MORE POINTS OF VIEW - SAYS WHO? SAYS I

I promised to go into a bit more detail about POV after my recent blog post on the topic. Call this one POV for non-beginners.

It’s not as simple as “Is it 3rd person or 1st person”. It’s not as simple as “if the POV character can’t see it, you can’t say it”. It’s not as simple as “don’t switch POV mid-chapter.”

In a way, however, it is as simple as my original exhortation: that every time you say anything, you ask yourself, “Says who?” And you answer it very, very honestly.

I would like to add two points:

• If you are genuinely mired in the voice of your book, and if you think properly about every sentence, you will not get it wrong. And when you do, you will notice. Think not of rules but of voice and its integrity. BE your story, think your story, breathe and dream your story.
• It is not difficult to repair POV slippages, once you’ve learnt how to spot them. I’m going to give you a real example.

After the last post about POV, "Sarah" asked a specific question that she was worrying about with her WIP. I asked her to send me something by email so that I could see whether her doubts about POV slippage in her WIP were correct. [If any non-writers are reading this, they may think they’ve stumbled on some kind of dodgy site!]

Sarah has given me permission to use her example here. She said:

“…..For instance, I'm trying to write a story about a city girl who ends up in an 1890s sheep station. Obviously she isn't going to know the names for a lot of stuff, but it could get a bit tedious if everything she comes across is described as 'the long brown cutting thing' or similar.

So in this example, I go from being inside Kavita's head as she wonders what's happened to her (she's just fallen down an old mine and woken up in the past), to a description of the homestead that I think is in a slightly different voice. Eg., it includes a post-and-rail fence, which I'm fairly sure she wouldn't describe that way:
                  

"Kavita woke. Sunlight shone through the lace curtain covering the window above her bed. It dappled the floor, which, reaching out to touch it, she discovered was bare dirt. Still here, then, she thought.

       She sat up. She felt groggy, but at least she was warm.

       What the hell was going on?

       Through the window she looked onto a garden of tangled herbs and flowers. Beyond the garden was bare ground, then a small stand of fruit trees covered in bright new leaves. Around the trees, and stretching either side around the house, ran a wooden fence made of rough-hewn posts and rails. A horse stood sedately in the paddock outside the fence and she could see a handful of cows and sheep. Beyond all this, far away, a sloping line of hills ran along the horizon, blue-green and dark with trees.

       Kavita looked down at the old-fashioned nightie she was wearing. It was plain, thick cotton, and when she lifted the hem she saw it was hand-stitched.

       This had to be a joke. Some kind of reality TV program where she’d been unsuspectingly kidnapped into a horse-and-cart community. Like the Amish. Were there Amish in Australia?

       Or it was all fake. It was one of those live museums and she was being filmed to see how she’d react. Either way, what was unlikely—what had definitely not happened—was that she’d fallen down a mineshaft and ended up in the nineteenth century.

       ‘No way,’ she said softly."

Sarah wonders if she’s stepping too far out of Kavita's head when she describes the paddock. The answer, in short, is Yes. But this is not a disaster and very easily fixed. I have fixed it for her, as you’ll see below.

All you have to do is apply the “says who?” question rigorously, and then make sure you are properly in voice. The answer to the “says who?” question is supposed to be “Kavita”. Not an impartial narrator. Not a narrator sitting on Kavita’s shoulder or following her around. And certainly not an omniscient one.

So, here is what I said to Sarah:

“I think (without having read the rest of it) that your instincts that it might not be OK are correct. I agree that you can't have her going round saying "the long brown cutting thing" etc etc, but there are ways round it. So, yes, you have inappropriate POV slippage and you'll need to put it right. The thing is that the POV is K's, even though it's 3rd person.

Here are some suggestions. Obviously some of them may totally have missed the point or repeated something you've already done, but I offer them as tricks to get round your issue, and you can adapt them and improve them. My comments and changes are in red. [By the way, Sentence 3 needs to be re-written – it’s clunky. But you weren’t asking me about that! I might also add something to the first para, something to show some disorientation.]

"Kavita woke. Sunlight shone through the lace curtain covering the window above her bed. It dappled the floor, which, reaching out to touch it, she discovered was bare dirt. Still here, then, she thought.

       She sat up. She felt groggy, but at least she was warm.

       There was something odd - a different smell. The sheets felt kind of rough. (I also think you should put the nightie bit here, as that's when she'd notice it. And instead of saying the hand-stitched bit so quickly, which she probably wouldn't have understood so fast, you could say: When she lifted the hem, it felt all bulky, with big, uneven stitches. As though someone had done it by hand.)

       What the hell was going on?

       Through the window she looked onto a garden of tangled herbs and flowers (say "plants" and then maybe specify - "roses and other flowers clambering everywhere". I don't think she'd know they were herbs). Beyond the garden was bare ground, then a small stand (would she say stand? group? cluster?) of fruit trees covered in bright new leaves (she wouldn't see that from so far away - omit). Around the trees, and stretching either side around the house, ran a wooden fence that looked like something from an ancient farm  - chunky, uneven posts and thin planks. A horse stood sedately in the paddock outside the fence and she could see a handful of cows and sheep. Beyond all this, far away, a sloping line of hills ran along the horizon, blue-green and dark with trees - I think she's describing too much here. You need to show some emotion now, some shock / confusion a bit earlier) It looked like a scene from one of those old-fashioned TV programmes - (I'm thinking of Little House on the Prairie but you can find a way to describe this).

   (Put this earlier: Kavita looked down at the old-fashioned nightie she was wearing. It was plain, thick cotton, and when she lifted the hem she saw it was hand-stitched.)

   (Now have her noticing one more thing, something odd in the room - maybe a jug of water and a bowl for washing?)

   This had to be a joke. Some kind of reality TV program where she’d been unsuspectingly kidnapped into a horse-and-cart community. Like the Amish. Were there Amish in Australia?

   Or it was all fake. It was one of those live museums and she was being filmed to see how she’d react. Either way, what was unlikely—what had definitely not happened—was that she’d fallen down a mineshaft and ended up in the nineteenth century. (Is the earlier context sufficient to support this guess? Is there a reason she'd come to the correct conclusion so quickly? If so, that's fine.)

   ‘No way,’ she said softly."

So, as you can see, it requires a bit of extra thought and some minor tweaking. It does not require a radical rethink of the POV. I know all that red makes it look like more than minor tweaking [I was a teacher, I NEED to use red] but it really isn't. It just requires thinking in character, in voice.

It’s also worth mentioning that if you [not Sarah, all of us writers] know this POV stuff before you start your WIP, you will find that POV slippages are minor and can easily be fixed. It’s all about getting properly into the voice of your narrator right from the start.

The secret is this: the narrator is actually a character itself. Every novel has a narrator, even if invisible, and it’s the voice, personality and mindset of that character which must sing out clearly in every sentence. It's like an actor getting into character, into the right voice. That's what you have to do. Put on the clothes of your narrator and feel what it is like to be him, her or it. Then speak.

BE your story, and tell it truly. Says who? Says I.