Chatroom Topic Point of View
There are Points of View till hell won’t have them. And we are going to talk about a few of them. We have been discussing character building, settings, symbols and images. We discussed dialogue, subjects and subtexts. On Sunday we hit on Action.
We can probably all agree that when it comes to Point of View, head hopping within the confines of a single scene is a major mistake. I think as writers, we have all tried it in our notebooks and discovery drafts a little head hopping has a valid place. We might head hop to get a feel for who a scene belongs to. Then we choose the best and leave the rest in a file somewhere on our computers or in our notebooks. These explorations are never a waste of time. These efforts are practice and practice is the best teacher.
Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash
I am revisiting Janet Friedman’s website.
The Basics of Point of View for Fiction Writers
Point of view, or POV, has to do with the narrator’s relationship to what’s being said:
- Is the narrator a participant in the events being told, an observer of those events, or someone reconstructing the events from a distance?
- Does the narrator announce its presence openly or try to remain invisible?
- Is the narrator seemingly dispassionate and detached, or does the narrator have a clear opinion of, or stake in, the story?
- Is the narrator qualified to tell the story in terms of access to information and the ability to provide that information to us? And do we trust what’s being said?
Photo by Kerrie DeFelice on Unsplash
Take about twenty minutes to read the guest post on Janet’s page. Join us in the Chatroom on Wednesday at 8PM EST