Heading into Danger: Choosing Point of View

I’m glad Jacqueline brought up point-of-view. Annually, I judge the Golden Heart—the prestigious contest run by the Romance Writers of America for unpublished writers—and a number of local-to-regional writing contests. I’ve also just returned from the Florida Romance Writers Cruise With Your Muse conference (yes, on a cruise ship) where I sat in on other workshops, taught my own and in general, hobnobbed with authors and writers on various topics, but most often the art and craft of writing.

POV seems to be the proverbial sticky-wicket for a lot of writers. In fact, very often when I teach workshops, there’s more than a handful in the audience who appear surprised that there are rules, there are serious craft considerations relating to POV. The fact that a scene or a chapter—or the fact that even an entire book could be based on the wrong POV hasn’t occurred to a number of writers out there.

It’s not that writers aren’t aware of POV (though not all know the acronym). It’s that many writers don’t seem to be aware of the decisions that need to be made in crafting. Or why these decisions are important.

“But it’s my characters’ story. It’s Bill’s and Ted’s and Mary’s and Alice’s,” the writer explains. And then proceeds to write a scene about what Bill does, then one about Ted, one about Mary and one about Alice. (Or worse—a scene where all are prominent and we’ll get to why that’s problematic in a bit.)

But a novel—the story you’re writing—is not just a recounting of incidents in one or more characters’ lives. It’s not a dayplanner come to life or a diary entry unfolding. A novel, as Jacqueline has taught me, is fiction and fiction is entertainment.

And don’t you forget that for a minute.

Ever see the Rockettes? Or any large choreographed production? Looks easy, seamless, doesn’t it? It takes hours and hours and days of practice, of drilling, of planning, of rehearsing.

Novels are no different. You just have words—not feet—dancing in a deliberate rhythm on the stage.

Reading a commercial genre fiction novel is, for the reader, a vicarious experience. I don’t think that comes as a shock to anyone out there. Readers read to immerse themselves in another’s life, another’s quest, another’s strivings, another’s failures, another’s challenges. Safely. All the adventure, none of the risk.

Readers also read, Dwight V.Swain sagely noted in his Techniques of the Selling Writer, to experience tension. And it’s the author’s job, Swain further noted, to manipulate the emotions of the reader.

Which ostensibly doesn’t sound all that hard—given that readers are already poised and salivating for the vicarious experience. They expect it. They demand it. They’re waiting for the writer to give them that magic carpet ride…waiting so intently, in fact, they’re willing to accept and believe all sorts of nonsense just to get that magic carpet under their readerly patooties. (That willingness to accept is called, in literary terms, the suspension of disbelief. But that’s a topic for another blog.)

So if it’s so damned easy to bring readers in, why is it so damned hard to write the correct POV?

Because fiction is entertainment and because readers do read to experience tension. And the wrong POV choice—or worse, the mixing of too many POVs—makes the piece un-entertaining and without tension.

In her (excellent) World Crafter’s Guild on her Sime~Gen site, Jacqueline often pens, “Whose story is it?” This directly relates to something I learned as a private investigator: “Who’s the best witness?” I can tell you from working oodles of vehicular accident cases that what witness #1 recounts may not at all be what witness #2 saw, or witness #3. Physical presence does not always translate to knowledge, and rarely translates to agreement.

Further, physical presence at an accident scene doesn’t immediately ensure the correct recounting of facts. Distance from the accident as well as location (ie: blocked view) are two factors that affect what a witness can impart. But other factors that come into play can include cultural, educational, and emotional issues. Let’s consider Mrs. Magillicuddy who witnesses Junior Snerd, the driver, clip the curb in front of the Magillicuddy house and plow his car into Mr. Magillicuddy’s brand new Lincoln MKZ parked in the driveway. Mrs. M will have an emotional reaction because it’s her husband’s car. Her view—her point of view—will be different from the UPS delivery driver exiting his brown truck across the street, who doesn’t really know the Magillicuddy’s or Snerd. Like it or not, emotions color memory and there’s a not a private detective, cop, attorney or judge that doesn’t know that. To Mrs. M, the oncoming car will likely—in hindsight—be remembered as larger and faster. More threatening, more menacing.

What does this have to do with writing fiction and POV?

Bear with me. I’ll get to it.

Now, the group of teenagers hanging out at the corner will have a different recounting of what happened when Snerd’s car whizzed by, stereo blaring. They may—because of their age and their teen-culture—be able to identify the song pounding through Snerd’s speakers and as well, might recognize the object in Snerd’s left hand as a cell phone, because those are things important to their world. But if asked whether it appeared Snerd’s car exceeded the posted speed limit, they might not be able to answer because—again, based on their teen-culture—a car with music blaring whose driver is texting on his cell phone is a “cool thing” (or whatever the current jargon is.)

Junior might even be a friend. Conflict of interest, that.

And Snerd, I assure you, has a very different recounting of what happened. (Insurance company files are full of statements from drivers who swear “that tree just jumped out in the road and hit my car.”)

So it’s a detective’s job to gather not only the facts from the witnesses, but ascertain those items which affect the facts, like distance, lighting, obstructions, and subjective factors like education, culture, relationships and so on. A report is then created from all the information culled.

A novel is not a report. A novel, Swain says, is desire plus danger. A novel, Jacqueline Lichtenberg teaches, is entertainment; it is a story whose essence is conflict.

Danger, desire, tension, conflict.

What does this have to do with POV? It teaches you that when you choose POV, you must always work from the character in whose POV the reader will experience the most conflict. Tension. Desire. When you work from the POV of the character whose recounting, whose experience will permit the reader to experience the most conflict, you’re feeding the reader’s desire for vicarious experiences, and you’ll keep the reader turning pages to find out what happens next (“What can I experience next?”).

Now, problems arise when writers get hopped-up on this emotional thing and believe More Is Better. “So,” newbie writer says aloud, “if the emotional experiences of one character in the scene can be gripped, then the emotional experiences of four characters in the scene will be fantastic!” And she writes the next few pages allowing the reader into the heads and hearts of all four characters, so that the readers knows the thoughts and feelings of all four characters at the same time.

Uh, no. It doesn’t work that way.

POV is like being a sports fan. You like the Tampa Bay Bucs (though likely not this year). You like the Tampa Bay Lightning. You root for the Rays, another local team in the Tampa-St Pete area. So when the Lightning play the Philadelphia Flyers, your focus, your interest, your emotion, your dedication is to the Lightning players on the ice.

But what if the sports field contained the Bucs, the Lightning and the Rays? Your loyalties, attention and emotions would be divided.

That’s one of the reasons multiple points-of-view in the same scene or (heaven forefend) paragraph doesn’t work: it splits reader loyalties. Instead of a 100% vested interest in Character A, the reader has a 25% interest in Character A, 25% in Character B, 25% in Character C and 25% in Character D.

Which makes the scene weak and the reader will lose interest.

Remember: readers read to experience tension.
Remember: reading is a vicarious experience.

Let’s go back to tension, which is where head-hopping or multiple POVs in the same scene fails.

If the reader knows what every character is thinking and feeling, then there can be no surprises, no secrets. And if there are no surprises and no secrets, then there is a lot less tension. And if there’s a lot less tension, there are a lot less reasons for the reader (or editor or agent) to keep turning the pages.

If you have a novel in which the newly assigned captain of a military starship believes—no, fears that the admiral of the fleet—who is currently on board— doesn’t trust her, you can ramp up tension by having that fear be all the reader experiences during that chapter. Throw in a few secrets—the new captain has a bit of a shady past that, if the admiral found out, would certain land her in the brig—if she lives that long—and you have more tension. More danger. More desire (to live, to succeed, to not be unmasked and killed for past sins). You can show (because good writers show and don’t tell) the admiral watching her with suspicion (or so she believes). You will then keep the reader turning pages because all the reader know in this chapter is what the captain knows—fear, suspicion, trepidation.

If, in that chapter or scene or (heaven forefend) those very paragraphs, you include the admiral’s thoughts and the reader learns that the admiral is not watching the captain’s every move because he suspects her, but because he’s secretly been in love with her for years…you then weaken the captain’s fears. The reader knows then that the captain really has nothing to worry about. Her fears are invalid. Her suspicions are bogus. It’s all really just a big misunderstanding.

So why keep reading? Where’s the tension the reader wants to experience vicariously? It’s watered down now. Ineffective.

“But, but, Linnea!” you wail. “That’s Games of Command. And we did learn about Kel-Paten’s feelings for Tasha.”

Yes, you did. But not in the same paragraph or scene. I gave you time to get emotionally invested in Tasha’s paranoia before I let you in on Branden Kel-Paten’s little secret. And when in the chapter where you learned about Kel-Paten’s little secret, you also learned about the huge risks and threat to him because of it.

I manipulated your emotions and you loved it.

I also kept you solidly in one point of view until I’d wrung those emotions out of you. Then and only then could I switch you to another character’s point of view, emotions and problems.

Did I do it flawlessly? Hell no. As author Mary Jo Putney so wisely said in a recent radio interview, each novel has limited real estate. You have a finite landscape in which to create your book. There are times you must cut, you must fudge. You have deadlines. You have word count limits. But even given all that, character POV is one of the elements a writer must always keep as a top priority.

Point of View is the tool by which you manipulate the reader because point of view is what places the reader into the character’s heart and mind. It is the means of the vicarious experience. Therefore, the point of view you choose must be the one that is the most impactful, most fraught with emotions, laced with desire, infused with danger. And you stay in that point of view long enough to make sure the reader has become vested in that character. The reader must care deeply and the reader can’t do that in a setting of divided loyalties or a cacophony of thoughts and feelings.

Going back to the accident between Magillicuddy and Snerd, whose story on the witness stand would you think would be the most impactful? The teens on the corner? The UPS driver? Or Snerd’s behind the wheel of the car? Which would have more sensations that were immediate and grabbing? Which would hold your attention longer?

The story you want to listen to is the point of view of that character.

~Linnea

Linnea Sinclair
// Interstellar Adventure Infused with Romance//
Available Now from Bantam: Shades of Dark
2009: Hope's Follyhttp://www.linneasinclair.com/

Shifting P.O.V.

Shifting Point Of View
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is a succinct, graphic, iconic way to depict what Lovers fight about, sometimes break up over, and occasionally become enemies about.  It depicts the reason that "The Far Left" reviles "The Far Right."  It's all in the Point of View, and that different vantage point is what creates the best dramatic Conflict, the Essence of Story.  Think hard about this graphic.

On a Yahoo Group zinelist where fanfic writers who are as good as professionals discuss fanfic, the topic of fanfic preference for single POV (Point of View) came up.

I learned to spot POV in narrative when I was in High School and read in a Writer's Digest that the POV in a story is what you would see through a camera set on the shoulder of the POV character. The POV character might not be the main character, the hero, or the character whose story is being told. The POV character can be a "Watson" -- a chronicle writer, a journalist traveling with, a Bard dogging the footsteps of King-to-be Arthur.

But knowing the definition of P.O.V., seeing it done by others in narrative, is not the same thing as writing it yourself.

I struggled with POV as a beginning writer and still focus on it as a professional SF/F reviewer for an on-paper magazine.

Choosing the wrong POV for a story, or shifting POV during a story can kill reader (and reviewer) interest.

I've been teaching writing craft since I was writing my Kraith Series of Star Trek fanfic, a series which had 50 creators working their own notions in my sub-universe under my editing.

Kraith is now available online FREE
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/
with other classic trek zines. (and we're open to posting more classics). Kraith won the Memory Alpha Award.

I went on to launch my professional SF novels, the Sime~Gen novels, then several other SF universes (one of which, DUSHAU, won the first Romantic Times Award for SF (so long ago the award isn't posted on their website!)) and now may be revived as webisodes in full color images.

Some writers who have studied the POV issue closely may have missed one key (very invisible) element in a good POV shift that I had to discover for myself.

The issue is not whether you shift POV or not.

The issue is when and why and how you shift POV.

Shifting POV is an art, but also a craft. And it is very difficult to pull it off correctly, or even to define what "correctly" is.

As you read this, please remember Art always trumps Craft in POV shifting. But without Craft there can be no artistic statement. Art requires discipline, and it is the discipline that makes the Art shine forth.

So there are a few craft rules, which if violated ruin both the fine-art aspect of the narrative and the commercial art aspect.

So when you violate a craft rule, (note, I said when not if -- as with all writing, POV rules are there to be violated) as an artist, you must telegraph that you know the rule, that you know why it became a rule, what your readership gets out of your obeying that rule, and that this violation intensifies or delineates an artistic point, and that it will be worth it to the reader by the final line of the story. (i.e. suspense).

For the most part, it is best to use such rule-violation technique with an audience you have established and wooed into trusting you. Your violation of the rule should come as a shock and a frisson of alertness to your reader. "She never writes like THIS! What's going on here?"

And it should come across as your promise to your jaded readers that you know what they generally get out of your stories, and that you will deliver that charge despite the rule violation -- or because of it.

Now, how in the world can a writer accomplish all that with a rule violation? And how can a writer know they have accomplished it, not just lost their base readership?

The answer lies in craftsmanship. Seasoned craftsmanship.

The reason single POV is absolutely, beyond question, the best choice for a beginning writer is that it takes years and millions of words to learn to manage a single POV.

You can't (really can't) manage the discipline for two POVs simultaneously if you can't manage just one by itself. It's a strength, like the strength of a muscle.

You can't lift 100 pounds if you've never lifted 50, or if you managed it only once then dropped the weight.

The reason many novels get published professionally where the POV shifts are not done correctly (blending Art and Craft smoothly = correctly) is that many editors don't have the education to know what they're buying -- and today, a lot of novels are bought by committee, not individual editors. The editor you submit to may be the only one who reads the whole book, then describes it to the committee -- who wouldn't know a POV shift if you put it before them.

Readers, however, still respond subconsciously to the Art and the Craft of the POV shift the same way they always have -- with some added sophistication because of the influence of TV shows.

A badly crafted POV shift will flip a reader right out of the story. They'll put it aside and not come back. Ask them why, and they say "Well, it got boring." or "I lost interest." or "I forgot what the story was about."

Readers don't know where their emotional responses to the character and story are coming from. And it's better for the writer if they don't. Better yet if the editor doesn't know where his/her emotional responses are coming from.

Writers must know -- at least subconsciously -- where their emotional power comes from in the story. It's structure. It's all structure.

A good novel, or movie, can be graphed for emotional pitch and volume. The name of the composition (novel, short story, movie, TV episode) tells you exactly where the peaks and valleys of emotional pitch and volume must fall throughout the work -- by percentage of the way through, by page number. Exactly.

Any writer can produce a work which has originally placed peaks and valleys of emotional pitch dictated by their personal sense of art -- but that work won't be a "novel" or a "feature film" or a "short story." Thus, it won't be "marketable" by the current marketing mechanism.

The name of the kind of work it is dictates the placement of peaks and valleys of emotional pitch -- and thus by derivation, of where the POV shifts may be, and how they can be structured.

Violate any of those unwritten (and un-taught in classes) rules, and your work will not become a marketing success even if you can get it mass market published.

Robert A. Heinlein, quoting an old adage of stagecraft wrote the motto of our WorldCrafters online school of professional writing (at http://www.simegen.com ) -- "Sounding spontaneous is a matter of careful preparation." And from Alma Hill, "Writing is a Performing Art."

And that's the secret behind POV shifting and not losing your readers attention. CAREFUL PREPARATION. It's all stagecraft, a performing art.

The seeds of the shift are planted 10's of pages before the event -- the upcoming shift is telegraphed clearly, but not blatantly.

ARTISTIC RULES:

1) Use single POV unless forced out of it by the THEME, the underlying art.

2) When you introduce a second POV, (or go to Omniscient Narrator) you blow your suspense line to smithereens, and totally change the reader's mood and engagement with the material. If that's the artistic effect you need -- to break the reader's concentration and building emotional involvement -- then you must shift POV because nothing is as effective at loosening a reader's hold on the material than a POV shift. But you must be "strong" enough, disciplined enough, in enough control of the material to redirect the reader's attention smoothly right at a peak of emotional tension where you have precisely foreshadowed what will happen next.

3) In preparation for a POV shift, plant the questions answered from the other POV, and make the reader pant to learn this information. Take two or three chapters if necessary to foreshadow the new POV. Plant the thematic and most especially the visual clues, the symbolism that works on the unconscious, way before the new POV.

CRAFT POV RULES:

1) Never shift POV because you don't know any other way to show the reader some information. Instead, learn the information feed techniques.

2) Never shift POV by accident.

3) Always know exactly what the entire story looks like from ALL the characters' POV's and what they're thinking, feeling, planning, hoping, dreaming.

4) Never shift POV to let the reader know what another character is thinking.

5) Craft the POV transition with the same care you use crafting a time-shift ("Let's go get pizza!" *** The pizzeria was hot and steamy.) or a flashback shift back and forward (another really complex set of operations).

6) At the outlining stage of your story, when you cast your vision of the beginning, middle and end plus the theme and conflict of the story, DIVIDE (or as they say in Mathematics, "factor") those monolithic elements into philosophical fragments that ADD UP TO the story you're telling, and assign each factor to a POV. (that's how Gene Roddenberry created the original Star Trek ensemble cast, factoring the underlying theme. Or so he told us.)

7) Never shift POV in a story under 30,000 words or so, preferably only in a story that's at least 50,000 words. It's too jarring to the reader and there isn't enough space to smooth the transitions. That's why romance novels tend to be longer than action novels.

That all sounds very cold, calculating and distant, maybe more work than fun, and fanfic writers write for FUN above all.

So not all writers do all these operations at the same stage of production.

Craft Step 6 above may be done on the 4th or 5th rewrite. For an example of me doing that, see my first Award Winner, Unto Zeor, Forever. It is in Hardcover & paperback. An early draft of it called SIME SURGEON is posted online for free reading, so students can see how that sort of rewriting process works, step by step.
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/surgeon/SURGEON1.html Compare with the published, award winning novel, and see how the POV is tightened and the theme sharpened.

So, the trick to POV shifts that don't leave the reader bored is the same as the trick that lets a writer include information in a flashback. As you move over the transition point between time or character, you must KEEP THE PLOT MOVING FORWARD.

That forward motion is accomplished by the foreshadowing and planting of thematic questions and symbolism long, LONG before the first POV shift -- by ensuring that the reader is anticipating what will happen to the character you're leaving as soon as you return to that character's POV -- and by ensuring that the reader is ready to leap into the new POV and the whole new STORY that comes with it, trusting you to take care of the character they already learned to love.

The more information you allow your reader to have, the harder you have to work planting the questions that produce suspense that will ultimate break explosively at the climactic moment where the conflict is resolved.

When you have two POV's, you have to craft the story's ultimate climax so that both POV-stories resolve in the same incident.

Marion Zimmer Bradley worked for over 20 years struggling to craft that moment for CATCHTRAP. One of the peak highs of my life was when I provided the comment that gave her the key to creating that moment. Publication of Catchtrap opened the door to publication of Mists of Avalon which became a TV Miniseries and a long series of long best selling novels. Crafting that final moment where two stories climax in one event is the secret of that kind of success. It's worth 20 years of hard work.

In a Romance it is customary to use 2 points of view, the two people who are falling for each other.

The first chapter opens in the POV of the person whose story the envelope plot is telling.

The second chapter opens in the POV of the secondary character who is the complication to the main plot. Or who might be a main plot of his/her own.

The questions that generate suspense in a Romance arise from the very POV shift itself, each understanding the other's behavior to be generated by different motives than the reader sees.

By introducing POV's in that order in that way, you telegraph to the reader that these two people are in conflict over a Romantic spark or involvement or misunderstanding. You also telegraph that you know what you're doing, that you understand the form of the Romance novel, that you will deliver what the reader wants.

Another way to work POV is to use Arthur Conan Doyle's motif of the objective narrator who watches events unfold, and is usually only peripherally involved.

I loved it on Sanctuary (the Sci-Fi Channel TV show) where they had Watson and Jack The Ripper faced off against each other in modern times. And Watson was the one who had actually been The Detective, not Holmes.

Writing a multi-POV story requires writing several single POV stories simultaneously, thus the rule 7 above, that it takes more space to construct a story with POV shifts. The single story has to be factored into 2 stories, each with plot, theme, and conflict, all derived from a single unifying theme .

For all those stories to be in the same volume, with events interwoven, the single stories must share a single thematic set. (Otherwise the reader gets confused, disinterested, or remains unsatisfied by the ending.)

I've discussed thematic structure in:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html

That post has a discussion of the lengths of novels by theme structure and how to achieve that.

A discussion of the Art of theme construction is at:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html

Our current plan at WorldCrafters Guild is to post PDF files edited from these long blog posts to put related subjects together for easier study. You will be able to download those volumes in PDF, and maybe HTML and .lit formats.

You can follow me on twitter as JLichtenberg -- or on LinkedIn or Facebook -- to get notice of when those books get posted.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://www.slantedconcept.com