Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related How often is too often?-Point of View issues

The thread on dialogue tags got me thinking about this.

As a semi-writer, I have often found myself staring at a bunch of prose wondering if I should switch to the other character's POV or just stick it out with the same one. Granted, in fanfiction, we seem to play more loosely with this than in original fiction.

However, nothing bugs me more than reading a story where every four paragraphs we're switching POV. Or, worse still, when we're switching POV in the same paragraph.

Which brings me to my question: how often is too often? Do you have a set amount of pages? Try to keep it rational? Really couldn't care less?

Well, there are two styles of writing pov. Omni and single pov. In single pov, you stick to the pov of one character within a scene and begin a new scene if you switch pov.

With omni, you switch within the same scene.

Single pov is often considered more 'classic', but it's really up to author choice which one they choose to use.

When working with omni, it's generally considered inadvisable to switch too rapidly, otherwise you just end up confusing your readers. I've never heard, myself, that there's any specific set of rules as to how often you should or should not switch - perhaps some of the more up to the minute Grammar Cops will be able to tell us differently - but I think it's generally agreed that you should have a fair run of paragraphs with one pov before you switch to another.

Four paragraphs I would personally consider much too fast.

I usually try to make it at least a couple of pages between switches, but certainly you should try to have at least half a page, I think. If not more. I think the rule of thumb should probably be to stick with your pov as long as you possibly can before you switch. And, if you can, put in a scene break when you do.

Definitely, it's a major no no to switch pov within the same paragraph. That just drives most readers crazy and leads to serious

LabRat

Hi Capes,
I found this here
and thought it makes good sense.

Basically, it's your own judgement, but too much of anything is just too much.

gerry

Wow, this is good to know. I never even considered the POV issue. I think I need to get through my first story first though.

Chriscy

As a general rule, I never switch points of view during the same section. (I've been known to make a mistake, but that was exactly what it was -- a mistake.) If I'm going to switch POV, it will begin with the next scene.

Nan

Yeah, that's pretty much my approach -- I used to do head hopping in my early stories but then Deb Manning thwapped me and told me to stick to one POV per scene. Which I've almost always done since. Thanks, Deb!

When I want to switch POVs, I try to find a transitional moment, a pause in the action, and then go on after a second from the other POV. Wendy does lots of that.
Obviously the first bit is in Clark's head, the second one is moving to Lois, yet the scene continues to flow. But the change is marked by asterics (aka "thingies") so it's a smooth transition. No moments of wondering, hang on, we're in somebody else's head now? When did that happen? It's ironic, but putting the thingies there actually made the scene smoother for me, as a reader.

Maybe the point is -- no stealthy hops. Or maybe, it's -- stick to one POV per scene, but the scenes can flow straight from one to the next, action-wise.

Or not. I'm confused...

PJ

This is more of a comment than useful advice, because I'm procrastinating studying for my maneating final tomorrow (as in, it's going to eat me ) and learned mostly by exposure what worked and didn't work. I kind of feel like I assimilated all of that to the point where I don't consciously think about it anymore. So when someone asks me how often should you should change POVs, or what dialogue tags you should use, I honestly have no idea. I couldn't even, apparently, tell you what I do . So my reply would be just to do what feels natural on a case by case basis.

Now, this is not of course to say that my instincts are necessarily good , or that the results of trusting them are necessarily good either. Or that I won't go back later and reedit all the things my instincts told me were good at the time <g> (instincts, like muses, can be fickle ). Or that I don't/can't learn from threads like this. And while instinct will get you so far, it won't help you much with symbolism/overall theme/etc, you still have to think about that. But as far as points of view or adverbs or dialogue tags, it would just never occur to me to think about it.

Do most people do this? Consciously select each word that goes on the page, which character's POV you're in, etc? Now I'm curious; maybe I've been doing something wrong .

Kaylle
back to maneating studying

Yes, picking a POV is, for me, an important part of planning a scene. You have to pick the right head to be in, and then I try to balance them between the characters. Once I've picked it, though, it flows very naturally -- or if it doesn't, then maybe I'm in the wrong POV.

I'll use the POV of the person who has the most to lose, like the quote above, but sometimes I'll also use a side-character to get a different view. If I have a scene that's L&C in Perry's office, and mostly dialog between Lois and Perry, I might choose Clark's POV. That way, Lois and Perry can be arguing the surface stuff, and Clark's thinking of the deeper implications. Plus it's easier to write -- quoted stuff with "he said" and "she said" and then the third person's thoughts in the narrative.

There's a reason they call it *di*alog -- a conversation between only two people is pretty basic back-and-forth. But when you get more than two people into it, you need speech tags every line, and things just get awfully complicated.

As for consciously picking every word... well, sort of. It's part of the character's voice. That's more in editing, though. In HU, a few times, I'd realize I'd written for Clark and that Kal would see things differently <g> He doesn't politely offer to help, he says 'stand back' and takes over. Little touches like that, I think, make the characters more real.

PJ

Like most things with writing, it depends on context. The writer's style, the characters involved, the pacing of the scene, etc.

I tend to just go with what feels natural. I write the scene from the POV I see in my head (and sometimes get into trouble because I forget that what's obvious, necessary, and clearly visible to me -- for example, whose eyes we're looking out of or just what the person we're looking at is doing -- isn't necessarily as obvious to the reader).

Shifting POV mid-paragraph is, as has been said, clearly a no-no. Even more of a no-no than changing speakers mid-paragraph, and that's pretty bad.

Every four paragraphs seems a tad short, but, depending on the scene, it might be right. A fast-paced action scene could change POVs even faster than that. Doing might leave the reader's head spinning a bit, but then, that might be the effect you were going for.

Paul

I will start off by saying I don't write. I'm just not good at it. I have ideas but I have a hard time fleshing them out and when I do I tend to be way to long winded. That said I would like to weigh in with an opinion here.

Quick and frequent change of POV is not really very good. If I start to get confused as to whose POV we are seeing I loose interest in the story. I'm reading for entertainment. If I want to have to struggle with the reading I'll pick up a tech manual to read. Make it clear whose POV we are seeing and run with it for a while. Yes you can write a whole book in one person's POV or several but jumping back and forth just tends to make me drop reading the story. I have enough things in my life confusing me with out my leisure reading doing that to me.

The other thing that makes me loose interest in a story or makes me change from really reading it to skimming it is when an author doesn't realize they've made their point. I won't mention any particular story or author but I've seen that on these boards as well as in other fandom. Let's say your writing a story about L&C first date and the slamming of the door. To go on and on for a page or more or even 3 or 4 paragraphs explaining why Lois slammed the door is writing the way I write - which is diarrhea of the mouth - it just keeps running. Your point is made in the the first few lines or the first paragraph but you just can't help yourself and you keep going on and on and on.

In the creative write class I took a couple of years ago the teacher said that was the biggest mistake she saw in writers. She said choose your words and make your point don't wander around in your writing looking for the point.

I want to say again I don't write so I'm not really trying to criticize anyone who posts here. You all are braver than I am. I've beta read for 3 different people here and my best friend who is trying to get published. I'm just trying to give you something to think about in your writing.

AND PLEASE KEEP WRITING

I'm glad I caught this thread, and have to admit as a newbie to actually writing fanfic, and not having finished my first one yet, that this was something initially I hadn't considered. I've just been writing what comes out! Now I'm worried my reader's heads are tennis balls! But hopefully I can remedy that now that I'm more aware.
Thanks for informing those of us who are ignorant about these things. Although now the challenge is going to be not to think TOO hard about what to write and then freeze up and not write anything!
Marcy

Oh, not all authors are so organised, Kaylle. I'm more in tune with your methods than anything else. And sometimes it does irk me a little, yes, in discussions like this, one method often seems to be presented as the 'right' way of doing things. Leaving some authors wondering what they're doing 'wrong'.

This can be especially true, I've found, with point of view methods. Often, single pov is held up as the ideal, the 'right' way to do things. I, personally, don't believe that's true and tend to go with it being up to the author which one they want to use. Each method being as valid as the other.

If your method is working for you - go with it, I say. I haven't especially noticed that it leads to bad fic in your case. And sometimes you can throttle the Muse into total silence by spending too much time secondguessing yourself as you write, wondering if you're doing it the 'right way'. Go with the flow, if that's how you work, and you'll do just fine.

For myself, I don't plot out or outline stories in advance. A story becomes a story for me when I've had a certain amount of snippets of conversation or a few paragraphs of narrative pop into my head. I jot them down as they arrive and if I get enough to stitch them all together, a story starts to take shape.

This means that, invariably, I have to look at pov retrospectively. Several jotted 'moments' in, I'll suddenly realise that I've switched and I'll fix it then. But I never think about it as I'm writing or prior to writing.

Curiously enough, I began writing for this fandom using omni pov and over the years have switched to single. This wasn't anything to do with believing that one method was more correct than the other than it was just something I fell into along the way. It wasn't a conscious decision.

LabRat

POV can be a challenge. I enjoy writing in third person, where I swap POVs from scene to scene, and in first person, where I feel I'm much more constrained and tend to stick to one POV throughout. I'm sort of in the camp that... well... if you write it well, you can get away with just about anything. There really isn't a right or wrong way to do things, so I'm hesitant to say jumping POV every sentence is bad. I'm sure somebody has managed it somewhere, and gotten raves.

My own personal preference, though, is to hop into the POV that makes things most interesting. Whether it's a character who has absolutely no knowledge of what's going on, thus to provide suspense, or whether it's a character who has the most to lose, thus making it gripping in its own way... I generally let the story decide, and I just run with it. I guess I'm an instinctual writer that way.

One of my favorite things about writing Samaritan was that I forced myself to stay in the POV of an outsider looking in on the Superman mythos. I think it worked very well for what I was trying to do, and in addition to that, it challenged me greatly. How do you describe everyday Superman things when it's a description by somebody who doesn't see Superman every day? Wonderful fun, at least to me.

I began writing in omni, but then noticed other authors were writing in single POV and decided to give it a try myself. I found it incredibly restrictive at first. It's much harder to illustrate a character's reactions and inner thoughts when you're stuck in someone else's head, and you certainly can't give immediate feedback to the reader as to what the other character thought. On the other hand, you can focus much more deeply on the thoughts and feelings of the person whose head you happen to be in, which brings me to my point. Single POV is very effective if your story is heavily relationship based - where your main interest is in exploring the feelings of each character in your story. That's why, I think, it's so popular among so many L&C writers.

However, that's not to say that omni or first person isn't equally effective. As Diane says, her first person story was made all the more intriguing because she was telling us about Clark from an outsider's POV. And omni POV gives you that immediacy you can't always get with single POV.

As to when to switch - well, I tend to switch at the end of a scene. Sometimes, like Wendy, I'll switch mid-scene, because that's a very good way of changing the pace and preventing the story from becoming too plodding and predictable. Sometimes a quick switch into another character's POV for a couple of paragraphs can work well, too - kind of like a quick aside to the audience at a play. The key is not to overuse any such techniques.

I have to confess, though, that my favourite is single character POV throughout, told in the third person. Perhaps this is because most of my recreational reading has been of thrillers, where you generally have a single hero (or anti-hero) who is jumping through the various hoops the author sets him or her. I love getting so involved in the story that I care deeply what happens to this person and, I guess, can sort of imagine myself in their shoes. Stories which try to divide my allegiance between two or more characters don't work so well for me - which is why I'm not a big romance reader, I guess.

Yvonne