Quick Tips for Avoiding Viewpoint Gaffes in Your Fiction

by Jodie Renner, editor & author   

For an introduction to point of view in fiction and especially deep point of view or close third-person POV, see my articles 

POV 101 -- Get Into Your Protagonist's Head, 

POV 102 -- How to Avoid Head-Hopping, and 

POV 103 -- Engage Your Readers with Deep Point of View. 

POV = point of view = viewpoint – Who’s telling the story?  Whose story is it? or, for novels written in multiple viewpoints, Whose head and body are we in for that scene?

Here are some quick additional tips for avoiding POV gaffes in your fiction:

~ First, decide whose scene it is. Who has the most at stake? If in doubt, show the from the viewpoint of your protagonist. And, to engage readers, it's best to start your novel/story in the point of view of your main character.

~ Now, get into that character’s head and body and stay there for the whole scene or chapter. Don’t flit around to the thoughts of other characters or show anything that’s going on outside of your POV character’s range or perceptions.

~ Don’t show or describe things going on behind the character’s back, in another room, or anywhere out of their sight or hearing range. Only show us what the character can logically perceive at that time.

~ To describe the setting, use the perceptions, words, goal, attitude, and mood of the POV character for that scene. Don’t describe a scene as a neutral observer or as the author talking to the readers.

~ Color your descriptions of other characters with the attitude and feelings of your POV character toward them. Avoid neutral descriptions.

~ Don’t describe other characters in a way that the POV character wouldn’t. For example, don’t give a detailed description from head to toe of a character the POV character is looking at and already knows very well, like a family member.

~ Don’t get into the inner thoughts or feelings of any other characters in that scene. Show their thoughts, emotions, attitudes and intentions by their facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, words, and actions – anything the POV character can perceive.

~ When starting a new scene or chapter, use the name of the viewpoint character right away, in the first sentence, to establish immediately for the reader whose head we’re in now.

~ After introducing the POV character, refer to him or her in an informal way, as they would think of themselves. Don't use "Mr." or "Dr." or "The director," for example.

~ Use the POV character’s name at the beginning of scenes, then use mainly “he” or “she” except when their name is needed for clarity. (The “he” or “she” is like “I” and draws us in closer.)

~ Refer to other characters by the name the POV character normally uses for them.

~ Avoid lengthy "info dumps." Don’t butt in as the author to explain things to the readers, outside of the character’s viewpoint. Instead, reveal the info from the character’s POV or as a question-and-answer dialogue, with some attitude and tension to spice things up.

~ Don’t show the POV character’s facial expression or body language (unless they’re looking in a mirror). They don’t know what’s going on with their face. Or indicate it somehow through their thoughts or fears. For example, you could say “She felt her face flush” to indicate that she’s blushing.

~ Show the POV character’s inner thoughts, emotions, and reactions constantly to increase reader engagement.  

~ Sprinkle in brief direct thought-reactions in italics, like What? to reveal the character’s true feelings and increase intimacy with the readers.

~ Constantly show the POV character’s sensory reactions to their environment, other characters, and what’s happening. Use as many of the five senses as is appropriate to get us into the skin of the character. Also show fatigue, fear, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, etc. That way, readers are drawn in and feel they "are" the character.

~ Keep the narration in the POV character’s voice. Not only should the dialogue be in the character’s voice and style, but the narration should too, as that’s really the character’s thoughts and observations.

~ Avoid lengthy backstory dumps, the author telling the readers about the character and their background. Introduce only the essential info, through the characters. Or use brief flashbacks, in scenes in real time, with action and dialogue.

~ Don’t have characters magically knowing the names of other characters they’ve never met or heard of, just because we, as the readers, have met those other characters. This is an easy gaffe to make inadvertently.

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For more tips on using deep point of view to engage your readers and bring your characters and story to life, see Jodie’s writers’ guides in the series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction, including her latest, CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, and CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICK CLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie on her Amazon Author Page, at www.JodieRenner.com, and on Facebook. 

POV 102 -- How to Avoid Head-Hopping

by Jodie Renner, editor & author    

In "POV 101 – Get into your protagonist’s head and stay there," I discussed the effectiveness of starting out your story in your protagonist’s point of view and staying there for most of the novel.

But what if you want to show how other people are feeling? If they’re important characters, like the villain, a romantic interest, or a close friend or family member, you can and should give them their own POV scenes, where you get into their heads and we see their thoughts, emotions, goals, aspirations and fears. This way we, the readers, find out things the main character doesn't know. Great for adding suspense and intrigue!

If another character is in the same scene as your main character, you show their thoughts, feelings and attitude only through what your protagonist can perceive—their attitude, words, tone of voice, facial expressions, body language and actions. 

Say you’re writing a romantic suspense or mystery, and you’re in the heroine’s point of view, showing her thoughts, perceptions and reactions. The hero, whom she’s just met under unfortunate circumstances, is angry. You’ll show his thoughts and reactions, not from inside him at that point (What the hell is going on here? he thought. What’s she trying to pull off, anyway?), but by what the heroine is seeing and hearing—his tense posture, hunched shoulders, clenched fists, furrowed brows, set mouth, clipped tone of voice, angry words, etc.

The general rule of thumb is “one scene, one viewpoint.” 

Or even better, wait for a new chapter to change the point of view to someone else’s. If you change the viewpoint within a scene, it’s best to do it only once, and leave a blank space before you start the next person’s point of view. Don't go back and forth within a paragraph or go into another character's thoughts for only a sentence or two. At the minimum, give the other person a paragraph or two. Ping-ponging back and forth can be jarring and confusing to the reader. This is what’s referred to as “head-hopping.” Some writers go so far as to leave three asterisks (* * *) and spaces above and below to indicate a switch in viewpoint within a scene, but I think that’s too jarring and disruptive to the flow of action, since we’re still in the same scene. Three asterisks, centered, are best reserved to indicate a shift in place and time -- in other words, a new scene.

So why is it so important to avoid switching viewpoints (head-hopping) within scenes?

First of all, in order to become emotionally engaged in a story, readers want to identify with and bond with one main character -- your protagonist or hero/heroine. 

They want to follow that character vicariously, know their thoughts and hopes and fears, almost be that character for most of the novel. So it's natural to be privy to that character's thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. But if the author suddenly jolts them out of that character and into the thoughts of another character, it feels unnatural and reminds us that we're reading a book. It's like the author is too heavy-handed, too intrusive. It can be subliminally confusing and annoying. Do that often enough and readers might put the book down and find another or write a less-than-satisfactory review. 

Scene changes or new chapters are the best and least disruptive places to go into another character's viewpoint. And most scenes should be in the POV of your protagonist.

Here’s an example of a viewpoint gaffe, which I made up:

Our heroine, Carole, is stirring the spaghetti sauce on the stove and talking to her husband on the phone. They’re discussing the fact that their son, Colton, is grounded. Suddenly, the author jumps into her son’s head and tells us about Colton sneaking by behind her back (his rap music is playing loudly in his room), and out the front door, then jumping on his bike and racing off. Back to Carole, who continues to stir the spaghetti and talk on the phone.

What’s wrong here? We were in Carole’s POV, and she had her back turned so she wouldn’t know Colton was sneaking past, especially with all that noise coming from his room. And how would she know he’s riding away on his bike? Another jarring POV shift in the same scene would be if we suddenly started seeing her husband waving his secretary away because he’s in an important conversation. We’re in Carole’s POV in this scene, and she can’t see what her husband is doing at his office.

Here’s another example of ping-ponging point of view, where we the readers jump back and forth over miles, within seconds.

We start out in Steve’s point of view, who’s in trouble and has just picked up the phone and called his wife, Grace:

“Grace, thank god you’re home. This is all too much for me. My life is crumbling around me and I can’t seem to do anything about it,” Steve said, closing his eyes and rubbing his face.

The sadness and despair in his voice brought tears to Grace’s eyes.

“I have to think.” There was long pause before Steve continued. “Luckily, George is right here. I’ll ask if he knows a good attorney who can help with this.”   

“That sounds good.” She felt some relief.   

“I’ll call you later,” Steve said, then hung up and slumped back in his chair.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said softly. The call ended before she could say I love you.

What’s wrong with how this scene is written? It's disjointed and confusing. Also unnatural. In reality, we would be one of those people and would have to infer how the other one is feeling or what they're doing by what they say, their inflection, background noises, etc.

Choose either Steve or Grace and play the scene from his or her POV. Show us only what he or she can see, hear, and perceive.

A quick way to check whose POV you’re in is to get out the highlighters or colored pens and choose a different color for each of your main characters. Pick your protagonist’s color, then start highlighting or underlining sentences that describe scenes, people, perceptions, and emotions strictly from his or her POV. Do the same for other characters, with their color. When you’re done, you should have paragraphs, and preferably scenes, of only one color. If you have another color creeping into that scene, see if you can rewrite those sentences from the dominating character’s POV. If you have a number of colors within one scene, you’ve got some revisions to do. And as Stephen King says, “Writing is rewriting.”

By the way, my third book, Captivate Your Readers, gets into a lot of detail on engaging your readers and bringing your story and characters to life by using deep point of view, showing instead of telling, and stepping back as the author to let the characters tell the story in their own voice.

Also, see "POV 103 – Engage Your Readers with Deep Point of View."

 

And click here for some quick tips on avoiding viewpoint gaffes. 

Click HERE for options to receive email alerts of new posts published on this blog.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, and CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICK CLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie on her Amazon Author Page, at www.JodieRenner.com, and on Facebook.