Bless you FV. Just ordered the books!

I had a really good think about the way to go with mine. Hubby was very helpful too. He read me some Patrick O'Brian, who changes POV all the way through the chapter back and forth. I didn't find it off putting at all, but it was all in the skill of his writing.

I lack both skill and ability; therefore I need to stay with simple storytelling!

All the best!

SJxx

He read me some Patrick O'Brian, who changes POV all the way through the chapter back and forth.

Thanks for pointing that out, SJ - I'm always looking for good examples of doing this, because this weird orthodoxy that seems to have grown up, that you must limit PoV, makes my blood boil.

Which isn't to say that you shouldn't stick to a single PoV, for any number of reasons, including that you feel it's what you can handle. Just that there's no reason to deny yourself a moving PoV if that's what will serve your story best.

Emma

Hi Emma!

Do you know, part of me (that naughty voice in my head) tells me that I should write how I want to (giggle)! However, I appreciate that there is a "commercial" aspect to writing, and that if I really want to try my hand at being a more proficient writer that could, at some point, be published, I ought to abide by the rules. Then I argue with myself, that I will never be published and so, therefore, why change?

I must say though, that the tip about making sure the POV change doesn't jar is excellent and I think that's the part I need to work on. I'm just not clever enough to get away with a lot of these things! I failed at English, and I can't really string a sentence together, so I mustn't try and be cocky! However, why not push boundaries?!!

As I keep saying to my husband, all I'm trying to do is tell a story. But it does, of course, need to be able to come across well so that people will read it!

Great chatting about this. It's really helped me, and I'm certain funnyvalentine will agree that it's been really beneficial posting the question, so big thank you to them for allowing me to barge into the thread.


SJxx

I ought to abide by the rules.

What rules? Pick up a dozen newish books in a bookshop, and I guarantee a good few of them will have a moving PoV. I don't know where this apparent orthodoxy has come from, but it really is daft.

I have a theory that the reason people say 'don't head hop' is because it's the easiest way to get a book which is doing it badly, into something like a publishable state. But long term, it's no way to teach people to be better writers. What they should be saying is 'If you want to do it, do it, but learn to do it properly'.

Of course you should write what you want, because there's only kind of writing which you have a standing chance of getting good enough to be published : your writing. Seriously, it's madness to give up on something you want to do, which seems right for your writing and what you want to say, just because it seems too difficult. At least not until you've giving it a damned good try.

At the risk of pushing my own work, my story Russian Tea, which is in the archive, began as an exercise in moving PoV, and handles the transistions in just the way I was describing further up the thread. I think it works, anyway.

Emma

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'don't head hop'

I mean, 'head hop' as a catch-all term for a having a moving PoV, rather than the genuine crime of making a mess of moving PoV. If you get it right, they won't accuse you of head hopping, because they'll be too busy reading.

If you get it right, they won't accuse you of head hopping, because they'll be too busy reading.

Oh my ... this is exactly what I'd love, Emma. You are spot on.

SJxx

Emma,
I can't or won't disagree too strongly, but I think it is also fair to say there are fashions that are deemed progress.

By which, I mean that the idea of making this a rule probably arose out of valid criticism of the way that almost every writer will, at some point, write a ludicrously incomprehensible piece of head-hopping madness and it is no longer considered an authorial virtue to give the thoughts of _every_ major character. (Though I think you'll back me up that it once was.)

By contrast, the extra discipline to write an entire story from a single viewpoint makes it more likely that the story will work first time as it implies more initial preparation by the author.

Even then, I think we are still only arguing about the degree of pov changing as almost every writer (Dick Francis being a possible exception) will move character pov occasionally.

For myself, I have found the times I have deliberately wanted to "break" the rules have almost invariably been self edited once I get the story more clearly in my head.

It's like poetry; sometimes having a form to follow is beneficial to the result.

G



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Ps Writing scenes entirely from one pov is the best way I have found to get to know a character.

By contrast, the extra discipline to write an entire story from a single viewpoint makes it more likely that the story will work first time as it implies more initial preparation by the author.

Oooh, I don't agree that it's extra discipline. In some ways it's much easier to write a novel from a single PoV. Can make the plotting awkward, but a lot of the small decisions along the way are solved for you.

But I do agree that this soi-disant rule must have come about from exasperation at aspiring writers doing it badly. Gordon Bennett, if it's good enough for Woolf and O'Brien, surely it's good enough for the rest of us.

I also think in literary historical terms (and lit crit does ifluence creative-writing-teaching, more's the pity sometimes) it's come about from a deep, 20th century, modernist unease with the lofty kind of omniscient narrator which we accuse George Eliot of being, for example, or Dickens - what James Woods (as I recall) calls an essayist narrator.

But the baby got thrown out with the bathwater, in linking the technical, authorial omniscience of a narrator who can move between different points of view at will, with the godlike certainty and opinions of a 19th century novelist who sees no reason not to put over their own views about all sorts of things. Byatt calls the former a 'knowledgeable' narrator, which I rather like - no godlike overtones, just a persona who knows and sees more than any one character can.

Emma

out of interest - structure geek alert - do you think moving POV within a scene works better where the original POV is a moveable feast anyway as opposed to what I think of as deep POV.
So sometimes, particularly with my MC, even though the scene is from her POV I still include things that she wouldn't, for the reader's benefit. But some POV scenes I write in deep POV. No description, no internal mono, nada, is written in anything other than voice.
It occurs that if I were writing in the later it would be harder to pull off a POV slip because it would clunk louder.
Just musing, you understand.
HB x

No, I think you're absolutely right, Helen. - either you set up a moving PoV at the beginning, and use it as seems right, or you fundamentally stick to one. If it's third person, of course, there's nothing to stop you being further inside or further outside the head.

Gardner describes it thus:

1) It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
2) Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
3) Henry hated snowstorms.
4) God how he hated these damn snowstorms.
5) Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul…

Gardner’s point is not that one is better than the other, or that you have to stick to only one. It’s not only important to know (roughly) what the psychic distance is, but also to understand the possibilities of the different distances, so that you can exploit more than one to control the reader’s involvement with the character. When you do move between distances it's important to take the reader with you, so there are no abrupt jolts.

But there's no reason on earth you shouldn't move, say, from 5), towards 3) then transition in a 3)ish style: "Henry hated snowstorms but Eunice loved them." through 4): "She really loved them, oh, how she did!" to "Snow! All crunchy and sparkly under your feet", and there you are, safely inside Eunice's head, and the reader with you.

BTW, you will observe, of course, that 1) is hyper-tell, and 5) is hyper-show, with all degrees in between (which is why show/tell is also not an either-or).

Emma


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Doh, not enough coffee yet!

"If it's third person, of course, there's nothing to stop you being further inside or further outside the head, and if you're fairly far out, it can often include something in the scene which, technically, the PoV character can't see: you've just slipped outwards to a more neutral, omniscient narrator.

"Gardner describes psychic distance it thus:"

<Added>

I sometimes find the often-recommended system of only changing PoV at a chapter break MORE jolty and confusing, than a fluid, shifting PoV throughout. When you've been deep in a head you could argue that you need the writer to take you gently by the hand and lead you by stages through the pyschic range, not abandon you abruptly at the end of a chapter, and dump you deep in another head at the beginning of the next. With a fluid PoV, the reader, as it were, keeps holding the writer's hand, ready to go wherever they're taken. I know it's sometimes said that the risk is that the reader doesn't get so involved in any character, but if the writer's properly involved with them, (and, possibly, there aren't too many PoV characters) they only have to write them properly for it to be fine.

Personally I think switching pov shoudn't be attempted until one is into one's 3rd or 4th mss. There are so many pitfalls a writer can fall into if they don't have the discipline of keeping to one pov in their first mss.

until one is into one's 3rd or 4th mss

Naomi, we're all different - some of us like to crash and burn heavily (my first foray into fiction writing was a full and ambitious MSS) in order to learn quickly, others like to take baby steps and only proceed when they get everything right first (I am gobsmacked at the patience of some people who seem to have a planned progression of over a decade before they'll even contemplate anything as big as a novella).

The point is, to go in with the attitude that there are things to learn and that there are skills to master.

G

PS: Emma, thank-you for your example that has made psychic distance so abundantly clear to me that I think I will start playing with it a bit more deliberately.

Personally I think switching pov shoudn't be attempted until one is into one's 3rd or 4th mss. There are so many pitfalls a writer can fall into if they don't have the discipline of keeping to one pov in their first mss.

But I see writers falling into other pitfalls - plot problems, deep tedium - because they do stick to a single PoV.

I agree that it takes doing it, to learn to do anything in writing. And most of us have some technical things about writing which come easily, or even entirely naturally, and others which we have to learn slowly and consciously. But I would question that it takes a whole novel to learn many of these, and I strongly believe that if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly because, apart from the few things which do come naturally to you, you won't do it well till you've done it badly a few times. Shakespeare's early plays are not as good as his late ones...

Why not write a short story to try these things out? (With apologies to all deep-dyed short fictioneers who are sick of people treating their transcendant art form as a five-finger exercise for the Real Thing of a novel). And, as a bonus, you may find that letting go of the need for your short story to be perfect - because it's only an exercise, after all - means you end up with a really good one.

Emma

if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly

Thank-you.

Gaius, you're welcome. For the avoidance of doubt (though I know you know what I mean) I should say that's not 'badly' as in carelessly, it's 'badly' as in can't do it well yet...

Emma

For the avoidance of doubt, yes, got that.

Just glad, finally, to have an unwritten life's motto verbalised by somebody else... coincidentally providing justification for valuing real-world practical experience at least as highly as the dry theory that explains it.

But, for the avoidance of doubt, this does not undermine or devalue the fact that the dry theory is either studied or available - I love the satisfaction of working something out the hard way and then being told a theory that explains and then builds on the reasons why.

G