Unlimited limited single POV

One of the first things we learn about point of view (POV) is that if you're supposed to be telling the story (or that section of the story) from a certain character's viewpoint, you can only say what that character could know or think.

For example, if we're in Fred's head, we can't have Fred tell us something that Joe's thinking, only what Fred thinks Joe's thinking.

So, writing from a single POV is limiting, isn't it? Even writing one section/chapter from a single POV must be limiting at least for that section/chapter.

Not so. Let me introduce you to the Unlimited Limited POV. (Don't Google it - I made it up.)

The point of ULP is, crucially, that the reader can know more than the character who is telling the story. This is because the reader knows that in fact the author is telling the story, manipulating the character to observe only what the writer needs him to observe. So, the character can observe something but not know the significance, but the reader, knowing the rules of story-telling, knows that the writer has put the observation there for a reason.

It's like Chekhov's Gun. (The idea that if a gun appears in Act One, it must be used by Act Three.) I also call it the stage telephone. You NEVER see a telephone on a film or stage set if it's not going to ring.

Recently I came a across a fabulous example of Unlimited Limited POV. You only need this one example to understand the whole concept. It's in The Help by Kathryn Stockett - a wonderful, wonderful book, by the way.

The book is written in the first person, but alternates throughout the book between several first-person narrations. So, how does the author show us more than the character can see? Well, my example comes from the POV of Skeeter. Skeeter's mother becomes ill during the book and the clever thing is how you know this before Skeeter does. She will mention things such as seeing her mother walk into the distance, looking smaller than usual; or she'll mention her not eating. She won't say she's worried about her mother being ill - she isn't, at first. But the reader is. The reader knows that the author wouldn't have mentioned such things if there wasn't a reason. It's like when, in a book or a film, if a woman feels nauseous in the morning, we know she's pregnant before she does.

So, when you're telling the story through a single POV, don't feel limited by it. Tell your readers more than the character knows, by selecting the things your character notices and subtly regulating how she expresses them.

I love fiction, love it!

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.

POINTS OF VIEW

Get yourself a cup of coffee: this is a long one.

Several of you have asked me to blog about Point of View (POV). There's a lot to say about it, but I want to keep this post fairly basic, so I'm not going into every subtlety. As with almost all rules, once you know them you can break them, but POV is an area where you must know the rules perfectly and have very good reasons for breaking them before you can do so.

POV is an anchoring mechanism for your reader's mind. You control your reader with it. When POV is done properly, your reader can engage. If you mess up the POV, it is jarring and discombobulating. Risky stuff. I'm all for avant-garde risky stuff, but only in the hands of an experienced professional. Would you go up in a plane with a beginner pilot and wish him to do acrobatics?

The basic idea of POV may seem simple: through whose eyes / mind is this story being told? But there are extra things to think about, which can produce complications or nuances, and this is where beginner / unpublished writers trip up:

1. Every single sentence must fit the POV, not just the sentences obviously expressed or felt by the chosen character / narrator.
2. Sometimes, we can have different POV within the book, but switching POV must be done properly, clearly, consistently and coherently, not just because the author fancies it.
3. POV is not the same as "voice" but it is inextricably linked. Sometimes, a beginner writer may obey the technical rules of POV but have an inconsistency of voice. I'm not going to talk about voice [much] here, so please read this post if you want to know what I mean.

So, this "every single sentence" thing. Yes, I mean this literally.

"It was a dark and stormy night..." Says who? Who is telling us that it was a dark and stormy night?  At the moment, it could be anyone. Let's read on.

"It was a dark and stormy night when Carmelle Jones pulled up in front of the grim little cottage, flung open the car door and tottered across the cruel gravel as fast as her Manolo Blahniks would allow. The wind grabbed at her hair and rain spattered the notebook that she clutched to her chest. Cursing the impulse which had inspired her to sign up to a writers' retreat at this time of year - in the country, of all places - Carmelle rang the doorbell, shivering, dripping, and wondering just how long it would be before someone would pour her a glass of Merlot."

So, this looks like a third person narrative, told from the POV of Carmelle Jones. We know her thoughts, at the same time as being able to see her from the outside. The narrator is not Carmelle, but is narrating Carmelle's thoughts while also being able to make observations about her appearance.

But here's the second paragraph:

"Inside the cottage, the sound of the doorbell woke Rob Flanders from a particularly pleasant dream as he dozed by the fire. An ex-SAS soldier, Rob always woke instantly, his ever-hard muscles ready for any action required. One smooth movement, and he was on his feet. He knew it was Carmelle Jones, of course. All the other writers had arrived. Soft and lardy, as usual, with arses made for sitting on. Too much laughing and weak eyes. Why he'd got into this business, he sometimes wondered, but someone had said there was money to be made from writers: all that poetic inspiration and not much sense, dreams of eternal fame and personal fulfilment. And he fancied a bit of smooth himself. Not that he'd fancied what he'd seen so far."

So, a different POV. We're seeing the thoughts of two characters. This means it's looking like an omniscient narrator. OK, but the author [me] has to continue this. What I can't then do is have 95% of it being Carmelle's POV and every now and then slip into Rob's. [Not that I would want to slip into Rob's anything, obviously, but you know what I mean. I hope.]

One of the most common mistakes of unpublished writers is POV slippage - the random and convenient decisions by the writer to tell us what someone else sees. POV slippage is not OK. It's like bra slippage. Well, some people [men] mmight think that's OK. But it's not, is it, ladies? It's sloppy and cheap.

BUT, you can switch POV if you follow some rules. POV switches must be clear, deliberate and part of the overall structure of your book. Here are the rules [and please note: I am aiming at beginners / other unpublished writers here. There are some different options for more experienced writers.]

• Don't switch POV within a chapter. [But see point 4]. Keep different POV for separate chapters.
• If you do that, you should make a clear structure for this and not do it randomly. For example, at a few intervals through the book, cleverly spaced, you could have POV B, with most of the book in POV A. But see the next point.
  
• Make it clear that you have switched POV. You might do this by choosing a different font, but you should use another device as well. It could be obvious from the change in tone / voice; or you could make sure you use the name or whatever would alert the reader to the change of POV and preferably show whose POV it now is. Don't play silly buggers with your reader. Deathwatch is an example of deliberate, structural and obvious multiple POV.
  
• An exception to the 3rd point is if you have a device whereby every now and then we are taken directly into the head of the central character. This kind of internal monologue is usually depicted by italics. It's tricky to carry off and should be used sparingly, but it can be effective. Let me give you an example of a book which does this and also incorporates some POV switches to illustrate my points above.

My novel, Sleepwalking, is a third person narrative with a slightly complex POV. When the main character, Livia, is present, it's her POV, though still third person. When she's not present, other characters share POV. When Livia is present, occasionally, she goes into first person internal thought, denoted by italics. Here's an example:

Livia lay awake in her sleeping-bag. The wooden floor was hard under her back. She heard the soft breathing of the others and wondered what they dreamt of. Were all their thoughts and dreams as complicated as hers?

"Liv?" It was Marcus, still awake, too. "Are you sure you're all right?" His voice sounded so reasonable, so strong, so ignorant.

Don't ask. Don't ask. Don't bloody well ask or you might not like the answer. I feel like a speck of dust floating on the skin of the water. What will happen when the wind blows hard and the water shakes its skin away?

As I say, don't do it too much or it gets irritating. The endless, angsty, internal thoughts of a character can be boring. So, keep the device for when you need it.

Let's look at some different basic POV structures.

First person narrative

If your story is in the first person, obviously you cannot say anything other than what that character knows. [Unless you have some separate chapters with a different POV. But this must feel right for the book and not simply be for your own convenience.] Be cautious about first person narrative, because it is restricting and you may end up regretting using it. You can do much more with third person.

NB: if your story is in the first person, you do not also need the italicised internal ranting bits. Sounds obvious, but I keep seeing it in beginner writers' work. First person IS internal narration, so you don't need to differentiate.

First person is also tricky because you may be restricted from using descriptive language. This is because you can only use the language that the character would use. You must get into that character's voice and stay in it. If your character would not think of describing the pretty flowers, you can't describe the pretty flowers either.

Third person narrative from main character POV

I find this the most straightforward and natural method. It allows you to talk about your MC as well as talking through her. Of course, it does mean that you can't say what's happening when your MC is not there, but this makes it a very direct and natural experience for the reader because, if you think about it, that's what real life is like: we don't know what's happening when we're not there.

Omniscient narrator

This should feel natural for story-telling, because why shouldn't the author be omniscient? Thing is, it's not the author who's telling the story: it's the narrator. And the narrator is actually a character, even if invisible. So, it's not easy to pull off. One reason for the difficulty is that if you are an omniscient narrator, you know so much of what is in every character's mind that there is no mystery left. Unless you are not going to tell your reader half of it. That's obviously the trick. So, an omniscient narrator has to mess with the reader a bit, and you have to be careful about messing with readers.Careful handling without trickery, let's call it.

I use the omniscient narrator in my next novel, Wasted. It's a highly individual, often sardonic, detached POV, really like some kind of fascinated God looking down and playing with the events below. It's right for this story but wouldn't have worked in other things I've written. It's right because in a way this book is about how the world works and how, if there were a God, he might play dice.  

Unreliable narrator

This is a fascinating device, and one which I am going to blog about separately. [So, please don't sully the comments section with diversions down this route - your time will come!]

A point about narrative voice

Remember that your narrator is a character, too. This is the case even when the POV is not that of an actual character in the story. The narration must have a voice and a personality, and must be consistent within that voice and personality. It could be sardonic or ironic, chatty or distant. Your narrator's personality is delineated by the language you use and the way you use it. Narrative voice is a powerful tool for the writer and a way in which you can make your book distinct.

Narrator, POV and voice are intrinsic to your book. They will define it. And they are not things to think about later - you'll be able to tweak them later, to get them perfect and iron out any slippages, but you must nail them fully at the start. They will colour everything else you do.

Remember, for every sentence ask yourself: says who?