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Before you start writing, one of
the most important aspects of your story to consider is the point of view(s)
you will use. The povs you choose will help to determine how close your reader
gets to each of the characters. Since pov determines to a large extent how much
information the reader has, it will affect the way the plot unfolds. Read the
articles on the pros and cons of the different types of povs to see what will
work best for your story.
If
your story is struggling, one way to fix the story is to change the point of
view. Try telling the story from a peripheral character or give each main
character a chance to tell things his or her way. You will be amazed how the
pace and direction will alter with a different narrator. Most readers prefer to
stay in one point of view at a time however, and only switch at demarcated
places such as the next chapter. If you change too much, or change in
unexpected places, your readers may have a hard time following. In The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, the two main characters take
turns narrating the story in first person. The author makes this clear by
writing the character’s name at the beginning of each section.
Once
you have chosen a point of view, you have to be very careful to stay true to
it. It is very common for novice writers to stray out of the selected pov and
thereby highlight their low level of experience. One way to slip beyond the
chosen pov is to give information that the character would not have. For
example, if you wrote, “I listened to the ticking of the clock. It was
midnight. Across town the water pipe had begun to crack and spill its dark
waters into the street.” Unless the narrator is some kind of psychic, there is
no way for her to know about events across town.
Another more subtle way to break
out of point of view is to have characters to observe details that are not true
to their characters. Even if Uncle Walter, a farmer with no education, was
standing right next to a woman in a fancy dress, he would not notice that her
dress is made of tulle. Nor would he probably comment on the fact that a sonata
by Beethoven suddenly came on the radio. In a similar fashion, an angry woman
is unlikely to notice tiny details irrelevant to her situation. If Nina is
marching furiously down the street, she is unlikely to think about the beauty
of the birdsong or the funny bumper sticker of a car she passes.
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