POV - what's the point?

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Discussions like this always make me reach for my copy of The Waves by Virginia Woolf.

 

[Ursa major]

But there is also the issue of immersiveness. If you have a chapter containing several short scenes, each with its own, clearly indicated POV, then there might be no head-hopping and no confusion, but the reader is less likely to get immersed as they're having to swap "host" so often. (But this has its place as it can be very good for ramping up tension.)

With regard to that balance of immersion and tension, I note that in The First Law trilogy, the author sticks to single-POV chapters until near the end, where scenes within the chapters are allocated to multiple POV characters.

Immersion is definitely easier where the drama's focus is upon a single character and that character is ignorant about what is happening to/around them, so that the reader learns as they do, which should also help in avoiding ill-timed info dumps. The detective in a crime novel is one example of this. The honest young blacksmith** destined for great things is another (though one to be handled with care).

The problem I have, as a reader, with long stretches of single-POV narration is that when a POV change does occur, I sometimes feel I'm being wrenched from one world-view to another, simply because I have been immersed so deeply in the first POV. I prefer being introduced gradually to characters, so I have no problem with early chapters more than one POV (although even I find it jarring where the POV scenes are very short). Perhaps this is because I'm a big-picture person, someone who likes to see what I'm getting into. With the aforementioned detective, this isn't a problem because I know how the book is going to go; with genres where a book's overall structure and end point is less clear, I feelI need to know more up front.

As in all things, most of an author's choices can work, if the author knows what they're doing.



** - Or, in the case of the main character in the two Charles Stross novels I've just been reading, the feisty bio-tech journalist with a pre-med degree who may be destined for great things....

 

[ctg]

Double message. Epic fail.

 

[ctg]

As in all things, most of an author's choices can work, if the author knows what they're doing.

How does one know they are doing the right thing?

 

[HareBrain]

The problem I have, as a reader, with long stretches of single-POV narration is that when a POV change does occur, I sometimes feel I'm being wrenched from one world-view to another, simply because I have been immersed so deeply in the first POV. I prefer being introduced gradually to characters, so I have no problem with early chapters more than one POV (although even I find it jarring where the POV scenes are very short).

This is a risk I've taken with mine (though not consciously -- I didn't realise it was a risk at the time). After a prologue from one POV, I have six chapters from a second POV, and then another four from a third, before the changes become more frequent. I'm sure there's potential for a reader to be thrown, and perhaps annoyed, by the switch between ch6-7, but I think i would rather keep the immersive feel of the first 6 chapters, and take this risk, than have them change around more at the beginning. Time will tell if it works, of course ...

Perhaps this is because I'm a big-picture person, someone who likes to see what I'm getting into. With the aforementioned detective, this isn't a problem because I know how the book is going to go; with genres where a book's overall structure and end point is less clear, I feelI need to know more up front.

That's an interesting point. I can't work out if I'm the same, or if I like structural surprises. Stephen Donaldson's The Illearth War has two POVs, and the second only begins on page 157 in my copy. I don't remember minding that, the first time I read it, but in that case the second POV is a character we've already met and got to know.


Edit @ ctg: first-hand, I guess either when you read something you think doesn't work, but then realise you've done the same, or if a reader points out that it doesn't work. But you can also learn a lot second-hand by reading books about writing novels. they can often explain what doesn't work, and why. There are some very good ones about.

 

[ctg]

Edit @ ctg: first-hand, I guess either when you read something you think doesn't work, but then realise you've done the same, or if a reader points out that it doesn't work. But you can also learn a lot second-hand by reading books about writing novels. they can often explain what doesn't work, and why. There are some very good ones about.

HB, that's the point, but there also lies the danger. One reads a novel and believes that he or she could have done better. They go on and do their best to not repeat the problem, but the danger bit comes in as you really don't know if your improved prose goes down to the readers better than the old one. Maybe the old one was written perfectly and you just over did it. So at the end, how do you really know you have done right?

 

[Dozmonic]

You get an agent who can slap you and tell you to stop rewriting, it's time to move the story to the next step

 

[Boneman]

Can't find the agent who said one pov per chapter, but will keep looking. I'd say that was as bad as 26 pov per chapter, especially when they are within the same scene... And every other agent I've ever read on pov has never been that extreme. But it does show the disparity between industry professionals.

By Ursa:

As in all things, most of an author's choices can work, if the author knows what they're doing.

I guess that's why we're all here, and it sums it up pretty well. I'll continue trying to get my pov spot-on - if I look at my very first version (written in 2006) it is toe-curlingly embarrassing how bad my head-hopping was. But I'm still flummoxed as to how 'Across the Face of the World' ever got into print, with two major publishing houses.

And, like Cul, I've given up on the book. Anyone who'd like a free copy of it, pm me. I got as far as page 298 of 529 before I could stand no more - after the 3rd time of the 'company' being trapped in the mountains/snow and it looking hopeless, and (wonder of wonders) a stranger appears and saves them, the pov and adverbs just became nonsensical.

But on the bright side: if this book can get published, there's hope for us all. All we have to do is stick to the rules...

 

[Gary Compton]

Interesting thread!

I postulate the theory that we, on this forum, maybe know too much for our own good. Disecting and analysing every word, every scene and from what POV.

But I bet Jo Public doesnt have a clue what all these so called rules are, all they do is read the book if it reads well and they enjoy the story then great. I know I didnt before I started my writing career.

Alot of the suposed classics have head hopping, info dumps, telling etc etc. But people say, 'Ah yes, but that was before the modern writing.'

Then there's others who say, 'Dan Brown is a terrible writer, so's JK Rowling, Tom Clancy is prone to info dumping.'

I can hear John Jarrold saying about the book you discuss, 'There's no exact template for succes.'

It all does your head in, my theory is get the best story you can down on paper, the rest is opinion.

 

[goldhawk]

Alot of the suposed classics have head hopping, info dumps, telling etc etc. But people say, 'Ah yes, but that was before the modern writing.'

Then there's others who say, 'Dan Brown is a terrible writer, so's JK Rowling, Tom Clancy is prone to info dumping.'

But it's not if they did it, it's how they did. There are a few ways to do it correctly, and many ways to do it wrong. Use them as an example of how to do it correctly.

 

[Ursa major]

But I bet Jo Public doesnt have a clue what all these so called rules are, all they do is read the book if it reads well and they enjoy the story then great. I know I didnt before I started my writing career.

I recall Teresa saying that one function of the "rules" is to help you find out what is wrong with your writing when you already know it isn't right but you're not quite sure why.

(Apologies to Teresa if I've mangled what she actually said so much that I've misdelivered her point.)

 

[Gary Compton]

Dont get me wrong I adhere to the rules now.

My book has 3 first person POV's and any other, which there a few chapters, are third person.

It seems to work but time will tell!!

However, the more I know the less I understand

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I've said this before (and will probably say it again many times), the rules are there to tell you why something isn't working. If it is working, no one is going to go looking for reasons to hate it. "Oh, I love this book, but I just realized that it violates this rule, so after all I don't like it." If it works, it works.

But of course different things work for different readers. And if a a book has enough of whatever it is that a reader really, really likes, they will overlook a multitude of flaws. If an agent or an editor looks at a manuscript and sees that it has a lot of something that (in the agent or editor's estimation) a great many readers are almost certainly going to love, then that agent or editor will overlook a multitude of flaws. If readers aren't quite so entranced with a book -- perhaps it has fabulous ideas, but they aren't ideas that readers are accustomed to, so they don't know yet that they will like them -- then the readers have to be won over, and until they are won over, then they will notice the places where the book is weak. They may not be able to articulate what those weaknesses are, in the same way that we, as writers, articulate them. They may even misidentify them. But, as I said in a previous message, they will respond to them. And that's why we try to eliminate them.

And while being able to recognize those flaws (because we are accustomed to looking for them in our own work) may make it harder for each of us to enjoy books that we might otherwise have liked pretty well, they aren't going to matter in a book that has plenty of whatever it is that we, personally, absolutely adore. Even the most critical among us will forgive those flaws under those circumstances.

(Of course that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have enjoyed the book even more if the writing had been closer to perfect. Which is another reason why we try to make our own writing better. So that the people who love it will love it even more.)

Edit --

Crossposted with Ursa, who did not mangle or misdeliver my point.