POV Changes within a Scene

This is a problem I encountered while writing my novel. (Though I don't write romance, I understand the "intimacy" issue.)

What I did was this:

I basically stole from Tom Wolfe. I allowed each main character, when they were in the same physical space, a little time in the narrative headlight. Since I'd been alternating POV between chapters anyway, I figured it only fit if I allowed that shifting to occur while the characters were "onstage" together.

Addendum:

You want the main character to shine through the most, though. (Duh.) What I've found in working with agents and now editors -- and this is no surprise to anyone on this board, I realize, but I'll put it in anyway -- is that the main character is essential. If you give more "weight" to your heroine throughout the story, I would probably give more weight to her in these intimate scenes.

Hope this helps.

I'm having the same problem. In a love scene, both H/h should have equal time, and it's difficult to divide such a scene into compartments.

In the same MS, I also have a very intense fight involving three characters. If I have to put an asterisk between each POV, it breaks up the flow and looks stupid.

I can understand doing it if several paragraphs are devoted to one character's POV, but when things are happening quickly, it's really HARD!

Tami Hoag does it often and effectively.

Here's a link - and the text (sorry, as it's rather long) of an article which I wrote that may be of assistance.

http://www.coffeehouseforwriters.com/fictionfix/0608 Grossack.html

What Are They Thinking?: Portraying Your Character's Thoughts

Victoria Grossack

One of the advantages that the medium of written fiction has over other forms of storytelling – such as film and theatre – is that novels and short stories allow readers easy access to characters’ thoughts.

Now, I’m not saying that other literary art forms never let us experience the inner workings of characters’ minds. Who doesn’t know some of Shakespeare’s great passages? Consider Hamlet’s, “To be or not to be,” Richard the Third’s, “Now is the winter of our discontent,” and the balcony scene in Romeo & Juliet: “Romeo – wherefore art thou Romeo?” These all give us wonderful insights to the characters’ minds. But they are soliloquies – the character is speaking ostensibly to him- or herself – and thus, some would argue, there is an air of the artificial about it, because people normally don’t speak so long and certainly not so eloquently aloud to themselves (although in Romeo & Juliet, Romeo happens to be conveniently eavesdropping – but this is not something that Juliet realizes at the time). Therefore, soliloquies are not always used and the chance to learn what the characters are thinking is often not possible. In theatre, the emphasis is more on dialogue than anything else and so what the spectators experience is conversation.

In film, thoughts are occasionally given – perhaps by the reading aloud of a letter, or by showing the character not speaking but having his voice speak anyway. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen showed a conversation between two parties with subtitles. But in film, the emphasis is on the visual, and internal thoughts and occasionally even the dialogue are sacrificed, to make room and time for chase scenes and special effects. This is not a complaint, mind you; just an observation.

So, if we really want to experience characters’ thoughts – and what could be more intimate, than to see into another person’s mind? – we’re best doing it in regular text, i.e., the printed page (or an audio version of the same). But showing characters’ thoughts is tricky. Let’s go through some of the issues that need to be addressed:

- How do you make sure that the reader knows that these words are part of a thought and not either dialogue or part of the regular text?

- How do you make sure that the reader knows which of your characters is doing the thinking?

There are a host of other issues that could arise, but this is a little column, so let’s limit its scope.

How you meet these challenges depends very much on other choices that you have made for your story; nothing happens in a vacuum. In particular, the person and point of view are critically intertwined with how you show your characters’ thoughts. These are subjects that I’ve not yet covered in my columns - because there’s so much to say and others have already said so much - but we need to understand these things now, so let’s lay some foundation.

Person and Point of View
Person is a term that you should have encountered while doing grammar, either while studying English or another language. A story told in first person is a story where everything is told through the voice of the narrator, who even uses the word “I” while telling the story. Second person is “you,” and it is virtually never used for storytelling (if anyone knows of any exceptions, please let me know – I couldn’t think of any). Third person means that the story is told using “he” or “she.”

Point of View refers to which character’s eyes (ears, nose, fingers and so on) the reader gets to experience the story. If you are writing in first person, then you are also writing using the narrator’s point of view (again, if anyone knows of exceptions, please feel free to contact me and I’ll include them in a future column). If you are writing in third person – and this is by far the most common – you have a choice. You can elect to tell the story from what is known as the omniscient point of view – where the reader can see the actions and motivations and occurrences associated with all the characters – or you can limit your readers’ access to either one or more characters in your story, for example writing each scene from a single point of view – or perhaps your entire novel this way. This I have seen referred to as the intimate point of view. With the intimate point of view, the readers can only learn what the characters experience or hear about.

Which is better? That’s an artistic choice, and is actually influenced by what you’re trying to achieve, so I don’t want to come down on one side or the other. It belongs, besides, in a column devoted to these topics – so perhaps I’ll write one some day. So enough on person and point of view! I could write an entire column on it (and perhaps some day I will). I simply wanted to define these matters, because we need them for what’s coming up.

Distinguishing Thoughts from Everything Else
Thoughts are like dialogue in that they are associated with individual characters and that they can be given verbatim. They are different from dialogue in that the rules surrounding them aren’t as concrete as the rules governing dialogue. In other words, the grammar gendarmes probably won’t come out to get you when you do one thing instead of the other. On the other hand, some techniques are smoother than others.

So, let’s work through some examples.

A. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and said, “I can do this.”

The above is dialogue, as is made obvious by the quotation marks and the word “said” – used to attribute the speech to John. Instead of saying these words aloud, John could think them. In that case, you could write:

B. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and thought, “I can do this.”

But this is awkward, because quotation marks are generally used to signal dialogue. Another technique is to employ italics. So here’s another possibility:

C. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and thought, I can do this.

I’ve even seen, in print, options B & C combined to create writing like the following:

D. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and thought, “I can do this.”

Now, I’ll interject some opinion. I am not keen on using italics. I think they should be used sparingly, because italics, I believe, tire the reader – especially if you have a lot of interior monologue. They’re distracting, and, I believe, should be saved for special occasions.

There’s also something else to realize about italics: they imply that you are giving the exact thoughts, in other words, word for word. The same thing goes for the use of quotation marks. But if you’re using the first person or a third person intimate, you don’t have to write it this way. You can imply it. Let’s go through a few more possibilities.

E. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and thought, he could do this.

Notice that the entire sentence is now in third person and the verb in the thought has shifted from the present tense can to its past tense could.

F. John stopped in front of the long, steep staircase. He could do this.

In version F, we have removed the word thought altogether and turned the single sentence in the earlier examples into two sentences. The first sentence, “John stopped in front of the stairs,” is important because it lets the reader know who is doing the thinking.

Then, as we are in third person intimate, we slide very naturally into John’s optimistic self-evaluation of his stair-climbing ability in the next sentence – in other words, into his mind and feelings - even though the word thought is not to be found.

G. I stopped in front of the long, steep staircase and thought, I could do this.

In example G, I’ve switched to first person. Although there’s nothing really wrong with the sentence above, in a way, there’s a redundancy of meaning. In first person, nearly everything – unless explicitly shown to be otherwise – is a thought of the narrator’s.

H. I stopped in front of the long, steep staircase. I could do this.

In example H, can you almost sense the quick intake of breath as the narrator looks at the long steep climb and decides to tackle it?

Conclusion
We’ve come up with eight different versions of representing almost the same thing. Some may be better, some may be worse; some will depend on what you’re trying to do. At any rate, we’ve had a chance to explore different ways of portraying what your characters are thinking. If you have the urge to tell me what you’re thinking, drop me a line at [email protected]

You can climb those staircases! Until next time.

****
This article is the sole property of the author. It is produced here with the author's permission. The unauthorized use or reprinting of an article is illegal, and will be prosecuted at the discretion of the author.

* * *
Hope it helps!
Victoria
www.tapestryofbronze.com

You can either stay inside one person's head, or simply describe what's going on as from an outside observer and let the reader draw their own conclusions.

Remember, it's all about showing, not telling. It's a myth that you have to get inside every character's head. You don't. The reader doesn't want to be patronised as in, "You're too dense to work this out for yourself so I have to tell you what everyone is thinking at all times."

I hate reading a scene where there's head-hopping. It feels messy and uncontrolled, and I don't like being told what characters think. I like to work that out for myself.

If you write romance, your audience expects to know what the characters are thinking and feeling, especially in a love scene. Head-hopping is allowed, if done well (especially as it became a refreshing change from the heroine-only POV so prevalent in years past).

Just avoid the back-and-forth, back-and-forth rapidfire changes that will make the reader feel as if they're watching a tennis match; stay in a single POV for a paragraph or three, then switch.

The thing to keep in mind is that you usually want the viewpoint of the character who's experiencing the most intense emotions and sensations in that moment, or whose thoughts are otherwise most vital for the reader to know.

I can't disagree strongly enough, CC. I read romances and I certainly do NOT expect to be told what each character is thinking and feeling, even in a love scene. Head hopping is not 'allowed' just so the reader can be told what's going on in everyone's head - the scene should be written in such a way that the reader can work out for themselves what characters are thinking.

Besides, laying it all on a plate takes away the fun of reading. It's often what we are NOT told that makes a scene interesting. After all, we don't know what people are thinking in real life, do we? All we have to go on are their words and actions.

Swapping heads in the middle of a scene is messy, messy, messy, whatever the genre and romance readers certainly don't deserve to be patronised. They're more intelligent than they're often given credit for.

There's no need to head-jump. Ever. The writer just needs to choose his POV wisely. A hard decision? Maybe. But no-one ever said writing a book was easy.

Just say no to headhopping.

As Scarletpeaches said, you really, really don't need to be in some person's head to show what that person is thinking and feeling, and every time you change POV, you break the reader's bond with the character. This is every bit as true -- perhaps more so -- in romance as in any other genre, since romance depends hugely upon the emotional attachment of the reader with the characters. What matters isn't necessarily what both characters think and feel in a given scene. but what the POV character BELIEVES the other character thinks and feels. We can find out later that the first POV character was wrong, but while it's happening, while it's unfolding in front of us as it's unfolding for the characters, while we're sort of inhabiting the skin of the heroine, for example, what matters is how the heroine is experiencing the event, including her impressions of his thoughts/emotions. She doesn't know what he's thinking/feeling; why would you want the reader to know, if you want the reader to share the heroine's experiences? Don't you lose some of the tension if the reader knows everything? If the heroine is thinking -- and this is cliche, but bear with me for a moment -- "I love him so much, and I hope he loves me at least a little" -- the reader is going to think, "Oh, me, too, I hope he loves her at least a little" and keep reading to find out. But if in the very next sentence, we pop into his head, and he thinks, "I love her so much," well -- poof -- there goes any suspense for the reader, so the heroine may be on tenterhooks, wondering about the hero, but the reader isn't worried, b/c the reader's thinking, "he's in love with you, dummy, all is well with the world," and there's no need to keep reading.

Decide whether you're writing third person limited or third person omniscient. If you're writing third person omniscient, go for it, and you can delve into any head you want, at any time you want (which sounds simple in theory, and isn't in practice), BUT -- and it really is a big "BUT" -- every time you do change, you're emphasizing the distance that's inherent in an omniscient POV. An omniscient POV also has a distinct narrator, someone the reader is aware of, someone who will make general pronouncements outside the POV of any character. And those pronouncements, along with the headhopping, make for a very distant feel to the story, not something you're going to want in a romance.

In romance, usually the author and reader want a more intimate POV, and will therefore use either first or third person limited. First person isn't on the table here, so that means you're left with third person limited. Third limited is a very intimate POV, and it allows you to delve deeply into the heart and mind of the character, and where the reader will bond deeply and for long periods with the character. Which isn't to say you have to stay in that one POV for the whole book; you can have third limited, with two or more POV characters, but you stay in one POV for the duration of a scene or longer. There are also variations in depth of POV, even in third limited, which you can play with for pacing and emotional reasons. In some scenes, you can be so deep in a character's thoughts/emotions that it's virtually indistinguishable from first person (you could change the pronouns and make the verbs match, and everything else would remain the same), and other times you can pull back a little and still be telling the story from that third-limited POV, but not delving quite so deep into the character's thoughts/emotions, b/c it's not as emotional a scene.

The thing to remember about slipping out of the chosen POV isn't that it's a sacrosanct rule and the punishment is that you'll go to hell if you headhop. The thing to remember is that the choice and use of POV matters to the story. POV is a tool with a purpose. Messing with the POV messes with the purpose behind using that POV. Know what the purpose of a given POV is -- to establish intimacy and a bond with the reader, in the case of third limited -- and if you're going to break the POV, do it with the knowledge that you're breaking the intimacy/bond, and you'd better have a darned good reason for it. The fact that it's easier for you, the writer, to show what a non-pov character is thinking/feeling is not even a slightly good reason; breaking POV has to be better for the reader in order to justify it, and it's hard to think of many circumstances where breaking the bond with the reader is better for her than maintaining the bond. The one circumstance I know that uses POV violations to good effect has to do with comic relief -- where Character A is thinking along the lines of "this is such a great idea" and Character B is simultaneously thinking "what a bad idea." Think about it, though -- do you think the technique that works for comic relief (largely b/c it's distant from either character's deep emotions and is, in essence, making fun of their emotions, taking on the characteristics of distant, omniscient POV) is likely to work well for an intimate scene?

One other thing to consider: is it at all possible you're switching POV b/c of some problem with the scene? The two things I see most often, where someone thinks she needs to switch POV in the middle of a scene are either: a) the scene has gotten to a point where the POV character's emotions are too strong for the writer to handle, and the WRITER needs some distance from those emotions, and switching POV gives that distance, but it's cheating both the writer and the reader if the writer doesn't force herself to confront the emotions to their logical conclusion at the end of the scene; or b) the scene doesn't have enough meat to it, and the writer has run out of stuff to say in the first POV and seeks to flesh it out (no pun intended for an intimate scene) by getting a different take on what's going on. In the latter case, checking for the basic components of a scene -- two characters, with opposing goals, in a struggle that matters to them -- will straighten out the problem, enabling the author to keep the scene all in the POV of the character whose goal is pushing the scene forward.

Yes, yes, I know. People headhop all the time. Doesn't mean the story wouldn't have been better if they'd stayed true to POV. Doesn't mean you can carry it off. Doesn't mean you should "settle" for something that's not as good for the reader as you can make it. You're better than that.

JD

To use a personal example of writers being too close to their characters' emotions:

For me, rape would be extremely difficult to write about. I'd be reluctant to do so. But the only way to make the reader feel the terror of the character would be to force myself to face up to it, to write about it, rather than jumping into another character's head or using wishy-washy terms, or telling rather than showing.

Sometimes if the writer is dealing with an uncomfortable subject they can pull back. Sometimes it can be that they've never experienced certain events themselves and don't know HOW to write it. Sometimes the writer can be scared.

If the writer is reluctant to write a particular scene in a particular way, it's logical to imagine the reader being similarly reluctant to bother reading it.

Head-hopping, no. Controlled, careful, well-written POV shift inside the scene, yes. I do it. (And POV purists can throw things at me, and think I'm wrong for doing so. That's fine. As long as my editor is cool with it, I'm happy.)

I've even been known to start, say, in the heroine's POV, shift to the hero's POV for a while, then shift back to the heroine's POV in a love scene. That's not head-hopping. Head-hopping, bad. <G>

Just do the shift well. Immediately ground the reader in the other character's head, making the transition clear.

Susan G.

I don't get it. If one changes POV mid-scene and goes into another character's head, that's head hopping. It's all very well to say it's done well, but head hopping is still head hopping, even by the different name of 'POV change'.

I've read thousands of books in my time (no, really) and I've never read a mid-scene POV change that didn't read like a head jump. 'Cause that's what it is. Changing viewpoint.

Yep, Scarletpeaches pretty much explained what I meant. Some authors DO experience what their character is experiencing, and some authors (me included) don't handle emotion well in our own lives (it's all that lawyerly training that makes me twitch when emotion comes into the equation, and I have to struggle to get past that), so if we're experiencing the character's emotion, and it's getting intense, we'll back away from it, look for excuses to end the scene (that's my personal pitfall) or to find a different POV that's not so intense. I'm not saying you do that, but it is something to consider, just in case, b/c I've heard enough writers admit to having trouble when the emotions get really intense, so it is a real risk.

One of the best examples of the effect of backing off like that, but it's a bit obscure and you'd need to be as obsessive as I am to really get it perhaps, is in the transition from Aaron Sorkin as the writer of West Wing to whoever wrote the later episodes. When Sorkin was writing it, you'd have a scene with two characters, and the first would say something, and the second would disagree, and the first would say something stronger, and the second would disagree more strongly, and the first would go into a long rant, and the second would either acquiesce or go into his own rant. When the new writers were doing a scene, the first would say something and the second would disagree, end of scene. There was no escalation of the tension. I don't know if it really was the cause, but it came across as if they couldn't handle the real emotion in the scene, and were only willing to take the first step, not carry it out to its logical (well, logically emotional) and intense conclusion. As a result the scenes were quite flat, compared to Sorkin's.

JD

jodiodi said:

I've seen (a) that you mentioned, written of before on the board. What does it mean? I've never written anything I couldn't 'handle'. It seems an oxymoron to me. I'm not feeling the emotions of the characters; the characters are telling me, showing me. Their emotions and such are their own, I just document them. I guess I just can't fathom what it means that a writer is too affected by their character's emotions.

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I think the "handling of emotions" goes back to each writer's individual process. I don't think of myself as a documentarian, following my characters around and recording the things they tell me. Rather, I see myself as a participant in their lives. I write in tight third-person limited and occasionally first-person. I'm not simply writing what the characters are doing, I am in their heads, experiencing things as they experience them.

Maybe it's me, but I can't imagine having an emotional distance when I'm trying to write about grief or rage or complete joy. If I am too distant, I am doing the character a disservice and the emotion may ring false to the reader. Not to say I am an emotional wreck while writing, but there are times when I have been affected by what my characters are feeling. I have felt uncomfortable writing certain scenes from certain POV's because of the challenge of the emotions. But I knew that the story would be best served by that POV, so I wrote it.

It was difficult, I hated myself for what I was doing to the Main Character, but in the end, it was exactly what the story needed.

JanDarby said:

As a result the scenes were quite flat, compared to Sorkin's.

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That's because no one can write rapier-sharp debate like Sorkin.

That's because no one can write rapier-sharp debate like Sorkin.

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Well, yeah. He's brilliant. I'm a huge fan, and writers can learn a lot from his dialogue, both things to do and things to avoid (his tendency to make all the characters sound alike).

But it also had to do with the later writers wimping out once they reached a certain point, and they just kinda' trailed off, instead of really pushing the issue.

JD

JanDarby said:

But it also had to do with the later writers wimping out once they reached a certain point, and they just kinda' trailed off, instead of really pushing the issue.

JD

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At the risk of hijacking this thread....

I agree. I am an avid West Wing fan, and you just can't top the first two seasons for quality. John Wells, as a producer, tends to play it a bit safe when it comes to hot button topics. I never forgave him for how they resolved the "Zoe kidnapping" plot.

scarletpeaches said:

I don't get it. If one changes POV mid-scene and goes into another character's head, that's head hopping. It's all very well to say it's done well, but head hopping is still head hopping, even by the different name of 'POV change'.

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No, head hopping is when you switch back and forth like a ping-pong ball. Hence "hopping." It implies more than once.

And this disagreement over what a term means exactly just goes to further point out the subjectiveness of writing.

Susan G.

Whoops, this got long

scarletpeaches said:

I don't get it. If one changes POV mid-scene and goes into another character's head, that's head hopping. It's all very well to say it's done well, but head hopping is still head hopping, even by the different name of 'POV change'.

I've read thousands of books in my time (no, really) and I've never read a mid-scene POV change that didn't read like a head jump. 'Cause that's what it is. Changing viewpoint.

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I used to think that until I reread a fantasy novel by Sean Russell. Right near the end of scene, the POV goes from the mage Eldritch to his assistant, Walky. And I had never noticed the first time because it went so smoothly. It does help that the POV stayed with Walky for the rest of the scene.

I'm strict about POV changes, but I don't see anything wrong with switching in the middle of the scene if you can do it well and keep it to that one switch. (I'm not going to do it myself, but I'm strict and old-fashioned. )

On a completely unrelated note, I do think some writers become so attuned to POV switches that they point at things that aren't really POV switches and shout "POV switch!!!" Sort of like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatches pointing at the good guys. I think some of them have attended workshops or read writing books (ahem, Barry Longyear, ahem) where they were told such-and-such was a POV switch, and they believed it. Even though most authors would look at that so-called POV switch and say "Wha?"

For example, in a story I had up for critique, where the POV character was Trebor, I had a sentence that went ... "If Malby thought he could get away with it, he'd cut Trebor's throat with that very sword." And a critiquer called that a "Major POV switch." But while I'll admit that wasn't very well phrased, it was from Trebor's thoughts, not Malby's! Trebor realized that if Malby thought he could get away with it, he'd kill Trebor.

There was another point in the story that he thought was a POV switch. Malby smirked and caressed the jeweled hilt of his sword, as if reminding his master who had the true power here. To think he had been so worried about that sword taking his life. The disease was going to kill him before long. Malby would get all the treasures, without so much as dirtying his blade.

Again, not the best wording. But I thought it was clear that it was Trebor thinking all this. Sigh. I know, if it's not clear to the critiquer, then you probably wrote it wrong. But ... POV switch?!

But that's nothing. In a workshop, I put up the first chapter of my fantasy noel for critique. I was told (by the guy running the session) that in a scene from the POV of Talia, the sentence "Near a long table in the center of the room, a gaunt middle-aged man struggled with a crate of vegetables, trying to drag it across the earthen floor" was a POV switch. Apparently to be true to Talia's POV, I had to say "a gaunt middle-aged man was struggling..."



Argh! And I thought I was anal about POV.