I just rediscovered I really like to write a lot, and while working on a story, I decided to a little bit of reading on the whole process. According to the books, though, I’ve fallen into the trap that a lot of beginners face, namely perspective shifts. I’m not talking about a type of first person narrative where the narrator changes each chapter (I hate those things to pieces and agree that it’s not a Good Thing), but a third person omniscient deal where the POV changes in the middle of a section. I know that sounds kind of confusing, so I’ll give an example.
Character A is talking to Character B. We hear Character A’s thoughts and are allowed to go inside his head until he says something that makes Character B remember something. We’re suddenly able to hear her thoughts and what she remembered etc. and the POV changes to her for the rest of the chapter.
I’m under the impression that this is a Bad Thing, and that it’s a sign of an inexperienced writer. I’ll admit I’ve only done it a few times in the course of the book, but IMHO I think it works pretty well in most places. But maybe that’s just me. The books say that it’s only okay if you’re an experienced writer. Whatever that means :rolleyes: .
I think the reason is because it’s bad form. A good writer should be able to show another character’s thoughts through their actions, or through well constructed dialogue.
I don’t think it’s confusing to read stuff like that, though it can be jarring if you’re aware of it. For me I make a mental note that it is poor writing that they had to approach it this way.
It’s like when you watch TV and there’s a conversation happening on the phone - You should be able to completely understand what the person at the other end of the phone is saying by the one-sided, naturalistic dialogue you can hear, and not rely on them repeating the conversation instead.
Consider it a writing exercise to try and write all your chapters without breaking into another character’s POV.
And while you’re at it, try and write dialogue without using the word ‘said’.
IANA Professional Writer, but I do write, and I also read. And I’ve read shifting-POV scenes, such as you describe, written by inexperienced writers.
I think the practice is avoided because it’s confusing for the reader. Particularly with a deep third person POV, the reader gets used to viewing a scene from the perspective of a particular character. If the POV character is suddenly switched, that confuses the reader as to which character is having what thoughts. The reader might not notice the shift right away, and think the scene is still from the original charater’s POV. Then the reader notices that the character he thought was gay now says he’s straight. Or whatever. Then the reader has to stop, and think “where did the shift occur? When I read ‘he clenched his fist’ two lines ago, which person did it refer to?” Messes up the flow of the story.
That’s not to say you can’t switch POV in the middle of a character conversation. An effective technique (er, in my IANAPW opinion) is to insert a scene break and pick up with character B’s POV, with a clear indication to the reader that a switch has occured (starting with a line clearly from B’s POV, I mean).
And, of course, if you’re really good, you know what you’re doing, and you can shift POV without confusing the reader without resorting to such things. But you’ve gotta be good.
It’s considered sloppy for some reason, although I’m not sure why. You’re supposed to insert some sort of a break between two character’s prespectives rather than do something like this:
Jimmy stared at Sharon. He couldn’t believe that the woman had admitted to once having a crush on Mister Rogers. Mister Rogers was just so asexual that he couldn’t fathom any woman, let alone one like Sharon, getting all hot and bothered as they pictured Mister Rogers’ trolly. " I bet you didn’t have many people to relate to in that."
" I guess not.“Sharon said with a shrug. She couldn’t figure out why he was acting so strangely. It’s not as though she confessed to carrying on a torrid love affair with a dalmation, so where did he get off looking at her like she was a freak? " Just about everyone has someone they find attractive that others don’t.”
Somehow inserting a break like *** between them or starting a new chapter is supposed to make a big difference, not that you could prove it by me.
It means that, like so many other “rules” for writing, it’s okay to break them if doing so makes the story better in some way. You shouldn’t be switching perspective just because you’re too clueless or inept to be able to pick a perspective and stick with it. You also shouldn’t do it just because you’re the author and you can. Although these rules for writing aren’t hard and fast, they weren’t just pulled out of the air. They exist because in most situations they work. If you believe your story is one of the exceptions to this (and there are many) then you should certainly go ahead and change perspective whenever you think it is best.
However, keep in mind that if not done carefully this can be confusing or irritating for the reader. There should be a good reason why whatever information revealed this way couldn’t be shown in some other way without changing perspective. It should also be clear that a perspective shift has taken place. This is traditionally done at some sort of break, be it a new chapter or a seperate scene within a chapter or short story.
I can only think of a few examples of books that shifted perspective between one paragraph and the next, and those stick out in my mind because of how clumsy it seemed. One of them was an especially bad example of perspective shifting. The entire book was from a third-person perspective with the heroine as the POV character…except for one paragraph during a dinner party where the POV shifted to someone else. I have no idea why the author did this. You do not want that to be the thing your reader remembers best years later.
I’ve been thinking about this lately because I’m working on a short story where the perspective shifts back and forth between two people. Since I’m doing it like that, I’m putting more effort into keeping the POV consistent within each segment of the story. It works best when there is a clean, obvious break.
Part of it is that characters can be more interesting when you’re not inside their heads, and you don’t know everything about them. Keeping the perspective with one character lets other characters be a little bit mysterious.
Thanks a lot for all of your replies, guys! Once I get around to editing this thing, I’ll go and try some of your suggestions. I was thinking about using more scene breaks in places. And I guess I never really thought about it being confusing. Guess I’ll have to get my sister to give me her opinion. She’s my one and only fan .
William Trevor does POV shifts in many of his stories, but they work because they’re not big “shifts” so much as gentle dips into this or that character’s consciousness. I think beginning writers are discouraged from relying on this because it can be a crutch, as Lamia says, for a writer who doesn’t really know what point of view she wants to write from. But it definitely can be done, and done very well.
If you do it throughout, you’re using the omniscient POV, which, though hard to do well, is not an issue.
Many beginning writers have a problem holding POV. It’s not that they’re switching POV; it’s that they don’t understand POV and switch from character to character randomly. So you’ll have a few paragraphs of one POV, a paragraph of another, a switch back to the first, two paragraphs of a third, etc.
One additional problem with a POV switch is that once you switch, the other character can have no secrets. If, for instance, you switch to the character who will be the murderer unveiled in the final chapter, he should logically be thinking “I’m the killer.” A good writer (e.g., Agatha Chrystie) can manage to finesse this past the reader, but it is not suggested for the beginner.
I’ve been writing science fiction professionally for over 20 years, and I can think of only one time when I needed to switch POV within a scene.
I agree with everyone about PoV shifts but have to say I diagreed with this. “Said” is one of those ‘non’ words that hardly registers with the reader. If, on the other hand, you try to avoid it you end up having your characters “exclaim”, “announce”, “shout” or any other similar expression. This is much more jarring to the reader. Have a look at a good author’s dialogue - they will use said every 2nd line and the reader will not even realise.
…there is a fantastic paragraph in Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs where the perspective shift’s from Buffelo Bill’s POV to Clarice’s POV almost flawlessly…I’ll try and dig it out, but it goes from Bill stalking Clarice in the dark, to Clarice listening to the “rasp” of Bill trying to breathe through his punctured lung-amazing writing. Its just a pity that Harris didn’t write a sequal to the book…
I read somewhere that Elmore Leonard makes a point of using only the word “said” in dialogue, and with no goddamn adverbs, thank you. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you don’t need them; the reader can get everything he needs from the context of the speech and the scene.
Agreed, but I don’t think that was what GuanoLad way implying. I read it as, “try and write dialogue without using any dialogue tags.” Frex:
“Take a look at this.” Antonio tossed the box across the table.
Bertie reached out and caught the box one-handed. He turned it over, examining all sides. Black. Featureless. “All right, I give up. What is it?”
“Guess.”
“Don’t be coy. Tell me.”
“It’s a transfibriographolomodulator.”
“Ah!” Bertie jerked backward and dropped the box on the table; it bounced onto the floor with a crash. “Those are radioactive, you ass!”
Antonio smirked. “Not if they’re unused.”
“Unused?” Bertie leaned forward. Had he heard right? “You need an X clearance to access an unused transfibriographolomodulator.”
“Usually. Not for this one. And not if you’re me.”
My perspective may be different on this because I do more screenwriting than writing straight prose. But, IMHO, this style is weaker simply because it it’s too “narration-ey”. Sticking to a first-person POV or a limited third-person POV forces the writer to “show” instead of “tell.” As a reader, I find it more interesting to see everything in my head from one point of view and pick up other characters’ emotions and reactions through their action and dialogue instead of the author just coming out and telling me how everyone feels and what they’re thinking.
Changing POV at the beginning of a chapter or section instead of the middle of the prose allows the author to keep it as a limited POV and “show instead of tell,” makes it easier for the reader to keep in mind whose thoughts he/she is privy to at the moment, and lets the reader pick up some of the subtext on his/her own instead of being fed everything by the narrator/author.
This, like all other rules, is made to be broken beautifully by a brilliant author. Those of us who haven’t reached that level yet would do well to at least take it under consideration
Again, this comes from my background of needing to show rather than tell, so YMMV.
I think limited POV shifts can be done without being confusing, but I don’t like them because if your reader is in everyone’s head, they are in no one’s. It is rather distancing. Sometimes it is necessary to show something your viewpoint character can’t know, or to build tension. Not that it is a killer - after spending some years in a critique group, I noticed when rereading LOTR that Tolkien does this all the time.
Personally I consider the lack of synonyms to be poor form. Certainly the word “said” can be repeated more often than other words describing communication. However, a novel exclusively using “said” could seem rather dull. Besides, “said” is not all encompassing and sometimes a different word simply makes more sense.
Such as? I’m OK with the occasional “asked” or “answered” in place of “said,” or even things like “whispered” or “shouted” in the appropriate context, but too much creativity in the tags, IMO, calls attention to itself and detracts from the power of the dialogue. Plus, of course, there’s the chance for an inadvertent Tom Swifty to creep in. “Great Scott,” Dick ejaculated. sounds terrible, and is far too close to “Great Scott.” Dick ejaculated. for comfort. An over-the-top example, yes, but you get the picture.
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