POV control

[Naomasa298]

Trying to get some more writing and craft discussions going.

Is anyone having any problems with POV control? Like, switching POV, POV distance, head hopping, which POV to use, and so on?

Or, come to that, any other craft discussions, at all? Post them in their own threads and I'm sure the hive mind collective experience of the forum members can help!

 

[Madman Starryteller]

I've always had problem with it, mostly because I don't think I learned the basics way back when I first started writing. But I try to make sense as best as I can.

Mostly, I just wing it and hope for the best!

 

[Luxuria]

I tend to control POV by writing in 1st person. Haha. But when I do third, I tend to let the POV drift as needed. But not suddenly. When it makes sense.

 

[Naomasa298]

I've always had problem with it, mostly because I don't think I learned the basics way back when I first started writing. But I try to make sense as best as I can.

Mostly, I just wing it and hope for the best!

Thing is, it's not just limited to first person, third person omniscient and third person limited.

As we saw in the workshop, there's also second person, and third person limited can vary between close distance and middle distance. It depends how much you chose to withhold and reveal. You can also switch POV in the same story.

There are probably half a dozen more I've missed out.

 

[Luxuria]

third person limited can vary between close distance and middle distance.

Ah! This is what I usually write when I do 3rd person these days. I just really like getting into a character's head, but sometimes third person works better than 1st for some situations.

 

[Naomasa298]

Ah! This is what I usually write when I do 3rd person these days. I just really like getting into a character's head, but sometimes third person works better than 1st for some situations.

Right, but what I mean is that, limited can range from being very close, "over the shoulder", and sharing thoughts, to only sharing some thoughts and viewpoints and hiding others. You control what the reader sees, not just the character.

 

[Luxuria]

Right, but what I mean is that, limited can range from being very close, "over the shoulder", and sharing thoughts, to only sharing some thoughts and viewpoints and hiding others. You control what the reader sees, not just the character.

That is interesting. Now, I want to write a unreliable narrator like this.

 

[Naomasa298]

That is interesting. Now, I want to write a unreliable narrator like this.

There are different forms of unreliable narrators.

One, like in American Psycho, where the narrator deliberately withholds the truth from the reader.
Another one is where the narrator is fooling themselves, and by that, fools the reader.
Another one is where the narrator reframes and justifies things to themselves and to the reader - "My training forced me to shoot him".
And another one is the naive narrator, where the narrator doesn't understand the events, but, through what they describe, the reader does.

And others... but the common thread is that the narrator doesn't tell the whole truth to the reader, just a version of it.

 

[Stuart Dren]

Or, come to that, any other craft discussions, at all? Post them in their own threads and I'm sure the hive mind collective experience of the forum members can help!

Well there doesn't seem to be a twenty-page thread about using italics for thoughts yet...

 

[Naomasa298]

Well there doesn't seem to be a twenty-page thread about using italics for thoughts yet...

If you start one, I'll post my thoughts.

In italics. Bold, underlined and 18pt.

Orange.

 

[Banespawn]

A common technique in 3rd person limited is to start a scene/chapter in more of an omniscient/objective view and, over the course of a few paragraphs/pages, narrow the focus until we are inside a character's head. It is especially common at the beginning of a story. The Wheel of Time does this in every chapter 1. It's also a good way to introduce a new POV character. Pulling back on the POV at the start of the switch helps to ease the reader into it, especially as we are likely getting a very different location as well.

You can also mix different POV styles in the same story. most typically 1st and 3rd, but I suppose you could do other combinations as well. It has to fit the needs of the story, though. Arbitrarily switching between them isn't likely to work well. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss, uses a mix of 1st and 3rd. He uses multi-3rd for the frame story and 1st for the story being framed. This makes sense because in the frame story, the protagonist is telling his life story (the story being framed) to a scribe, so naturally that would be in 1st person.

Brandon Sanderson mixes an omniscient 1st person narrator with a limited 3rd person viewpoint in Tress of the Emerald Sea. I'm trying to do something similar in my Arch story. Rather than split the POV in a frame, Sanderson has the narrator interject in the middle of the 3rd person narrative. The narrator is also a character in the story, though at the time of the story's events, he was suffering under a curse, so his contributions were very limited. The protagonist had to work hard to get anything useful out of him.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Trying to get some more writing and craft discussions going.

That would be dandy, thanks! We have enough non-writing stuff in here to sink a ship. Now that I have some time off and am getting back into writing, I'll start a few as things come up.

Is anyone having any problems with POV control? Like, switching POV, POV distance, head hopping, which POV to use, and so on?

Not really. POV might be the only thing I've never struggled with in the slightest. For whatever, the voice and perspective always comes to me fully formed. Wish everything else was like that.

 

[Naomasa298]

Distance and scope. Hopefully, I got this right. Tell me if I'm talking bullshit though. It's quite likely, since I'm out of coffee.

First person:
I gripped the steering wheel so hard that my nails dug into my palms hard enough to draw blood, but the pain barely registered. Screw Chad. He was going to get what was coming to him. I glanced at the bag. Good. The gun wasn't showing.

Third person limited (close):
Karen gripped the steering wheel so hard that her nails dug into her palm. The welling blood and subsequent pain barely registered. Screw Chad. He was going to get what was coming to him. She glanced at the bag. Good. The gun wasn't showing.

Third person limited (middle distance):
Karen gripped the steering wheel so hard that her nails dug into her palm and were causing blood to well up, but Karen barely registered it. Screw Chad, she thought. She was going to make sure he got what was coming to him. She glanced at the bag and smiled.

Third person limited (distant):
Karen's fingers were tightly wound around the steering wheel. Her nails were red with blood, but she didn't register the pain. She muttered a curse under her breath, and quickly glanced at her bag to check if the gun was visible.

Add some omniscience:
A few people gave her car mildly interested looks, curious at how fast it was going.

(Italics added, just to please @Stuart Dren)

 

[Louanne Learning]

Sometimes I find myself drifting into a sort of omniscient, and I have to remind myself, "Get inside their head!"

 

[Naomasa298]

Omniscience has its practical function, but it doesn't have to be consistent. Jane Austen's narrator is omniscient, but can selectively zoom in whenever she wants to, and has access to a character's interiority. But the narrator is also judgemental, which varies from what we usually identify as omniscient.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Jane Austen's narrator is omniscient

Austen made use of "free indirect discourse" -

"a literary technique in which the narrator’s voice appears to take on properties of the character’s voice to the extent that as a reader you are not quite sure who owns the words or thoughts."

For example, in the following two passages (from Chapter 16 of Pride & Prejudice), Elizabeth begins to form her opinion and feelings about Mr Wickham. In the first, her feelings are directly described, the author lets use know that they are her thoughts with the words ‘made her feel’:

‘the agreeable manner in which he immediately fell into conversation, though it was only on its being a wet night, made her feel that the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker.’

In the second passage, Jane Austen uses free indirect style to share Elizabeth’s feelings about Wickham with the reader.

‘There could be no conversation in the noise of Mrs. Phillips’s supper party, but his manners recommended him to everybody. Whatever he said, was said well; and whatever he did, done gracefully.’

Whilst this may sound like a statement of fact from the author, it is in fact a little more interesting. Not everyone would agree that Mr Wickham was so pleasing. This is in fact Elizabeth’s opinion of him, but it is presented by the narrator as part of their narrative.

 

[Naomasa298]

Austen made use of "free indirect discourse" -

"a literary technique in which the narrator’s voice appears to take on properties of the character’s voice to the extent that as a reader you are not quite sure who owns the words or thoughts."

Yes, she was one of the first writers to do so, but I'm not talking about the narrative mode. I'm talking about distance. Austen uses "narrator-as-character" and the narrator zooms in and out as she wishes, and chooses what to reveal to the audience for effect. She zooms in if she wants to deliver a particularly knowing, acerbic comment and invites the reader to come to the same judgement and be complicit in the thought.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Distance and scope. Hopefully, I got this right. Tell me if I'm talking bullshit though. It's quite likely, since I'm out of coffee.

First person:
I gripped the steering wheel so hard that my nails dug into my palms hard enough to draw blood, but the pain barely registered. Screw Chad. He was going to get what was coming to him. I glanced at the bag. Good. The gun wasn't showing.

Third person limited (close):
Karen gripped the steering wheel so hard that her nails dug into her palm. The welling blood and subsequent pain barely registered. Screw Chad. He was going to get what was coming to him. She glanced at the bag. Good. The gun wasn't showing.

Third person limited (middle distance):
Karen gripped the steering wheel so hard that her nails dug into her palm and were causing blood to well up, but Karen barely registered it. Screw Chad, she thought. She was going to make sure he got what was coming to him. She glanced at the bag and smiled.

Third person limited (distant):
Karen's fingers were tightly wound around the steering wheel. Her nails were red with blood, but she didn't register the pain. She muttered a curse under her breath, and quickly glanced at her bag to check if the gun was visible.

Add some omniscience:
A few people gave her car mildly interested looks, curious at how fast it was going.

(Italics added, just to please @Stuart Dren)

Not bad. The distances are difficult to illustrate on the paragraph level, though. More of a macro, chapter level thing in my opinion.

The last thing would be objective, which is in nobody's head ever under any circumstances. Kind of like a camera that offers existential opinions but no personal ones. The antithesis of omniscient. One knows all, the other knows oogatz.

 

[Naomasa298]

Not bad. The distances are difficult to illustrate on the paragraph level, though. More of a macro, chapter level thing in my opinion.

Too much work for me right now. I don't write novels, but I have done it for short stories, which is around chapter length. It's kind of the relationship the readers have with the characters.

The last thing would be objective, which is in nobody's head ever under any circumstances.

Yeah, never done it. Probably more a scriptwriting thing or a non-fiction thing, maybe? Like Anthony Beevor's The Downfall, from memory.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Too much work for me right now. I don't write novels, but I have done it for short stories, which is around chapter length. It's kind of the relationship the readers have with the characters.



Yeah, never done it. Probably more a scriptwriting thing or a non-fiction thing, maybe? Like Anthony Beevor's The Downfall, from memory.

Cormac McCarthy did everything in objective. I suspect Faulkner dabbled quite a bit too since Cormac is his mini-me in many ways, but I would have to investigate that. When I'm done with dinner I'll do your paragraph in objective. Beef, shrimp, and chicken in garlic chili sauce with Thai basil. I'm cooking a lot of Asian shit these days.