Lesson Four - Point of View

I chose this topic since I’m now writing concurrently in two points of view--first person for my cozy mysteries, and third person for my Silhouette Nocturnes.

Let me step back and explain point of view, just in case you don’t know or need a refresher. (And that sentence somewhat involves second person, BTW!)

What is Point of View

Point of view (POV) refers to the perspective from which a particular story is being told.

There are generally three main types of POV:

- First person, where the story is told in the narrator’s POV - “I” and “me.”

- Second person, which is told with reference to “you” - “You went to the door and opened it, and then you looked outside.”

- Third person, in which the story is told by the characters being referred to as “he” or “she.” The best third person stories (in my opinion) are generally those where the reader still gets inside the POV character’s thoughts, although there are also “omniscient” or “authorial” subcategories of POV where the reader simply watches a scene as it’s told by the author.

And of course there are combinations of the above, especially in today’s stories where so many of the old rules have often been tossed out. It used to be a no-no to change types of POV in the same book, but not any more. You can do a chapter in first person, then switch to third in the next, then back again.

How Do You Choose Point of View?

Sometimes, depending on the genre in which you’re writing, you don’t have a choice. It’s a standard, and if you’re not comfortable with it, try writing something else.

For example, I write dark and sexy paranormal romances for Silhouette Nocturne. Because they are romances, I need to get into the heads of both the hero and heroine and let the readers know what each is thinking--the attraction, their conflict, how they both deal with the issues in the book. That only works well in third person.

I also write cozy mysteries. My Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mysteries are in Kendra’s POV, and they’re written in first person. She pretty much told me, when I started the series, that she preferred it that way. Mysteries, though--whether cozy or not--can be either first or third person, whichever seems to work best for your story.

And that’s the key in most genres: whichever seems to work best for your story.

I’ve started writing a thriller, and they work best in third person, as do most suspense stories. Getting into the bad guys’ heads along with the protagonists’, and other characters’, is a great way of ramping up the suspense.

Right now, I’m working on my first story in the spin-off from my Kendra books, another cozy mystery series about Lauren Vancouver, pet rescuer. She’s introduced in HOWL DEADLY, the Kendra book that’s about to be published, in December of this year. She has a legal issue that Kendra helps to resolve. We meet her through Kendra’s POV, since Kendra books are always in first person. And when I started getting to know Lauren better while I began writing her first book, she, too, insisted that her stories be told in first person! She’s a very different character from Kendra, though. It’s been interesting writing about what “I” did, but in an entirely different voice.


How Do You Use Point of View?

Again, it’s whatever works best for you and your story.

It’s pretty simple when you’re in first person. You’re always in your protagonist’s head, and therefore constantly describe what “I’m” doing.

Third person can be a little more complicated, especially when you have more than one POV character. The main thing, if there are two or more POV characters, is to be clear about whose head you’re in. That’s not to say you can’t switch POVs within one scene, but you don’t want the reader to think you’re in the heroine’s thoughts and then all of a sudden realize they’re the hero’s --likewise, the protagonist’s versus the villain’s. You can handle that the easy way by saying something like “she thought” but that gets old after a while. Instead, you can you’re your writing more interesting by starting a paragraph by, for example, describing something the character is doing to establish whose view you’re in.

But if you do this--watch out for the dreaded head-hopping! Switching each paragraph in a scene to another character’s POV, or even doing it within the same paragraph, can get confusing to readers and could even lead them to tossing your book across the room... assuming your editor even lets it stand.

What works best for me is to change scenes, or even chapters, when I’m moving from one person’s third person POV to another. It’s clear that way, and I don’t have to worry about including a lot of signals about whose thoughts I’m in--just at the beginning of the scene.


Your POV

So... what are your thoughts on POV? I’ve given you mine. And the readers of this blog posting will also be interested...