled out by the reader but not by Rodney. All of that was best served by keeping everything outside him for the entire first part. Daniel, on the other hand, was a complete surprise; somehow he just worked better for the conference room scene, but that meant I had to go back and switch an earlier passage from Sam to Daniel so the reader knew to expect POV changes and the later switch wouldn't seem so clumsy.

- "Allergy" switches among three people, and I often wonder if I should have held back from posting long enough to make that two. I purposely structured the POV to start and end with John, with Rodney in the middle (because clear patterns work into reader expectations of narrative structure); Carson only ended up having one scene, and I can tell myself it works as the pivot for the story, but I'm still not sure I was right not to rewrite that to Rodney's POV.

- "Antigonish", the post-Trinity I'm currently writing, was originally an alternation between close-POV Rodney and omniscient third for worldbuilding and plot advancement. The omniscient passages were really grating and I ended up yanking them, even though that gives me a problem establishing certain plot-relevant content early in the story now. I still think I should use only Rodney for POV (rather than moving around) in this case, because the sense of restriction plays into his (slightly skewed) sense of isolation ... but unfortunately that means I'm having trouble establishing the other characters. His perspective of their actions is necessary to make him feel more shunned, but that perspective is (purposely) flawed, and it makes everyone else seem like jackasses, especially John. How long will a reader trust that this is a skewed viewpoint of John (who is in fact acting unkindly, but not nearly to the extent Rodney is seeing) and not me as a writer bashing John? I'm still fighting this one. (In part, the problem is that I like everyone to get along. So if I switched to Teyla or John, I'd be explaining why they're acting the ways they are, and establishing how some actions aren't as harsh as they seem ... and then fighting the problem that Rodney obviously doesn't understand them, so why won't he try and why won't anyone stop and talk to him, blah blah blah. I find conflict easier to write if I'm only portraying it from one angle, I think, even though I make sure to work it out from all angles so that what we see makes sense for everyone, even if one character's interpretations don't.)

tl;dr: POV matters hugely to me, and some stories work best from only one POV, but so long as the story sets expectations and then follows its own rules (and doesn't switch mid-paragraph or, preferably, mid-scene without a clear break), I'm happy with switching because different POVs can enrich the story.

There are obviously exceptions to my rule (some story tropes like bodyswap making switching POV almost necessary because the fun is seeing how each character reacts to the situation), but for the most part, I prefer to read close 3rd same POV throughout a story. And that's almost invariably what I write.

I've had at least one time where I was seriously tempted to look into remixing someone's S6 SG-1 fic from Daniel Jackson's perspective.

*whistles innocently*

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Let's talk about point of view!

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