Plotting Your Story, Part 4: Point of View

POV–It’s What Tells the Story

POV is an acronym for Point of View, also called Viewpoint.

This class isn’t about how to write limited third-person POV; rather, how to use POV to tell your story. It is, after all, one of the most powerful toolboxes. While writers have great fun arguing over which type of POV is best, they sometimes forget that it’s a toolbox, not just one tool. Each event is best shown with a particular tool, and it’s up to the writer to choose the correct tool to tell the story.

Up until now, we’ve discussed how to shape the story, but POV is how to tell the story.

First a brief definition of the more frequently used forms of POV.

POV is what the character sees, feels, hears, touches, smells, and thinks. How that is written depends on the type of POV you’re using.

First Person: the story is from only one character’s viewpoint and told with “I.” First person POV is sometimes used in mysteries, westerns, chick lit, and urban fantasy.

Second Person: the story is telling what “you” are doing or need to do. Very little fiction is written in second person POV.

Third Person Limited: this is commonly used technique in the Romance genre. The story is told from the “he, she, it” POV and we stay in that viewpoint for the duration of a scene.

Omniscient: from the point of view of an outside observer, omniscient POV is sometimes used in epic fantasy, and also prologues. “Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away” is omniscient POV.

Lee Masterson wrote an article with more comprehesive explanations of each, posted on the Fiction Factor site.

So what does all this have to do with Plotting Your Story? No doubt about it, your heroine’s eyes and ears will send observations to her brain dictating her next move. As does the hero’s–and of course, the villain’s. Who has the most to lose? Do you want to be in that person’s head or do you want to observe him instead?

According to Laura Baker and Robin Perini in Discovering Story Magic, the protagonist is the character who changes the most, and the antagonist is the one who drives the story. In determining POV, it’s likely you’ll need to know which character is the protagonist: whose story is it? Generally (but not always), this character will receive the larger portion of stage time.

Advanced POV

Learning how to write a scene in one character’s POV is the first step in learning what POV is all about. Some other important considerations are:

How does your hero relate to a stimulus?

Two people are in a car, a 22-year-old cowboy on his way to a rodeo with a big purse, and one is a star-struck 17-year-old young lady. A bee flies through the window and is buzzing around the interior of the car. How do each react?

1. The young lady lets the cowboy rescue her, so she plays helpless and frightened.
2. The young lady wants to show how independent she is, so she manages to get the bee out of the car.
3. The cowboy wants to impress the girl with his macho prowess, so he whaps the bee and squishes it.
4. The cowboy is deathly allergic to bees, and the young lady is wanting to be protected by the brave cowboy, but ends up protecting him.

Same characters, same event, but different viewpoints, different decisions, different outcomes. Let’s talk about #4. Would you write this in the cowboy’s POV? His thoughts would reveal his embarassment and maybe shame for showing a weakness, and desperation to convince her to get rid of the bee. Or would you write this in the point of view of the young lady, and show her irritation that her big, brave cowboy was scared of bees?

What does your character see?

When we walk into a room, what we see depends on what we consider non-remarkable. We seldom observe something unless it’s out of the ordinary. Let’s say your hero is a chef–what will he notice when he first enters a stylish new restaurant with the heroine? The last time I was around two chefs, they discussed the gears in Hobart mixers. Does your hero peek into the kitchen to see what model of mixer they have? Would your heroine care?

A good example revealed itself when I was writing a western. The bad guy was in the process of robbing a bank during the Fourth of July fireworks. My hero, the marshal, rides into town. I needed the marshal to know that bad guy was in town so he could foil the robbery. But how? I mulled this over for two days. Then, at dinner with my husband, I told him my woes. He said, “Easy, the marshal sees the villain’s horse.” I protested that the marshal had only seen the villain’s horse once, but my husband informed me that every man in his company knows what car everyone else drives, and if he doesn’t know a car on the lot, he makes a note of it. Bottom line: most men observe what others drive, and in the Old West, they observed the horses others rode. Most women don’t.

How does your character think?

This comes across in word choices, not just in dialogue, but in internal thoughts and narrative as well. Often, dialogue conveys the exact opposite of what a character thinks (called a reversal), and the writer can pull a lot of emotion out of a scene where the character acts one way and believes the other.

Let’s go back to the cowboy and the chef. A waitress plops down a huge steak dinner in front of each. The cowboy is impressed with the quantity, the chef checks to see of the steak is properly cooked. Now let’s say the waitress was topless. Neither the cowboy or the chef remember they ordered dinner. So sometimes very different people react the same.

Narrative word choice

I actually don’t know what to call this section but I guess “narrative word choice” will do. This is a mixture of the author’s voice and the character’s outlook on life. What words are chosen to describe a character’s actions?

Here’s an example: my hero was observing the bad guys. When their attention was diverted to his direction, he stepped back behind a bush. An editor changed “stepped back” to “retreated.” Nuh uh. My hero does not retreat. Very out of POV, so stet that one, and I explained why.

Summary

All these things come into play when you’re designing scenes. You might not be conscious of it–I rarely am–but it’s there. You know what you can do with a character, what part of that character you show the best by either using his POV or staying away from it. You know how you can torture a character by withholding information, or giving him too much info, or incorrect info.

How best to show the character’s arc that plopping a dilemma in his lap so he can show you what he’s really made of? After all, that’s the only purpose of events, to build a structure for the character’s growth arc, and in Romance, the journey toward true love and Happily-Ever-After.

Happy Magical Monday!

Jacquie
Down Home Ever Lovin’ Mule Blues (See the Book Video)

Tags: plotting, point of view, POV, viewpoint, Writing