“Point of view problems” are one of those things that a lot of editors and beta readers cite, expecting the writer to know what the phrase means. If you take it apart, though, it assumes a fair bit of theoretical knowledge, as well as the practical skill to apply it. So let’s unpack it a bit.
“Point of view” can refer to two different-but-related things. The first is who the viewpoint character is, as in “Who’s the point of view in this scene?” The second is the type of viewpoint it is, first-person, second person (rarely), or some variety of third person.
“Viewpoint problems” means the reader thinks the writer is violating the constraints of whatever viewpoint the writer has chosen. This can occur with either of the meanings of viewpoint: If the writer is violating constraints of viewpoint character, they’re switching to someone else in mid-scene, or head-hopping; if the writer is violating the type of viewpoint, they’re switching from first-person to third-person (which is usually easy to spot, though I’ve seen this kind of POV bobble in actual published books), or from one sort of third-person to another sort (which is much harder to spot).
The problem with all this is that the “rules” for viewpoint are not clear-cut. Take head-hopping as an example. I can’t recall reading a single published murder mystery in which the author does this. In science fiction and fantasy, I’ve seen head-hopping occasionally, but it is generally considered a symptom of “bad writing” and looked down on when an author does it. In Romance novels, though, limited head-hopping is not only acceptable, but almost an expected convention.
Even viewpoint type gets a bit squishy at times. It is really easy to spot (and avoid) switches from first- or second-person to any of the other types. (“I went through the dead man’s pockets. His pants pockets held nothing to interest me, but in his jacket pocket you find a letter and a bill for $22.19 from a health club.”) Third-person, though, is a problem because it is a continuum, with highly filtered, almost-first-person tight-third at one end and completely omniscient at the other end, with no real dividing lines along the way.
So when an editor or reader says that a story has viewpoint problems, it can mean that 1) The writer has switched from one viewpoint character to another in mid-scene (while using a viewpoint other than omniscient), violating the “one viewpoint character per scene” convention; 2) The writer has violated the constraints of whatever type of viewpoint they have chosen, either by switching types (from first-person to third-person, for instance) or by doing something that is not appropriate to whatever variety of third-person they have chosen to write in (if you are writing in camera-eye, you can’t suddenly give a character’s thoughts directly, as that is something a camera can’t see); or 3) The reader has mistaken what the writer was doing – the POV character for the scene really was George right from the start, but the reader presumed it was Sally at the beginning, so when it became obvious that it was George, the reader perceived it as a switch, or the reader presumed that the story was camera-eye or tight-third, when the writer intended it as omniscient all along.
In order to fix any of these, the writer first has to know what they meant to do. That is, the writer has to be clear what type of viewpoint he/she is using (first-person, second-person, tight-third, limited third, camera-eye, omniscient, etc.), and who the viewpoint character is for each scene. Yes, there is a viewpoint character even for camera-eye and omniscient – for camera-eye, the viewpoint is the invisible camera; for omniscient, it can be variously God, the author, or a character outside the story who knows everything. The writer has to know these things because you can’t tell where you have violated constraints if you don’t know what constraints you have chosen to use.
Rather than repost here the nine-page handout on viewpoint that I used for my classes, I suggest than anyone who does not know what camera-eye, tight-third, etc. are should go here (Edit: OK, that wasn’t working, so instead go up to the menu and click “links,” and then go down the list to “Pat’s summary of viewpoint” and click that, and you’ll be there. Folks with RSS feeds will either have to go to the web site or wait until my guru gets back and figures out how to make the in-line link work again.) and then maybe take a quick look through some of the older posts about viewpoint.
As I said, it is generally pretty easy to spot viewpoint problems in first- or second-person, whether the problem is a shift from one POV character to a different one or a shift from first-person to third-person. Often, this kind of thing happens when the author has recast a scene from third-person to first-person and missed catching a line or two, or when the writer decided in mid-scene that George would really be the better viewpoint but forgot to go back and fix the first few paragraphs.
The real problems come with third-person, because even though you have a particular viewpoint character, the narration feels as if it is coming from the outside. “I did this” is me (or the POV character) telling you what I did; “He did this” feels like me, the narrator, telling you what the character did, even if that character is supposed to be the POV/narrator. Because it feels as if it is outside, it is easy to slide from “He never takes me seriously, Sally thought” to “George shook his head, wondering where Sally came up with these notions” without quite recognizing that one is, in both cases, reporting the characters’ thoughts, and that in a tight-third-person viewpoint, your viewpoint character won’t know what the other one is thinking unless they are a telepath (and in camera-eye, the camera doesn’t know what either one is thinking).
Again, the first thing to do is to make a firm decision about exactly where on the continuum of third-person viewpoints you are writing. Often, the “problem” with a third-person viewpoint is that the author is writing something that falls in the fuzzy gray area between, oh, a highly filtered tight-third-person and a somewhat looser, unfiltered but still focused third-person. This can certainly be done successfully, but if your editors and beta readers are coming back to you with “you have viewpoint problems” comments, you are not doing it successfully. The simplest solution is to shift the viewpoint up or down the continuum of third-person so that you aren’t writing in the fuzzy gray area.
The most common problems seem to arise with writing tight-third-person and randomly floating out of the POV character’s viewpoint. If you are trying to write tight-third and having horrible, horrible trouble seeing where you slide out of viewpoint, it can be helpful to rewrite a couple of the most problematic scenes in first-person. It is usually pretty easy to tell that “That’s odd, I thought” is fine, but that “George looked at me and thought, That’s odd” is not something “I” would know. If you still can’t see a problem, pick one of the characters and rewrite the scene as a letter from that character to one of the others, paying particular attention to the sentences you have to change in order to get it to work as a letter.
If it’s camera-eye you’re having trouble with, try doing a search on every synonym for “think/thought” and “feel/felt” that you can think of. Basically, you have to train yourself to notice when your viewpoint is sliding around, and one way of doing that is to force yourself into a viewpoint like first-person that has even tighter constraints on the troublesome part than whatever you are using. It is almost always easier to loosen up from a tighter viewpoint than to tighten up from a looser viewpoint.
Which brings me to omniscient, and Problem #3 (when the reader has mistaken what the writer is trying to do). I will deal with that next post, or this one will be huge, but at this point I do wish to emphasize that #3 is not a problem with the reader. It is still a writing problem. It just isn’t quite the same writing problem as the first two
I’ve been scrutinizing some of my favorite books (reader favorites), but with my writer hat on. It’s been really interesting. My absolute favorite author writes in tight third person. As a reader I perceive that it is so, and she herself describes her work thusly.
As a reader, I simply enjoyed her stories and accepted the tight third as a given.
Looking more closely, as a writer, I can see that her viewpoint actually drifts between tight third person and looser-but-focused third person.
As you say: “This can certainly be done successfully…” And clearly my favorite author is doing it successfully. So successfully that I never even noticed it until I looked at her work from my writer stance.
What I noticed was that she sticks to tight third person through the heart of each scene, but often loosens her focus in the transitions. She never gives the thoughts of someone not the current POV character. Nor does she “show” things that the POV character couldn’t see or know. It’s more a pulling back of the character’s focus from the immediate interaction (whatever it was) to a wider focus of the surrounding landscape and other people. It’s subtle, but it’s definitively there. As a reading writer, I perceive the focus as looser and more “outside.”
The reason I was looking at this was that I noticed in my own stories that the POV was looser in the transitions than in the heart of the scene, and I was worried about it. None of my beta readers had ever uttered a peep about it. They didn’t seem to notice. But I noticed. And wanted to know if this slight loosening was something other writers do. Seeing that my favorite does so was reassuring.
You, or more likely your web-wallah, need to fix the link to your nine-page treatise on viewpoint; it appears not to be working.
Specifically, the link has an extraneous slash between “pc” and “wrede”.
“Ah, now the point I wanted to make in the first place”, Gene thought …
I was a member of Toastmasters International for about five years. One thing that I frequently heard speech evaluators saying was a complaint about vocal variety (presumably the lack thereof) and without any examples. It was not just for my speeches so that was not it. It seemed to me that when someone could not think of a negative point — always have to have one — the person would use this. Without any examples, it was fairly useless.
I mention that because “You have viewpoint problems” has that same feel to it. This means that if you do get this comment, you should pull for more data.
And this will teach me to read all the comments before I do stuff. Thank you, Gene; the extra slash was indeed the problem, and the link should be working now. I left the edit with step-by-step directions in, though, just in case.
Dang. It’s on the links page; I put directions in the post.
Mighty Old Bones by Mary Saums is a murder mystery that switches between two characters’ heads in alternate chapters. It’s the second mystery with those characters.
Switching viewpoint characters between scenes or chapters is not head-hopping; it’s multiple viewpoint. Head-hopping is the kind of thing Tiana is describing below, where it is clear that George is the viewpoint for the scene, but suddenly we’re getting what Sally thinks and how Jennifer feels, even though George can’t know any of that.
I’m trying to think if Heyers head-hops in her mysteries. I’ve only read the one, and I think she might’ve done it a little. (But she’s good at it, so it wasn’t intrusive, IIRC.)
The most common problem I seem to find is when the viewpoint is written in tight third or first, but then the author randomly interjects what another character thought about something. I recently read a super popular series where this happened and kept scratching my head.
I try to stay in one person’s head per scene (really aiming for camera eye most of the time), but the words sometimes snake out when I’m not paying close enough attention. It can be subtle and hard to catch, as in this example:
“I’ve often wondered—why did your people send only one man? Why not a squad, or a regiment?”
“We reasoned that way there’d be less of a chance of provoking a fight. A group of humans thrown in among a pack of wolf-kin…. You have to admit, that’d be a volatile arrangement.”
“Whereas if just you piss us off, it’s one quick death, and it’s over with. Is that it? Are you that expendable?”
Was she ribbing him, or was it a legitimate curiosity? [Grissom POV] Grissom smiled ruefully, took a deep breath. “I like to think I’m of some worth to my people. But that may have been part of their rationale, yes.”
Sonja looked at him in that studied way of hers, and he knew he was being read again. “What?”
She turned her head. “Just that a bit ago you said ‘we’, as though you had something to do with the decision, and just now you said ‘they’, implying that your superiors guard all the bones.”
Grissom nodded. “For the most part, we all have our say, but the final decisions always lie with those in power.”
“Even if you disagree with what they say?”
“Even if we disagree.” He held his hands open in front of him, but close to his body, as though he were showing her something but not offering it to her. [Sonja’s POV] “We choose people to represent us, and we rely on them for their wisdom and guidance. We give them authority with the understanding that we will abide by their judgement as long as it serves the greater good for the long term.”
Sonja looked back at him and shook her head. “Yours are a very strange people, Grissom.”
“I won’t deny that.”
I don’t know how to classify this problem; in fact, I’m not entirely sure that it is a problem. What say you?
Head-hopping. One scene, two different POVs.
They both seemed to be Grissom’s view-ish to me. I didn’t have a problem with it.
If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to take this apart in a post, probably next week. The short version is that you are using an omniscient technique; if you intend this to be omniscient, then it’s perfectly fine. If you intend it to be tight-third…well, it isn’t. Next post will be on omniscient, and the one after that gets back to the third “POV problems” problem.
That would be more than lovely. Indeed, I’d be honored to be skewered. 🙂
Mmm … wolf kebab. And some will think it a nice change from Christmas turkey.
I am looking forward to what Patricia has to write about this. I think that the POV switch is just a bit off, but I might not have noticed the offness had the POV switch not been pointed out.
Georgette Heyer head-hops with startling frequency in some of her Regency books, to the point of serious confusion. I think the modern “one POV per scene” requirement is more recent than we are willing to admit.
Agreed.
Another place where head-hopping may be not only more expected, but potentially required is in adaptations of graphic novels. E.g., the first ElfQuest novel, which was based on the first collected book (first 5-10 issues, I think?). Since sometimes the viewpoint would switch around between the many characters, even to the point of thought bubbles (or at least thought-bubbles with stormclouds) of different people, in the same or adjacent panels, well… Head-hopping!
The second novel was much less satisfying to me, because they tried to stick to viewpoints as per a novel, and not an adaptation.
Heyer writes in omniscient, and very good omniscient at that. (I think of this as “British Omniscient”, since so many Brit writers seem to do it well.) It’s also, hm, an older standard technique; a lot of 19th C. stuff, when not direct memoir or first person, tends to this by default.
There are also interesting variants possible with how much there is a separate authorial/narrator’s voice, explicit or implied, in either third or omniscient. Tight third, it seems to me, suppresses the authorial voice to the maximum extent possible, giving over that space to the POV character.
But I see Pat is taking this on next-post, so I’ll leave it to her.
Ta, L.
I’ve always wondered whether Dorothy L. Sayers is writing omniscient or limited third but head-hopping occasionally. The one that made me come down on the side of “omniscient, but usually in Lord Peter’s view” is “Murder Must Advertise,” where she expands out at the ends of several chapters to either other characters’ thought or general commentary about advertising. I’ve never found it confusing, however.
I’m looking forward to the next post on the omniscient point-of-view. My current WIP is my first attempt at omniscient, and I have no idea if it’s working or whether it’ll end up reading like head-hopping…
I’m not sure that all the books are written in the same point of view. Perhaps they are all omniscient, but they vary a lot about how close they cling to the point of view characters.
Charles Todd does a bit of head-hopping in his Ian Rutledge mysteries, but I’ve never found it jarring or confusing. The books are told in mostly-tight third-person with Rutledge as the primary POV character (though occasionally–especially in the beginning of a book–there may be chapters or scenes centering on a different character’s POV), but even in scenes where we’re obviously in Rutledge’s head, we occassionally get a peek at another characters thoughts or feelings. It’s done very well, though, and feels seamless enough that you almost don’t notice it unless you’re actually looking for it.
I’ve found, on occasion, when editing my own or other people’s work, that a lot of viewpoint problems aren’t one of type but one of degree. When doing head-hopping, or even mixed viewpoint, it’s incredibly important to make the transitions clear.
I’ve also found that I really don’t like the forced omniscient narrator, where he ‘tells’ you exactly what the characters are thinking. “Joe thought that this was the silliest thing he’d seen in his life. But Sam thought about just how much he’d like to jump off a roof too.” I know this is a plausible option, and I’m sure in competent hands it could work just fine and be unobtrusive, but I think the very strong narrator voice combined with looking into heads just begs the question ‘why does the narrator know so much’.
I’m listening to the audio book of the Dangerous Women anthology and came across a point of view switch that gave me a few confusing moments … I had to rewind to figure out what was going on. It was Melinda Snodgrass’s story The Hands That Are Not There. I confess that the story is Not My Cup of Tea, and my mind had wandered, but the author’s choice continued to bother me. Short story is that the POV character (third person) meets a guy in a bar who tells a story. She chooses to use the same third person POV for the story teller. It was confusing, because there was at least one instance where it shifts back to POV 1, then back to the storyteller. I can’t help but think that if the story teller’s story was switched to first person (which does seem to be a bit of a convention for good reason, I think), the whole thing would have been more successful, from this reader’s perspective.
OTOH, there is a charming story called Nora’s song by Cecelia Holland, told from the POV of Nora, one of Henry II’s children, at about 6 years old. A masterful job of limiting the view to the experience of a child.
Very interesting anthology – worth a read/listen
Victoria: IIRC that in _Murder Must Advertise_, except for the scene you mentioned, where a very omniscient author/goddess is reading everybody’s mind, the POV is either what Ld. Peter is thinking, or a very close camera-view of what he’s doing. No, I take that back, there’s one scene where Ginger Joe is the POV character … but Sayers does it in such a way that I don’t *think* anybody would be confused.
Anthony Boucher did the same in _The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars,_ with one scene in which an omniscient viewer (characterized as Asmodeus) listens to what each of the suspects (and a few others) is doing/thinking, and concludes that even Asmodeus would not be able to tell from what he overheard, who was the murderer.
And I think Boucher may have done that in one or two of his other mysteries, but I can’t put a finger on them at the moment.
There’s very minor head-hopping in the romantic suspense novel “Montana Sky” — but it never takes place during the mystery bits, and it’s not a problem to see who is thinking/doing what. It’s usually limited third person with A LOT of multiple viewpoints — I think at least five, and maybe more. The novel has three couples, two “bad guys”, and IIRC, it starts in the POV of a gossipy neighbor lady at a funeral. You have to admire Nora Roberts for being able to juggle that many viewpoints AND to make them all distinct voices.
(-: I’m afraid some of my multiple viewpoint characters all start to sound like the same person: me.
Looking forward to seeing the omniscient post! Most of the omniscient stories I know of are 19th century . . . . I kind of wish it’d creep back into fashion — the skillful version, of course.
I have a friend who makes a good living as a professional fantasy writer, with numerous books in print. Her prose is evocative and her stories engaging — but she is flagrant head-hopper. Far from restraining herself to one viewpoint per scene, she often changes VP within a paragraph—and in some cases in her latest offering, within a single sentence. Every time she does it, it throws me out of the story, and I find myself a bit irritated by it.
I know editors do not spend as much time massaging a book as they used to, but this seems fundamental and is not something I would let pass were I in charge of the book. Do editors simply not care about POV? Is this a thing now?
I write tight third, varying randomly among my three characters (one per scene), and the hardest thing I do each time is to change pov characters so I can write the next scene.
The harder it is to change, the more successful I was at ‘being’ a different character in the previous scene.
For some reason this still catches me by surprise – and, until I manage the switch, the new scene refuses to come together.
Wouldn’t do it any other way. I LIKE being three people.
I just finished P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberly, which mimics Jane Austen’s somewhat detached, omniscient narrative style for a murder mystery. It was interesting.
Mind you, I don’t know that I’m recommending it: the dialogue, on the whole, was not as good as Austen’s, and the infodumps (both in dialogue and in the narration) were not as well handled, probably because there were a lot more of them in order to explain things, many of which Austen’s readers would have already known. And possibly that’s also a stylistic difference between what it necessary: I think Austen elided details when possible, whereas the mystery genre requires them.