By Max Vonne.
Point of view is
something to take seriously as a writer. It’s one of the primary
decisions we make when writing a scene or chapter. Whose point of view
are we viewing the action from?
The answer can be a
black hole. The point of view (POV) of no one is actually an
option. That is called omniscient POV.
A detached, all-seeing eye informs us of what we need to know. We
don’t know where it comes from or how it feels about anything. And because of that, omniscient POV is a
thinly disguised data dump.
Readers hate data
dumps. Information in itself is not interesting; it’s just a bunch of
facts. For example:
In
the age of Thuron, under the reign of the last of the great kings, in
swamplands of Gonon, where unnatural creatures stirred when the moon fell dark,
there arose a host of the discontented horde, ready to make its presence
known...
I’m already
sleeping. None of those facts are compelling. I don’t know who is
speaking or why I need to know about the swamplands of Gonon.
Readers want to
experience things through the eyes of a character so they can feel what the
character is feeling. The two most common point of view types used in
commercial fiction are first-person past tense and third-person limited.
In “Interview With the
Vampire,” Anne Rice tells the story through the eyes of Louis in first-person
past tense. I can’t use her snippets for copyright reasons, so I’ll make
up my own to demonstrate.
I
saw his eyes widen, straining in disbelief. Were my teeth that
frightening? Or was it the pallor of my
ghostly, milk-white skin, such as it was? It didn’t matter. The scent of the man’s hot blood running
through his veins offered me too much pleasure to resist. I sank my fangs
into the wretch’s neck and took what I needed.
In the above sample,
we see things through the eyes of the vampire. It puts the reader right
in the middle of the action, experiencing things as the character does.
Obviously, I’ve kept the scene brief.
It’s close and intimate. This
point of view is perfect if you want to write your story from a single
perspective.
Writing from a
third-person limited point of view is the other popular way to go. Here
is a short example from my book, Star Faer - The Queen of Zori.
Baz
faded in and out of consciousness. He much preferred being out. His wakeful state brought tremors with it,
fits of shaking that he couldn’t control. And those sounds. The ones he couldn’t quite distinguish. Footsteps in the distance? A door slamming somewhere? Sharp voices. Laughter?
Being
bound and gagged didn’t help.
Even though this is a
jarring paragraph with no context or setup, you can still recognize whose point
of view we see the action from. Baz is obviously a prisoner. We know he is suffering. We experience the action of the story as Baz
does.
The books I’ve read on
point of view, like “Point of View” by Marcy Kennedy, always discuss an
omniscient point of view as an option because it’s been used
historically. Lord of the Rings is written with an omniscient narrator. Tolkien was a genius. Here’s my opinion. Don’t ever use an omniscient POV if you want
people to read your book. Lord of the Rings was written in the
1940s. Reader tastes have changed. Don’t take my word for it. Google it.
Read some books on technique.
My stance on this is rather
strong because I see writers using omniscient viewpoint a lot on
CritiqueMatch.com, a platform where writers edit and review each other’s
work. It’s the most common mistake I see.
Often a writer will
reject that criticism out of hand. It’s a structural problem to the
writing, and it’s hard to understand what the problem is when a writer is first
starting out. I know this from the inside out because I made the same
mistake. I wrote the first draft of The
Queen of Zori in omniscient point of view. It was a disaster.
Luckily, Bethany
Tucker, an editor on CritiqueMatch.com challenged me. Others on the
platform didn’t object to what I had written, so at first, I thought she was an
outlier, someone who just didn’t like what I was writing. I dismissed it
because I figured that you couldn’t please everyone. But at the same time, my curiosity was peaked,
and I started researching. The research
always led me in one direction, away from an omniscient point of view.
Today’s readers want
to experience the story through the eyes of a character. Anything that
muddles up that experience is a bad thing.
Often, a writer has
written in an omniscient point of view and doesn’t know it. That makes it
difficult to correct. Luckily, there are
simple indicators that you are in an omniscient viewpoint. Here is a
short list:
1.
Head-hopping
2.
Referring to a character in a way they
would not refer to themselves
3.
Providing information that the character
couldn’t know
So let’s tackle these
one at a time.
1) Head-hopping
Head hopping occurs
when you switch the point of view between characters within a single scene or
chapter without clear delineation. Here’s an example:
Sheila’s
nerves were chewing on her. She hated how he looked at her. “Staring at something?”
Bob
felt awful about it. But what could he do about it? He certainly
wasn’t going to tell her the truth, that her hair was sticking straight
up. “Umm, not really.”
Sheila
reflexively put her hand on her hair and felt that something was out of
place. Was it sticking straight up?
Oh, no. Of course, he wouldn't have told her that.
She instantly regretted being angry with him.
This is an absurd
example, but we can clearly see that first, we get Sheila’s thoughts, then we
get Bob’s. This is called head hopping.
We are anchored to no one. We are
a distant observer. It’s an omniscient
POV. Since we have Bob’s thoughts, we already know Sheila has a hair
problem before she discovers it. That
makes Sheila’s POV following unengaging. At least to those of us awake.
Now let’s try this
from just Sheila’s POV:
Sheila’s nerves were chewing on
her. She hated how he looked at her.
“Staring at something?”
Bob’s flat expression didn’t
change. “Umm, not really.”
Sheila reflexively put her hand on
her hair and felt something out of place. Was it sticking straight
up? Oh, no. Of course, he
wouldn't have told her that. She instantly regretted being angry with
him.
This time we only see
the scene from Sheila’s point of view. She doesn’t know what Bob is
thinking. In this example, we get to
experience her discovery of the hair problem. The point is that we focus
on Shelia and her feelings. We don’t need
to know what Bob feels. If necessary, he
could communicate it through dialogue. As a writer, you have to trust
that a single point of view can deliver a better experience for the
reader. In my opinion, it always leads
to better writing.
2) Self-referencing
Now let’s look at
self-referencing. That is how the character refers to himself/herself.
The
fireman carried the victim, a small girl, to safety. He put her on the
ground gently. Then the fireman turned
back to the blaze to try to find someone else to save.
This is a little
exaggerated, but it’s to make a point. This writing could work if we’re
not in the POV of the fireman. But if we are writing from the point of
view of the fireman, it doesn’t work at all. Would the fireman think of
himself as the fireman? Of course not.
When referencing a
character for the first time, using their name is the most common approach:
Bob
carried the small girl to safety. He put her on the ground gently. Then he turned back to the blaze to try to
find someone else to save.
Now Bob feels like a
person. But we don’t know yet that he’s a fireman. It’s ok. We can add some detail to make that work.
Bob
carried the small girl to safety. He put her on the ground gently. Then, he made eye contact with his fire
captain. Captain Hendricks waved him on just as more fire trucks were
arriving. Bob hurried back to the blaze
to try to find someone else to save.
This was a simple
example, not spectacularly written by any means. It needs to
improve. But even this small change
feels more like a fire scene. We added the fire captain and the fire
trucks because we needed to identify Bob as a firefighter. I added the
“hurried” detail because I started to think about how Bob saw things. He would certainly be in a hurry in his role
as a fireman. After all, we see it through Bob’s eyes. He feels more real to us than the nameless
fireman ever could. Once we’re fully
seated in Bob’s point of view, it’s hard for us to break out. That’s a
good thing. It means we’re engaged with
the character.
3) Information the Character Couldn’t Know
Another telltale sign
of omniscient POV is that we get information the character couldn’t know.
After
being called on by the teacher, Arlene’s cheeks turned red.
Unless Arelene is
looking in a mirror, she can’t see her own cheeks. So how would you
express something like that from the character’s POV?
After being called on by the
teacher, Arlene felt the heat surging in her cheeks. Am I blushing?
I sneaked in a bit of
internal monologue because it seemed like Arlene would naturally think
that. Because I constrained the POV to what she can see, I gained insight
into what she might actually think. The reader experiences her blushing
more directly than if it were stated as a simple fact.
It takes work to
develop a feel for point of view. Cutting out information can seem
counterintuitive, but you have to learn to trust it. If the character
can’t know the information, leave it out.
You can always figure out a clever way to work it in at some point.
The deeper the point
of view, the richer the experience for the reader. I keep a copy of
Marcie Kennedy’s “Deep Point of View” on my desk, along with a few other key
books on writing technique. I’ve only scratched the surface of this topic
with this article, but hopefully, it will inspire you to dig into the topic
more.
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Max
Vonne is a sci-fi writer who
blends science fiction and fantasy, creating stories full of kings and queens,
slaves, barbarians, elves, magic, and tech. The Kaedra galaxy is at the
heart of his work. To develop it, he
wrote a custom computer program that created thousands of stars and
planets. His books explore stories
involving those worlds. You can visit these worlds at www.StarFaer.com.
Max also founded www.WritersWiki.com to provide free resources
to new writers.
