Views on Point of View

by Stephanie Black

I enjoy writing in multiple third-person-limited points of view, where the reader sees the story through the eyes of multiple characters. This is not an omniscient POV. In an omniscient POV, you can move in and out of any character’s head whenever you want, and also add authorial commentary. In limited third person you can have multiple viewpoint characters in the novel, but only ONE viewpoint per scene—and no authorial narrator inserting things like “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom noticed it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.” Omniscient POV worked wonderfully in Gone With the Wind, but is not common in modern genre fiction (the exception that comes to mind is Harry Potter-style openings where the author starts out broadly, but then zeros in to limited POV and stays there). If you’re writing genre fiction and start bouncing between heads in the middle of a scene, stop and think. Do you really INTEND to write in an omniscient viewpoint? Why? Are you SURE it works for your book and makes it stronger? Will editors like what you’ve done—or will they wonder if you knew what you were doing? Are you writing in Accidental Omniscient, i.e., you never really thought about it, but it would be handy to add Bob’s thoughts right here, even though up to now the scene has been in Jane’s POV? When in doubt, stick with third person limited. One scene=one set of eyeballs.

Whose eyeballs? You choose. Whose POV would be the most effective and work most powerfully in weaving the story you want to create? (But bear in mind the advice from my favorite writing guru, Jack Bickham, in his book The 38 Worst Fiction Writing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them): even with multiple viewpoints, you need one viewpoint to dominate the story. Make sure you’ve got a main character).

In my work in progress, I have a viewpoint character whom I’m demoting to non-viewpoint status. She’s a secondary character, and didn’t have all that many POV scenes, and I’m demoting her for a few reasons. 1-I was afraid the book was too soap opera, and her viewpoint scenes were among the soap. 2—The book was too long. It’s not deal-breaker long, but it could be tighter. 3-Removing POV from this character would make her more mysterious. On the downside, it removes the insight into her character and backstory that we enjoyed when we hung around in her head, but ah well. One must sacrifice for the good of the novel.

Making this change involved (or will involve—I’m not done with the draft yet) cutting a couple of her viewpoint scenes entirely, which includes moving needed info elsewhere. And in the case of a scene I wanted to keep, it involves flipping the POV so it now belongs to the other character in the scene.

Switching a scene into a new POV is not minor surgery. Even if what happens in the scene is still the same, it takes mega-rewriting to tell the story from a new POV. The thoughts, perceptions, attitudes, etc., now need to fit the new POV character, and we no longer get to peek into the thoughts of the other character in the scene. The POV character can observe, infer, and guess, but she can’t mind-read (unless your story is about telepathy). Here’s a sample—the first few lines from the scene, in two different versions:

One look at Carissa Willis’s flushed face made Summer switch the sarcastic greeting on her tongue to a new, softer one. “Thanks for driving all the way up here.”

“No problem.” Carisssa gave a smile that wilted before it formed. “Is—is Alan home?”

“No. He’s actually in Canfield. He and Gavin had some kind of business connected with Linda’s will.”

Carissa looked deeply relieved.

She really stinks at this deception thing, Summer thought as she waved Carissa into the house. Getting information out of Carissa was going to be insanely easy.

So we’re in Summer’s POV. What do we learn through hanging out in her head? We know Carissa is nervous because we see it in her face and hear it in her hesitant speech. What do we know about Summer herself? She doesn’t think much of Carissa, but she’s not made of steel—when she sees how nervous Carissa is, she tones down her urge to be sarcastic. We also know she wants information and she thinks it will be easy to get it out of Carissa.

Here’s a rewritten sample from Carissa’s POV. (I also changed the meeting place, so now they’re at Carissa’s house—that has nothing to do with the POV; it just made more sense.)

“Hi, Summer. Thanks for driving all the way out here.” Carissa’s cheeks burned at how stupid the words sounded. Why was she pretending to be friendly?

Summer smiled, but her smile wasn’t any friendlier than Carissa felt. She was very pretty and so together. Her shiny brown hair curved perfectly above her shoulders, and her olive skin was so smooth—how could anyone look that good without makeup? No, she was wearing a little eyeliner and a touch of mascara, but that was all. Her sweater fit smoothly over the kind of figure Carissa would need surgery to achieve.

Fighting an urge to suck in her stomach, Carissa asked, “Does Alan know you’re here?”

“No. I didn’t tell him anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. I haven’t blabbed your dirty secret.”

What do we learn this time around? We still know Carissa is nervous, but not because outside eyeballs see that she looks flushed. We feel her cheeks burn and know she feels stupid when she tries to act polite. The way she dwells mentally on Summer’s physical appearance and her own perceived shortcomings tells us something about Carissa—she’s got some hang-ups and self-esteem issues (here she is in a tense situation and she's self-conscious about her flabby abs?). Flip it back into Summer’s POV and no way would Summer see herself like Carissa does—in fact, she views herself as short and plain.

Point of view is one of the most powerful fiction-writing tools, so it pays to make sure you're wielding it in a way that will strengthen your story. Have fun!