Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related POV Writing

I'm currently working on a long story entirely from Lois's POV. I know others have done this in the past to great success <<Cough, Cough, AntiKryptonite, for one, Cough>>. Most of my stories (the longer ones) bounce back and forth between Lois and Clark's POV (Point of View) and sometimes include other's (Martha's, Jonathan's, Jimmy's, Perry's).

Sometimes I find it hard to not let things seep into her knowledge bank without her finding them out on her own. Then I have to go back and say, 'no, she doesn't know that yet.' And then have to go back and fix things. It can be very frustrating.

Who's POV do you prefer to write? Why? Does it depend on the story? Do you find it harder or easier to keep your POV character in character when writing from one person's POV for an entire story? Are there other potholes I should be on the look-out for when writing a story entirely from one person's POV?

I'm finding it difficult to stay in Lois's character the longer I'm trying to stay in her head. Any advice on remembering to do this?

Usually I try to keep to one POV within each scene, because otherwise it can get confusing to the reader. (Although I do know of one emotionally charged scene where I couldn't figure out how to break it into two scenes without it jarring the reader. So, it evolved from Lois's POV to ending in Clark's, but since I didn't receive any negative FDK on it I'm assuming the transition was seamless enough that I got away with it ).

Do you have trouble keeping to one POV within a scene?

Sometimes, I have written the same scene - first in Lois's POV and then followed (repeated) it with Clark's, just not to have both POV's in the same 'scene'. As a reader, do you like this? Or hate it?

(If you like this, may I recommend the old Kevin Bacon romantic comedy "He said, She said" which is all about POV? )

What are your thoughts or rules for POV writing?

I never attempted a single-POV story. Although I did the odd one-POV-per-part thingy. For my personal writing style, mixing POVs in a single section is a big no-no. I guess, too me, the biggest challenge is to keep with a theme and to balance things out. If you mix LnC, they got to get even screen space. I once did the prologue and epilogue of a vignette from Clark's POV and the rest from Lois, mainly because I needed his reaction. And in my NK adaption, I just had to include the rest of the story's main protagonists since I had to show their side without it being a really long conversation afterwards plus a couple of guest spots for dramatic effect. Umm...what was the question, again?

/stops rambling, goes back to quote digging...

Michael

Hi Virginia,

I think when I started writing, I always did omniscient POV, but at some point switched to first person - sometimes Clark, sometimes Lois. (I did one from Martha's and one from Jonathan's, but those were really hard for me.) Now, I can't recall the last story I did that wasn't first person.

I do find it harder to remember what the person I'm writing from knows and doesn't know in long stories. I wrote a story several years ago (well, most of my stories were written several years ago at this point) from Lois' POV. Clark was in a relationship with someone else. I really wanted to show the dynamic of that relationship, and so would write scenes where Clark was out on a date and then remember that I couldn't use them since Lois wasn't there.

Similarly, I wrote a story from Clark's POV and in it, Lois was a bit... fickle, I guess. The things she did always sort of surprised me, even though I wrote them, and I often felt like I had to imagine the whole scene again in my head from Lois' POV to make sure there was some explanation for her actions, even if Clark didn't know what it was, as I wasn't sure she wasn't just acting crazy (she wasn't).

But both of these happened early on in the stories. Once I was several chapters in, I became ingrained in seeing it only from the POV I wanted. I actually had to take a break from the Lois one for a little while as she was going through something tough and whenever I even thought of the story I immediately got into Lois' head and then feel terribly depressed.

So, I guess over time it gets easier. You start to feel a bit more like you're one with the protagonist.

As for things to watch out for - just re-read often - especially early on - for scenes that slipped out of the POV you wanted.

Also, remember when you can to describe facial expressions, hand motions, etc. The little things that people do that let you know how they feel. It's those details (as noticed by your protagonist) that help people connect to the other characters, too. Even if Lois doesn't know why Clark is suddenly unable to meet her eyes and so she brushes it off, those cues really help a first person story end up with several well drawn characters.

Hope that helps.

- Nancy

I find it difficult to do a POV story. I imagine the scenes as they would be on screen. This means the characters are acting, moving, talking, gesturing and interacting with each other. I'm not in any character's head. So the reader has to discern their interests and concerns from outside their minds and by their actions. I've heard this called "the God view" by some writers.
The advantage to this is you can used multiple characters and never change the story rhythm.
I'm trying to be the impartial observer, instead of reading someones' mind.
I don't know if this helps you or not.

Artemis

I have written both from the omipotent "God view" and from a first person POV. I've even ventured to play with the odd-2nd person "you" perspective.

Writing from the 3rd person omipotent is the easiest. And I know it isn't necessarily "proper" to show everyone's thoughts. That's why I usually try to stick with one character's mindset. I don't always succeed in that, and sometimes you really do have to pop over and expose another character's thoughts. Like when I was working on Clarkus Maximus - Clark and Lois have two very different adventures. I *had* to hack into the brains of both.

First person POV is more difficult, simply because, unless your character is a mind-reader, there is a limit to what they can know. But as someone else stated, that's where detail work really comes in handy. Lois can see and describe the crease in Clark's brow, and come to a conclusion that he's very frustrated. Or she can see the laughter in his eyes even though he is outwardly neutral. This is also the *only* time where I feel like I don't switch POVs in the middle of a scene.

2nd Person POV is the hardest for me, only because it's weird to write "You walk down the hall and flip on the light in the kitchen."

In answer to your question, I think the stoy absolutely determines the POV that I wind up writing. When I worked on What Is Eternal, there was *no* way that I could have made tha work from a 3rd person viewpoint. It demanded that I "become" Clark and write the 1st person.

Certain characters I always have problems writing for. Perry is a *bear* to try and capture, no matter if I am writing 1st or 3rd person. Jonathan and Martha are hard too, although I have *tried* to write a Martha POV fic that I may one day finish.

Anywho, I hope that this helps and that it answers your questions.

I personally think that POV has a great deal to do with setting the mood, tone, atmosphere, and feel of the story. If you want an introspective piece, 1st person often works best, though if you want the 'feel' of it to be a bit more reserved, you'd want to pick 3rd person but keep it all through one character's view. Also, when switching POV, you can oftentimes sneak in subtle nods or foreshadowings by allowing the current character POV to be a bit more objective. So, then, I always try to decide what feel I want for my story before I decide on POV.

In 'And Then There Was Light' (and to the compliment, Virginia), I chose 1st person Lois because I wanted to draw out the mystery and obviously seeing through Clark's view would have cut that real short real fast. However, in 'Lethal Qualities,' I was (hopefully) able to keep some suspense going by switching between Clark, Lois, and Perry's point of view every rotating three chapters. 'Me, Myself, And You' was 1st person Clark and referred to Lois as 'you' so that it ideally felt like the reader was inside Clark's head. Each time, the POV was chosen because of the feel of the story.

Sometimes, I have to admit, that if the story focuses more on the plot, POV don't figure in as heavily, but certainly in the shorter stories they do, such as in mozartmaid's 'Frigid' or in Deadly Chakram's 'Just Say My Name...' stories, as well as Lynn S M's 'Echolalia.'

As to keeping in character within the POV, the only advice I can give from personal experience is to believe everything your character does, feel everything they do, and even though you want to consider what other characters are doing so that you can keep your storyline going, always do that objectively, never personally so that you can keep in the mindset of your character.

Anyway, don't know if any of that helped (I've found it's hard to put into words my writing process--it makes perfect sense until I try to explain it), but there it is.

Wow, thanks everyone for the terrific response! Hope that helps.

Yes, AntiK, I loved "And Then There Was Light" (Plug, People, if you haven't read it, you should. Nobody does Clark in pain quite like AntiK. Just finished her "Lethal Qualities" - you should read that too!). It was kind of what inspired me to tackle writing a story from one POV. I did that a little in "Jolly St. Clark", but my new story (the long, dark one) has to be from Lois's POV (mainly because Clark's missing), so bringing him in kind of ruins the mystery (Everyone knows he's missing from the first scene, so it's NOT a spoiler -- oh, wait, that fits under what Lois doesn't know) and see if I can make it into something people will read twenty parts of (my current estimate).

And now I really want to find the time to dig out that passage. Oh well, sleeping dogs and all And you're welcome about the rest

Michael

Let's hope you don't have THAT much free time on your hands.

Thanks, Virginia, for the mention. The story you are thinking of is "All the Daytime and the Nighttime" which was a song title sometime back, or else one line in a song.
The sequel is "Nighttime in the Daytime" where Clark saves the world from Nightfall. It is here and not on the Archive yet because I'm planning on polishing it more.
The characters interact in both stories, but there is never a section I consider to be from their internal POV. Their actions are always described from an outside viewer's POV.

Artemis

I've evolved in this, over the years ... one of my favorite authors is Georgette Heyer, and she wrote decades ago, when 3rd person omniscient (God view, I guess) was common. She'd do head-hopping and tell you what each character was thinking and feeling, switching every paragraph or so. It worked, I thought, so I started off with that.

But then I was told that 3rd person limited was better (he said, she said, but you can get inside one character's head per scene). That POV makes the story more personal -- helps immerse the reader in a character's viewpoint. Usually this involves doing scenes from different character's POVs in turn. This is mostly what I see in published fiction these days, and it's mostly how I've written my stories.

One of my other favorite authors started off writing strictly-limited 3rd person -- the entire novel is told through one character's eyes. As you discovered, it's hard to do that for an entire story, but it really really puts you in that character's place and has a you-are-there quality, because that's how we live our lives Mind you, her stories worked in part because there was the one main character having adventures, and then a lot of less-important supporting characters. Later in the series, when she introduced more complicated relationships, she started including more than one POV per book.

2nd person is weird and really rarely works, because the author is trying to dictate what the reader would think and do in the circumstance, and it's easy to go wrong, so the reader says, "no way, I wouldn't do that".

1st person limited can work -- it worked best for "My Interview with Superman" and the next few sequels, but those were short and the readers were already familiar with the non-POV character & backstory. Those were present-tense, too, which was interesting. By the third sequel, though, I had to split into two POV's -- doing it all from her perspective didn't work, because the reader needed to know what was going through his head, at the same time, because she couldn't figure it out from what she saw. Plus one of my br's thought he'd done something he hadn't, so I had to make that clear

Back in 3rd person limited -- I usually decide which POV to use in which scene before I write it. Obviously, if the scene only has one of my POV characters (usually just Lois & Clark, nobody else), then that character has to tell that part. When they're together it's trickier. I have had occasions when a scene between the two of them isn't working, and eventually I realized I'm using the wrong POV. When I switched from Lois to Clark (or vice versa), the scene worked much better. Once, I needed to switch POVs in the middle of the scene; I put in a mini-scene break (one asterisk instead of three, or whatever) and continued from the other character's view. Nobody complained so I guess it worked.

As for going through the scene twice, once from one POV and once from the other, I'd recommend against it. If it's meant to be a lot of introspection, you could do the action from one POV and the subsequent reaction from the other, but it can be overdone. One of my friends used to do that. First, she'd show them doing something. Then one would think about it. Then the other would think about it.
It could go for pages without anything actually, you know, happening. That can be fun sometimes but it really does get to be a bit much, IMO. If one particular bit needs to be chewed over, that's okay, but most human beings just don't think about stuff that much, and it gets boring.

PJ