The POV Conundrum

[neonlyte]

As a self-taught writer, POV plagues me. I understand the rules, yet find it difficult to stick with them. If I return to edit something, it's always POV that troubles me. I've re-written chapters time and again switching POV because 'it doesn't sound right'.

It's the Third Person Omniscient - All Characters Inside and Outside that bugs me when it really ought be the simplest. It's the way I prefer to tell a story generally because I have strong balanced protags rather than a single protag. Inevitably, an individual chapter gets drawn Third Person Limited Omniscient, which makes the subsequent 'sound wrong' when it switches back to TPO.

Does anyone else feel this problem, or am worrying too much about 'the rules'.

 

[Liar]

As a self-taught writer, POV plagues me. I understand the rules, yet find it difficult to stick with them. If I return to edit something, it's always POV that troubles me. I've re-written chapters time and again switching POV because 'it doesn't sound right'.

It's the Third Person Omniscient - All Characters Inside and Outside that bugs me when it really ought be the simplest. It's the way I prefer to tell a story generally because I have strong balanced protags rather than a single protag. Inevitably, an individual chapter gets drawn Third Person Limited Omniscient, which makes the subsequent 'sound wrong' when it switches back to TPO.

Does anyone else feel this problem, or am worrying too much about 'the rules'.

I have a hard time with TPO. Because of the the O. It implies that I, the author must know everything. And when I know everything and leave stuff out, I have to make up plausible excuses for why I do it. Everything has to be a neatly ticking machinery.

This is why I like First Person Limited. Because it makes it easier for me to limit the scope of what the reader knows at any given point. And it gives me the opportunity to use confusion and contradiction as narrative tools.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Does anyone else feel this problem, or am worrying too much about 'the rules'.

It used to drive my ex crazy when I would deliberately create a grammatically incorrect sentence knowing it was "wrong" but also knowing that it reflected actual usage and would be more easily understood because it's "wrong."

That's my attitude toward rules - I more or less know what they are, pretty much recognize where they matter and where they don't (or get in the way) for purposes of clear communications, and charge forward doing what seems the most lively and best way to convey what I'm trying to communicate. This applies to fiction and also the other types of writing I do.

POV is an area where it kinda does matter to do it right - most of the time, except when it doesn't. It irritates me a lot when a less-skilled writer gets sloppy and lazily shifts POV for no good reason - it's right up there with things that make a piece feel really amateurish. I'm pretty sure I've shifted POV at times, but it's deliberate and I "signal" the reader in some way that this is so. It's done to add some pop or sizzle to a particular passage.

 

[3113]

Inevitably, an individual chapter gets drawn Third Person Limited Omniscient, which makes the subsequent 'sound wrong' when it switches back to TPO.

Take a read of War and Peace, one of the best TPO books out there. Tolstoy certainly has chapters that are almost entirely in one person's pov, and others where it switches between several.

In other words, it's been done that way and done successfully. So the question is, are you really doing it in a way that "sounds wrong" or do you just think it sounds wrong?

If it's really bothersome, I'd recommend you stick to one character's pov *per chapter* rather than trying to have chapters with a lot of pov's. So it's third person limited, but that third person can be any potag per chapter. That way you get to have your cake and eat it, too.

Third Person Limited doesn't mean you only get to have it from one character's pov. Just that the chapter is one person's pov.

 

[neonlyte]

Take a read of War and Peace, one of the best TPO books out there. Tolstoy certainly has chapters that are almost entirely in one person's pov, and others where it switches between several.

In other words, it's been done that way and done successfully. So the question is, are you really doing it in a way that "sounds wrong" or do you just think it sounds wrong?

If it's really bothersome, I'd recommend you stick to one character's pov *per chapter* rather than trying to have chapters with a lot of pov's. So it's third person limited, but that third person can be any potag per chapter. That way you get to have your cake and eat it, too.

Third Person Limited doesn't mean you only get to have it from one character's pov. Just that the chapter is one person's pov.

Thanks, 3113. It's pretty much the style I've been adopting... I suspect I'm thinking it 'sounds wrong' more than actually messing up the POV. I suppose it's a roundabout way of asking... Can I Do This? and the answer appears to be yes, as long as one's not trying to be cute. The protag POV's are limited to two around whom the tale flows, I'm probably worrying too much.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Thanks, 3113. It's pretty much the style I've been adopting... I suspect I'm thinking it 'sounds wrong' more than actually messing up the POV. I suppose it's a roundabout way of asking... Can I Do This? and the answer appears to be yes, as long as one's not trying to be cute. The protag POV's are limited to two around whom the tale flows, I'm probably worrying too much.

I think you're worrying too much

I'm reading a friend's fiction right now, and she tends to write third limited-- except when her focus character's physical description pushes her buttons, and then his "thick curly hair" (as seen from outside) will be in evidence. (for truly limited POV, the character should feel fingers running through his hair, not the texture of his hair)