Point of View

One reason editors often reject manuscripts are viewpoint problems, so let’s talk about point of view.

What is point of view (POV)?

The point of view is the lens through which we experience the story.

Basically, there are three types of POVs:

• First-person POV: The story is written in first person (“I”), most often from the POV of a main character but sometimes from the POV of a minor character.

• Omniscient POV: The narrator is not one of the characters but an all-knowing observer who knows what every character thinks and feels. He knows more than the characters and can see into the future and the past (e.g., Little did he know that… or If only she had known that…). Just dipping into the minds of several character is not omniscient POV; this is called head-hopping. The omniscient narrator comments and judges and is a tangible presence.

• Third-person limited POV: The story or scene is told from only one character’s point of view. The reader knows only what the POV character is seeing, feeling, and thinking.

What’s the best POV?

There is no best POV. The right POV depends on your story, including the genre, and the effect you want to achieve.

In the 19^th century, novels were often told from the omniscient POV. The advantage of omniscient POV is that it provides a view of the context and society as a whole. If you want readers to view the events in the story at a critical distance, omniscient POV is a good choice.

But nowadays, especially in love stories, we want readers to identify with our characters and to forget that they’re just reading a fictional story, so omniscient POV is no longer popular today. Nowadays, the most common point of view is third-person limited, so we’ll focus on that.

What are some of the most common POV violations?

• Head hopping: Head hopping is switching POVs within a scene. The reader is jerked from one character’s head to the next. This yanks the reader out of the story and makes it harder to identify with the main character. Writers should stick to one POV within a scene and change POV only at the beginning of a new scene or chapter.

Here’s an example: 

“Hi, this is Chantal. Thank you for calling,” Christina breathed into the phone.

“Um, hello,” Linda said.

Christina furrowed her brow. A woman? In the four months since she’d started working for the sex hotline, only three women had called her. “You’re calling at exactly the right time. I’m just undressing to take a hot bath.” She made her voice sound as if she was revealing a secret. “Do you want to join me?”

Linda’s heart started racing. She fiddled with the phone cord. “Would it be all right if we … if we just talk?”

This is head hopping. Christina doesn’t know the name of the caller. She can’t feel her heart racing, and she can’t see her fiddling with the phone cord, so the reader shouldn’t have this information either.

Here’s the excerpt from Alison Grey’s Hot Line (to be published in 2013) without the head hopping: 

“Hi, this is Chantal. Thank you for calling,” Christina breathed into the phone.

“Um, hello,” a female voice said on the other end of the line.

Christina furrowed her brow. A woman? In the four months since she’d started working for the sex hotline, only three women had called her. “You’re calling at exactly the right time. I’m just undressing to take a hot bath.” She made her voice sound as if she was revealing a secret. “Do you want to join me?”

“Would it be all right if we … if we just talk?”

• The author describes things the POV character can’t know. In third-person limited POV, the reader can only know what the POV character knows. So you can’t talk about things that are going on behind the POV character or what the person on the other end of the line is doing while having a phone conversation with the POV character. Also, if your POV character is a city girl, you can’t name every plant in the forest.

• Describing the POV character from the outside. Unless your main character is very vain, you can’t have her thinking about her looks. Instead of Her face turned red, you could write: Her cheeks heated.

• Describing things the POV character already knows or wouldn’t notice. If you know something well, you don’t notice it anymore and you have no reason to think about it. We don’t stop to think about the way we look or about the furniture in our house unless we have a very good reason to do so. Example: She slapped Sabrina’s face. “It’s over!” They had been dating for six months now. Mutual friends had introduced them at a party.  At this moment of high emotion, she wouldn’t be thinking about how they met, so this is not a good way to give readers this information.

• Having too many point of views. POV is a tool that increases reader’s identification with the character. Readers get to know a character by sharing her thoughts and feelings. If you throw readers into the heads of too many different POV characters, they won’t get to know any of these characters as intimately as if you have just one or two POV characters.

• The “Burly Detective Syndrome”: Don’t use phrases like “the blond actress” or “the young attorney” or even “the nineteen-year-old” to describe the POV character. No one thinks of herself or himself that way.

Here are a few links to other articles about point of view: 

Point of view

POV made simple

Head hopping and POV violations

More POV violations

Is third person limited limiting?

Read our first blog post on reasons why manuscripts are rejected:

Show, don’t tell

And please check back for more advice on writing next Wednesday, when we’ll talk about story beginnings.

Happy writing!

Jae