I wanted to type up a little rundown of quick n dirty writing tips based on things I see a lot in fic/ amateur original manuscripts, and, uh, it turned out that they all revolved around POV. Nailing point of view in fiction writing is both crucial and one of the least intuitive building blocks of writing to learn: an understanding of POV has been the only useful thing i took from my college creative writing classes, and god knows how long Iâd have stumbled along without it otherwise.
So! I am saving you, baby writer, the trouble of slogging through a miserable writing class with a professor whoâs bitter as FUCK that genre fiction sells better than his âsad white man drinkingâ lit fic novels. Here are some assorted writing tips/ common mistakes and how to fix them, as relating to POV:
(this turned into a WALL OF TEXT so i will be using gifs to break it up)
> âI watched the ship tiltâ âhe saw the sky darkenâ âshe noticed flowers growing on the rusted gate.â no. If the character who felt/saw/noticed etc is your POV character, whether in first or third, then this is called filtering and it takes the reader out of the story by subtly reminding them of the separation between the POV character and themselves. in most styles of writing, this is bad, not to mention it unnecessarily complicates your prose. try again: âthe ship tilted.â âthe sky darkened.â âflowers grew on the rusted gate.â Readers will instinctively understand that the POV character is witnessing the story happen, they donât need to be told it.
Iâm not telling you to never refer to your character âwatchingâ something, of course: âI watched the birds dart around for hours,â isnât filtering because watching is a notable activity, here, rather than an unnecessary obfuscation of the ârealâ thing happening. But understand how phrasing can jar readers momentarily apart from the character viewpoint, and use it with intention.
> Close Third Person POV still requires you to be mindful of your POV character. this is a rookie mistake i see allllllll the time. âJosh cried stupid tears at the beautiful display by the dancers,â is a sentence in Joshâs POV. âStupidâ tells us how he feels about the tears, âbeautifulâ tells us how he feels about the display. ok. all good so far. BUT.
âJosh cried stupid tears at the beautiful display by the dancers. It was everything heâd wanted from this production, from the lighting to the costumes to the exquisite choreography. Martha had to suppress a fond smile at his reaction; he was always so sweetly emotional after the curtain fell.â
Do you see whatâs wrong with this paragraph? The first two sentences are Joshâs POV, and then the third one suddenly becomes Marthaâs. A lot of amateur writers donât even realize theyâre doing this, which in its most egregious form is called âhead-hopping,â but itâs disorienting and distracting for the reader, and makes it harder to connect with a single character. In multi-person close 3rd POV story, the POV should remain the same for an entire chapter (or at least, for an entire scene/ segment,) and change only between them. If youâre new to POV wrangling, watch your adjectives/ interiority (weâll get to that in a second) and think âwhich character am I using as a lens right now, and am I being consistent" every once in a while until you get the hang of it.
> Related: letâs talk about interiority. Interiority is a more sophisticated way of thinking of a characterâs âinternal narration,â IE bits of prose whose job is not to advance the plot, set tone, or describe anything, (although it CAN do any of those things as well, and good prose will multitask) but to give us a specific sense of the characterâs internal life, including backstory, likes, dislikes, fears, wants, and personality. In the above example paragraph, the middle sentence âIt was everything heâd wanted from this production, from the lighting to the costumes to the exquisite choreographyâ Is interiority for Josh. It tells us that not only did he love the show, heâs very familiar with this art form and thus had expectations going in; likewise, listing the technical components is a way of emphasizing his enthusiasm while pointing out that itâs informed, implying that Josh himself is intellectually breaking down the performance even in appreciation.
âThatâs a lot for a throwaway sentence you made up for an example.â Well, yeah, a little interiority goes a long way. Interiority is what creates the closeness we have to POV characters, the reason we understand them better than the non-POV characters they interact with. Itâs particularly key in the first couple chapters of an original work, when we need to be sold on the character and understand the context they operate in.
If readers are having trouble connecting to or understanding the motivations of your character, you might need more interiority; if your storyâs plot is agonizingly slow-moving (and you donât want it to be) or your character is coming off as melodramatic, you might need less. Itâs not something you should necessarily worry about; your amount of interiority in a WIP is probably fine, but being able to recognize it for what it is will help you be more mindful when you edit.
(Fanfic as a medium revels in interiority: thatâs how you get 10k fics where nothing happens but two characters lying in bed talking and having Feelings. Or coffeeshop AUs that have literally no plot to speak of but are 100k+ long.)
> try not to describe the facial expression of a POV character, even in third person. rather like filtering, it turns us into a spectator of the character when theyâre supposed to be our vessel, and since itâs *their* POV, there should be other ways available to communicate their emotion/ reactions. There are ways of circumventing this, (the example sentence where âMartha had to suppress a fond smileâ is an example) where their expression is tied up in a physical action, or something done very deliberately by the character and therefore becomes something they would note to themselves, but generally, get rid of â[pov characterâs] eyeâs widenedâ and â[pov character] smiled.â
so thatâs what i got! go forth and write with beautifully deliberate use of POV.
