A man just approached me in a cafe and asked a perplexing question.

I was working on my book. He asked me (I’m paraphrasing) “whether I was writing in the scene or writing around the scene.”

I don’t know this man. I have never seen him before in my life. It took me a second to understand what he was talking about.

In retrospect, I think he was trying to flirt with me (I just got a cute haricut!) but I thought he was asking a genuine question. I was expecting something a stranger might say like “where’s the nearest bus stop from here?” but apparently this fellow had been staring over my shoulder and guessed that I was writing fiction because he saw quotes.

FYI: Please don’t read over my shoulder. I mean it. It makes me self-conscious. I generally choose a corner so this can’t happen, but the cafe was fuller than usual today.

As the question came out of left field, it took me awhile to understand what he was talking about. He gestured to the room when he said “scene” so my first thought was that he supposed I was writing about the cafe and jotting down what people were saying around me. I assured him I was not doing this. He came back with “No. no. I mean, you are writing fiction, right? I saw the quotes. Are you writing from the character or from above?” He made hand gestures.

Ah. He wanted to know what POV I was writing in. I told him it was the character. He nodded sagely, sensed my discomfort at the intrusion, and departed.

And now a mini lesson on POV (Point of View)!

POV is the perspective you are writing from when you tell a story.

Most writers develop an inclination for a particular POV. I can do different sorts, but my preference is Third Person Limited. In third person limited, you tell the story from one character’s perspective at a time (you can switch between clear-cut scenes or chapters, but not paragraph to paragraph). To break it down, Third Person means I use the character’s given name rather than “I” (”I” is First Person). Limited means I get inside one character’s head and stay there.

When writing Third Person Limited correctly (lots of people do it incorrectly), you can’t see into the heads of other characters and you can’t give the reader information the character doesn’t know. Writing from an “overhead” perspective (sharing information about the thoughts of multiple characters at once or about the world or story beyond the character’s knowledge) is called “omnicient”.

Three Cardinal Sins in POV

I will only share three cardinal sins for Point of View, but there are lots.

1. Jumping between limited POVs in the same scene.

This is bad writing. Careless writers do it. Lazy writers do it. Mostly it is done by writers who don’t understand POV. It is an amateur’s mistake. And I know you’ve seen it before. I know you’ve seen stories like this published. You’ve probably even seen popular authors get away with it–at least in certain genres. But just because lots of people do it doesn’t make it a good idea. Sorry. It is confusing for readers. Do you want your story to be confusing? I don’t.

2. Switching POV when writing in 1st person–anywhere in the same book OR series.

Seriously, don’t do this. I don’t care if you indicate at the beginning of a book or section that it is happening. I don’t care if Stephanie Meyers did it and made millions. It is confusing. It is awful. It is actually upsetting. You get comfortable with knowing a story from one person’s POV–then all of a sudden it changes. Ick. Yuck. When authors do this, it throws the reader out. The reader is abruptly aware that a writer is manipulating them. It throws the story into “THIS IS FICTION! IT IS NOT REAL!” zone. Don’t do it.

3. Switching between 1st person and 3rd person in the same book or series.

Don’t do this either. For the same reason as cardinal POV sin number 2. 1st Person is sacred. It has firm rules. It is great in that it can really make a story feel real, but it is supposed to be limited to that ONE person’s story. One. Period. If you choose to write ANY part of your book in 1st person, then you have strapped yourself to telling the whole story in 1st person. Do it if it makes sense. If you want more versatility, don’t do it.

I could go on, but I will stop here for now!