May be way of base here, but it occurred to me last night that "On Beauty" shifts POV an awful lot. In the party chapter alone, we get pretty close to being inside Zora's head, as well as Howard's and Jerome's...and somehow, it works.

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"off" base

It's a while since I read it, but 'Blindness' by Jose Saramago has pov shift within the same chapter, page, sentence, I think. He's in and out of everyone's head, I seem to remember, but that's the point. And it's great, imo.

I wonder if the point of view dogma is a result of the influence of film and TV? But actually TV drama shifts pov all the time - we see something from a character's point of view, then we witch back to see their reaction. But of course, we never get inside their heads. And the dominant pov is that of an observer who plays no part in the story - the viewer takes the place of the omniscient narrator and is shown things that the characters may not be privy to.

Sorry, hungover rambling.

I wonder if the point of view dogma is a result of the influence of film and TV?

Roger - you've inspired me to break my two-week WW fast...I have been wondering this too. I think an very individual authorial voice can be something in books that I particularly enjoy. Straight boring telling is one thing. But there can be this thing these days of sensations through the characters lots of "she felt" which can be flat. Thinking about many of my favourite books, many contain a slightly sardonic authorial voice which reminds me of the best thing about theatre - when a relationship is built between the performers and the audience which can add an extra layer and just be FUN, goddamn! This is the thing theatre can do which television and film can't and I think books should be able to do both.

I'm not here really. Bye.

just rushing back quickly to say - what a rambling and horribly typoed post that just was - sorry. Hope you got the gist.

Definitely got your gist, snowbell! The theatre vs film analogy is an interesting one. Actually in writing a novel we can be all of the other forms put together - we can have the intimacy of theatre and the scale of a Hollywood epic, without having to worry about the production budget. In fact, we can do what the hell we like! We're in charge! We are God! But maybe the point is to be in control of what you're doing, and to know - somehow, even if it's just instinctively - why you're doing it.

Now there's rambling for you!

At the risk of sounding pompous, I think it's the legacy of modernism. No one voice is privileged, there's no such thing as a omniscient view, speaking with authority about characters and their actions, but only a series of events and actions (think Henry Green, say, or Waugh in Vile Bodies). The only job of a narrator is to state what happened in thought and action - anything else is suspect.

That collides with the other idea of modernism, that the internal workings of human sensibility (think Woolf, Joyce) are the primary subject of fiction. To do this, you have to be inside a single PoV extensively in order to explore that sensibility.

The struggle to combine the intensely objective of the first with the intensely subjective of the second makes writers take refuge is silly prescriptions about sticking to single PoVs by rote. (Are you sure no-one's said how many pages of each you should have before you change? In which typeface?

Emma

Sorry to go back to (silly) asking questions on POV, but me being new, I still have a lot of those

I am currently struggling with POV's. My original plan was to write the whole novel in one POV, but going through all of your stuff, I'm fearing that it might be boring.
I do have different times in the live of my one POV though. Present qand two past times. Do thse count as different POV's as well?

Or should I try and write different chapters in two or three POV's? Does anyone ever write in a single POV anyway?
I have never thought about this before I read this topic, so this is yet another worry to add to my list.

Hi, VGW.

You know, my advice at this early stage would be just to write the book as it comes out, and worry about all the other stuff later.

Good luck!! It's a daunting business, isn't it?

Yep, never realized it was such hard work

VGw, I'd agree with Sappholit. Just write. Your first instincts, whatever they are, are the ones to go with for now. Not least because it's writing how you really want to write it that will mean you can keep going.

Everything is provisional, everything can be changed. You learn so much in doing it, and when you get to the end of the first draft, you'll be much better placed to tell what works and what doesn't about what you've written. Until then, don't get too hung up on the technical decisions we all agonise over. Lots of them make much better sense in retrospect anyway, when you look back over what you've done, than when you're in the vacuum of the empty page.

And welcome to WW, by the way!

Emma

Or should I try and write different chapters in two or three POV's?

The main problem with that, if you go for it and it's in the 1st person, is VOICE. Each character will have to sound sufficiently different, which means as a writer you can't just write, you have write in three different styles and bear that in mind when you edit each and every sentence. It's a bastard. At least for me it is.

Colin M
welcome aboard!

Yeh, VGw, all i would say is that it is generally felt a story written from multi viewpoints requires more skill. And many books are written from one POV.

I am a relative beginner and have just finished my 2nd book written from 1 POV, 3rd person, and this really enabled me to polish my POV skills. My first book was multiPOV and was all over the place, i didn't even think about POV.
I'm about to start my next book where i may venture into more than one pov, i don't know.

All i'm saying is, depending on what grade of beginner you are, in my experience writing from one POV is much easier, gives you fewer challenges with 'voice' and gives you more time to polish the other aspects of your writing.

Good luck

Casey

Can anyone think of a modern novelist who changes pov all over the place?

Not all over the place, but very quickly: Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother, which does alternate POVs by chapter but many of the chapters are very short. Most are 2 or 3 pages but some are 2 paras!

I do find it slightly confusing if in a scene where both the main characters present are viewpoint characters - I have to keep my wits about me to remember which viewpoint we're currently in. If not differentiated by chapter divisions I think it's got the potential to be even more confusing.

Out of curiosity, what makes you want to try varying viewpoints "all over the place"?

Deb

Out of curiosity, what makes you want to try varying viewpoints "all over the place"?

It's just a style of writing, called omniscient, where you take a God view and can jump from one person's mind to the next within the same scene. Notoriously difficult to pull off, but it's often how people write when they start out, before they learn anything about limiting POV.

it's often how people write when they start out, before they learn anything about limiting POV.

True, but it's also how just about everyone wrote until not that many years ago. If it's done well, the reader hardly notices. The trouble is, it's usually done badly, and limiting PoV is the quickest prescription for curing the problem.

Emma