Writing Tips Pt. 11 - Points Of View

Writing Tips Pt. 11 - Points of View

So tense involves whether a story is narrated in the past, present, or future relative to events. But what about the POV, or point of view? I've seen a lot of confusion about this, especially among novice writers, so I'll try to clarify what they are.

Imagine you're standing in a crowded space, having a conversation with your reader. You're telling them a story, making you the narrator.

If you are the main character of the story, that is First Person POV. You will use "I/me" pronouns.

If your reader is the main character, that is Second Person POV. You will use "you" pronouns.

If one of the other people around you is the main character (not you and not your reader), that is Third Person POV. You will use "he/she/it/they" pronouns.

So the POV is relative to who the main character is.

Obviously, not every first person POV is going to be literally about you. But they will be told as if you, the narrator, are the one experiencing events. The main thing to remember with such stories is that your viewpoint character needs to be interesting or likeable enough to keep the reader's attention. No one is going to want to read an entire story with a flat, boring, or extremely unlikable viewpoint character. It's also easy to get enmired in the character's thoughts a little too much and forget to tell the story.

Of the three POVs, second person is probably the trickiest to write well, and is not normally encountered in fiction, but it isn't completely unheard of. Classic Choose Your Own Adventure books are written in second person to facilitate the conceit that the reader is the one experiencing the story, the main character. The Monster at the End of This Book, The Book With No Pictures, and other similar books for children that have interactive elements also work well, with the narrator or narrating character talking to the reader throughout the story. Self-help books and other articles will frequently use second person POV as well, as does fanfiction that puts the reader in the main character's shoes in order to ship them with a character.

Now, you may have heard of limited and omniscient POVs, specifically for third person. I've heard different ideas of what each of these mean, or how to use them, with a lot of misconceptions, so let's try to clear that up.

Third person limited POV is limited to one character's thoughts and feelings at a time. Think of it as riding in that person's head. You can hear their thoughts, know their feelings, but you don't know what's going on inside any other character's head. You learn what the main character learns, but if someone else is keeping secrets from them, you won't know those secrets. Limited POV is good for drama because it's easier to keep the reader from knowing things they shouldn't. This POV still allows you to use a character's "voice" in the narration, as with first person POV, just with third person pronouns.

Emily scrubbed the dishes with increasing vigor, glaring daggers at John over in the dining room the whole time. It's like he doesn't even care that I'm angry, she thought, dropping another handful of forks into the drain tray with a rattle. Staying out all night, not a word about where he's been or what he's been up to. And who needs that many shipping boxes anyway? Her thoughts spiraled away from her.

With this POV, you can stick with one viewpoint character for an entire work, or you can change as often as needed for the purposes of your story, but it's best to keep such changes at scene and chapter breaks to avoid confusing your readers.

Third person omniscient POV is aware of all characters' thoughts and feelings as needed. Omniscient means "all-knowing." The narrator of this story might tell us what a few characters are feeling, or inform us of a bit of backstory for a newly-introduced character without necessarily riding inside that character's head. Many older works of fiction were written in this style. This is arguably the simplest POV to write, and yet also the easiest to mismanage.

Many authors make the mistake of trying to write third person omniscient by constantly changing which character's head we're in. This is called head-hopping, and can cause literary whiplash for your readers as you keep bouncing around from one character to the next. One way to avoid this pitfall is to avoid getting so deeply into any character's head that you're writing out their actual thoughts. Create more distance between the narrator and the characters.

Emily scrubbed the dishes with increasing vigor, glaring daggers at John over in the dining room the whole time. Her thoughts jumbled about as she mused over where he might have been the night before, where he might have been every night for the past three weeks, and what all those shipping boxes that arrived every day might contain, unaware that John had been meticulously planning a surprise party for her—one that was about to go horribly awry, all thanks to assumptions and lack of communication.

In this example, you can see where I distanced myself from Emily's direct thoughts, so that it wouldn't be as jarring when I also shared John's side of things, along with a little narrative foreknowledge that neither of our characters could conceivably know at this point in time. I am by no means an expert in third person omniscient—I prefer limited for my writing—so I highly recommend checking out guides online for better examples on how to do it right.

One last thing: as with tense, it's important to be consistent, but that doesn't mean you absolutely must stick to one POV for your entire story. Perhaps you want to switch characters periodically, but you want one character's chapters to be in first person POV. Perhaps you want to include letters written between two characters as interlude chapters and thus need to switch to second person. Perhaps one person is literally a deity and thus has a more omniscient viewpoint in their scenes. This is fine, but be consistent within the guidelines you have set for your story. If Emily's scenes are written third person limited, don't switch to first person for one scene.

Writing Tips Pt. 10 - Tense

I wasn't aware until this past year that sometimes people confuse point of view and tense when writing stories. I ran across a fanfiction where the author mentioned experimenting in "second-person POV" for the first time...and proceeded to write an entire story that was third-person present tense. Someone brought it up in the comments, and it turns out that the author was under the impression that what we know as present tense was "second-person POV."

So that has inspired this post and the next (which will be about POV).

There are three main tenses you can use when writing, each with subcategories. I'll cover the main tenses in this post, for simplicity's sake, but I won't go into detail about the subcategories. There are plenty of articles that explain those finer distinctions in greater detail than I can manage here.

The three main tenses you can use are past, present, and future.

Past tense is arguably the most common tense you will find in published fiction. While everything in the story is told as though it has already happened, most if not all readers are so used to this tense that they will still feel a sense of immediacy when reading a story written in past tense.

John ran to the door and yanked it open to reveal his sister, bedraggled but alive, soaked and shivering on his front step. The storm raged overhead as he pulled her inside to warm up, even as she protested that she was fine. That didn't matter. Only her safety mattered.

Subcategories will be based off of more specific structure of the tense, such as "had gone" or "would go" or "would have gone," but they can come across as more clunky and stilted, even flat and passive, compared to simple past tense.

Present tense is less common, but still accepted as a valid tense for published fiction. This tense has the added benefit of built-in immediacy for the reader, since the story is happening in what amounts to "real time." The events of the story haven't already happened, they're currently happening.

John runs to the door and yanks it open to reveal his sister, bedraggled but alive, soaked and shivering on his front step. The storm rages overhead as he pulls her inside to warm up, even as she protests that she's fine. That doesn't matter. Only her safety matters.

I find this one a bit more difficult to write consistently and well, but I've read plenty of stories that put it to good use. This is also the tense that most book blurbs (the summary on the back cover or inside dust jacket of a published book) are written in. This has similar subcategories as past tense.

Future tense is rarely used in fiction, as it is extremely difficult to do well. More power to you if you want to give it a try, but be aware that most editors will probably ask you to change it if it's not handled well at all. This tense gives a sense of events that have yet to happen, which is part of the reason it is rarely used.

John will run to the door and yank it open to reveal his sister, bedraggled but alive, soaked and shivering on his front step. The storm will rage overhead as he pulls her inside to warm up, even as she will protest that she's fine. That won't matter. Only her safety will matter.

One of the only stories I've heard of that did this well (read by my husband, not myself, so I only got this second-hand) was a story telling the main character what he was destined to do, because that's what he'd done on every previous time loop, and ended with encouraging the main character to go and live their own life instead of the one their previous iterations had lived. It was also phrased as dialogue from the narrator to said main character to help facilitate the tense. The only other instances I can think of off the top of my head that work in future tense are children's books. ("Jeremy will turn five tomorrow. Everyone will be at his party. Jeremy will have a good birthday.")

My recommendation is to avoid writing your story in future tense unless you feel it's absolutely necessary to capture the essence of what your story is about.

Regardless of which tense you choose, though, make sure to be consistent. Don't switch tense mid-story, and especially not mid-section. The sudden shift from one tense to another can be very jarring to a reader, and that's something we as writers don't want. If you're combining sections you've previously written (especially as short fiction exercises and "drabbles"), make sure to double-check the tense of each section you add to the story to make sure they match. I've seen stories that took segments previously written separately and combined them together, but some segments were written in present tense while others were in past tense, and the author failed to edit for consistency, leaving very disruptive tense-changes intact.

There are, of course, some instances where tense changes can work to your benefit. An out-of-body experience or dream sequence, for instance, may be done in present tense even though the rest of the story is in past tense. If you switch POV to a character who experiences time differently, you could also justify a tense change.

The short of it, though, is this: choose one tense for your story and be consistent about it.

Anagram Poetry - Hero of Ferelden

Someone on Reddit ran "The Hero of Ferelden" through an anagram solver and posted a bunch of the results. A lot of it sounded very poetic, so here's me cherry-picking the lines I liked best and turning them into actual poetry. Enjoy!

The Hero of Ferelden

Throne-offered heel Often freeholder, he. The red elf free. Oh no. There, hold off Renee.

He often fed her lore, Left horned foe here, Then offered her Leo. No elf fed her the roe.

Oh, let her offer Eden 'Fore hero-end he felt, Note led her off here.

Hereon the elder off, Done here, for he left.

How do you deal with hecklers? Do you ignore them, do you take their advice?

Brandon Sanderson: So, it depends. Hecklers, I ignore. Criticism, I don't. I am lucky in that I have a team, and I, these days, have my team watch. Like, "You read the one-star reviews. Tell me if there are things popping up that I need to pay attention to," and things like that. Reading one-star reviews is generally a bad experience, but reading three-star reviews is usually a really handy experience for you to do. That's what you're looking for, those three-stars, the people that could have loved the book-- and if you give it three stars, you liked it, but there were things that bugged you.

And if you start seeing themes like that pop up, try to address them.

But also understand that art is about taste. Every type of art. And you are going to write things that are the right piece of art, but that somebody doesn't like. Just like some people don't like my favorite food. Some people hate it. I like mac and cheese, other people hate it. I have a friend who hates ice cream. I'm like, "What? Who hates ice cream?" But he hates ice cream. It's okay.

So, learn to separate taste from things that are actually skill level problems. And as you're a new writer, in particular, focusing on craft, just practicing, is more important than the feedback, often, on your first few books. 'Cause you'll know. You'll figure it out. Your first couple books, you'll be like, "They don't have to tell me; I know what parts are not working." But you can't get better at that until you write them.

And then you do finally track it down when you realize you had one of the characters wrong.

The true AO3 experience is trying to remember a very specific fic you read some time between 2013 and 2019 but you can only remember two of the characters, a vague idea of the plot outside of one specific scene, and you have no clue what the tags could have been.