Point of View (POV)

> The birds sang cheerily but Amberyl didn't even notice them.

Our perceptions of the world need to be filtered through the senses of the POV. If Amberyl doesn't notice, we shouldn't notice.

> Even hunched over in pain, Amberyl was still an impressive sight.

Describing the POV as making an impressive sight begs the question; who is making that value judgement that Amberyl looks impressive and why are we in that person's head? Surely it isn't the POV who thinks of himself as impressive?

> Amberyl's grey eyes had a haunted look to them and his thick black hair appeared untidy.

He isn't looking in a mirror so we should not be getting a visual description like this. BTW, the old POV-looking-in-a-mirror-ploy just so that the author can tell us what the POV looks like is a sure way to mark yourself as a clumsy amateur.

> "Lady Megan." Prince Amberyl nodded in greeting.
> "Your Highness." Megan returned, curtseying deeply, just as her mother had taught her.

We shouldn't know anything about her motives, only her actions. The POV can guess at her motives, but we need to be privy to the knowledge he has which would lead him into that guess.

There are a lot of differing opinions on point of view. My personal opinion is that normally one POV is the best way to go for a character oriented story (which is the sort I usually write and read). A novel can support two POVs but they should be chapter based - one POV per chapter.

The story needs to be about the POV character. We see the story through his eyes. He needs to resolve the conflict. There is one exception I make to this rule, and that is the "outside focus" story.

My favorite example of this style of writing is the collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. Watson always tells the stories, but Sherlock is the focus. I believe that what that style requires in order to succeed is a focus character who clearly stands out and is fascinating enough that the readers want to be able to get to know him from the outside. Each story is not about a mystery being solved, but about Watson watching Holmes solve the mystery.

Nobody reading the Holmesian chronicles wants to *be* Holmes, they just want to watch him work. He's a fascinating man, and we can empathize with Watson's obvious admiration for him.

To some extent the same is true for David Weber's Honor Harrington series. Honor is a fascinating character to see from the outside, so readers love "meeting" her through the eyes of other characters. It is a much more demanding style because of the weight that the focus character must bear, and she must be an obviously *exceptional* person. That doesn't mean that she is perfect, which would be boring, but she must be much more interesting to readers than those around her.

This would be a case where multiple points of view could work. Since the focus is on a character other than the POVs, hopping around in their heads wouldn't be so disruptive since the focus is still the same from head to head. Honor Harrington is an excellent example of this. David's focus hops from secondary character to villain and back again, but the focus always remains on Honor.

An example of multiple POVs done unsuccessfully (IMVHO) is Robert Jordon's Wheel series. The reason it fails for me is that there is no central character, and therefore no human focus for the story. The events may tie together, but, like flies, the reader observes them from multisegmented eyes. More information is obtained that way, but the image is so fragmented that the beauty of the whole picture is lost. My interest in any one character is so diluted that I had very little sympathy for any of them.

One of the benefits of a limited POV is that there is more mystery in the writing. If you just pop into the head of whoever is the focus of the story at that time, you always know what all the major characters know. Figuring out why people do what they do is part of the fun of reading about them. If you are in their head you don't need to figure them out.

As mentioned above, sometimes the person the story is about (focus character) is not the POV character. This device should be used sparingly, and only when necessary.

Some possible reasons to use focus-not-POV:

• The focus character is so non-standard (so alien, so brilliant, so insane, etc) that you don't think you can accurately portray his thoughts.
• The focus character is not the sort of person whose head anyone would want to be inside.
• The story depends on a mystery which would be spoiled if we got inside the focus character's head.

Of the three, the last one is the weakest and the most likely to be misused. If the story is about a mystery it ought to be focusing on the person who is solving the mystery, which should be the POV.

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