We confess. When we first began writing our mystery, an editor pointed out that we were playing fast and loose with POV. Huh?
We immediately Googled the term, POV, and discovered that it referred to a Point of View. Okay, sure, we had a point of view on many issues. For example, we're pretty firm in our belief that in a mystery, a corpse needs to appear within the first 50 pages.
But alas, the editor wasn't asking our opinion on dead bodies or anything else. We soon discovered that in writing fiction, every scene should have a clear POV.
And that's when we took the proverbial red pen to our writing and got serious about POV. The result: a much tighter, more focused book because we made sure that the POV was clear.
Once we understood the concept, we realized that as readers, most of us recognize when a scene's POV is confusing. It's those moments in a story when you're not quite sure through whose eyes you're seeing the action unfold and whose emotions are being revealed. And that's important because you want to make a clear connection through your characters to your readers.
It doesn't mean that you only need to have a single character's point of view throughout your book. You may choose to do that – and that's a perfectly fine approach. Our short story,
I Try Not to Drive Past Cemeteries, is written in the first person and everything is from the point of view of Brianna Sullivan, a funny, aassy, smart psychic detective. What that means, however, is if Brianna doesn't see it happen – neither does the reader. Everything is channeled, physically and emotionally, through her.
If your book is going to have multiple POVs, which is the approach we use for Murder Off the Books, then all the POV characters need to be well developed and unique. The POV of an incidental character – the unnamed bus driver who drives by the murder scene – is rarely interesting. If the reader is going to be parked in a character's head for any amount of time, you must invest time and words in that character. Above all else there must be a reason for using a particular character's POV. It must advance the storyline in a way that cannot be achieved through the POV of other characters.
As in most things, less is more. The fewer POV characters you have in a book, the easier it is for the reader to know and care about your characters.
How do you check to make sure you aren't mixing POVs in the same scene? Watch out for the random insertions of thoughts, feelings, and motivations. Only your POV character gets to have those. All the other characters in the scene are limited to physical actions. For example - Paula saw the dog follow the cat under the buffet table. (No POV established in that line of text.) But check out the difference in this line of text. Once the dog followed the cat under the buffet table, Paula knew a fight was about to break out. (Paula's POV is established.) Watch out for key words such as believed, worried, knew, thought, dreamed, planned, and felt. If the reader knows what "Paula" thought, then Paula is a POV character.
Here are three other tips that will help you score an A in the POV test.
1. One POV per scene is best. Don't jump around from one character's head to another. You'll give your reader a headache or at least make them confused and nauseous.
2. Don't break rule one unless you know what you're doing and even then – don't. For example, if the POV character (whose thoughts, emotions, and dreams the reader has been experiencing for over half the book) walks out of the room, the reader doesn't get to know the emotions of the maid who watches him leave. A POV error jars the reader out of the plot. It's like throwing cold water on your reader. She may not be able to identify exactly what's wrong with the writing, but as the icy moisture trickles down her back, she senses something is wrong.
3. Establish the POV early in the scene, usually in the first or second paragraph. Readers like to know through whose eyes they are seeing the world. If you want to change POV, change the scene.
As 2006 winds down, we look forward with giddy anticipation to March 2007 and the debut of Murder Off the Books. During this holiday season, we are grateful for your support and encouragement. We wish for each of you that your days be merry and bright and all your dreams come true.
Evelyn David 