lunabee34

Oh, man, POV. My most troubling issue lately is whose to write from. Most of my stories come with POV and tense attached - I "hear" the story in Dean's voice, or know it *has* to be in River's POV, etc. - but sometimes I just have the *idea* and can think of two or three different ways to tell it; then it becomes a matter of trying it out and seeing which fits, or stalling out before I even start because I can't decide.

I do find breaks in POV jarring, if only because my default reading/writing setting is third limited, and I've had it beaten into me by betas not to change POV in the middle of a scene, because it gets confusing, and it also breaks intimacy and flow. I will let one or two instances slip, but if it happens consistently in a story, or is a certain type of break (the really horrid kind where the person is describing themselves - "Dean's lambent green eyes glistened with a jewel-like sheen of tears as he watched Sam walk away and realized he might never see his brother again." or "Eowyn's hair glinted like molten gold in the moonlight as she waited for Faramir to come to her." - those are usually clear signs of a new writer) I'll likely back out of it in annoyance.

Third omniscient is hard, and I find it off-putting except in the hands of a really good author; too often it slips into multiple third limited without any delineation of who is actually telling the story, which is problematic for me, because then I spend time going, "but how did Y *know* what X was thinking?"

I have written in first person on rare occasion, but I really dislike it in fanfic - 1. it almost never sounds like the character as I hear him or her; 2. it becomes a crutch for the author, especially if they always write in first person from the same character's POV; 3. it tends to sound more like the author than the character.

Second person is...I've written successfully from second person POV once or twice, and I've seen it said that it's meant to foster intimacy, putting the reader right there in the character's shoes, but I feel it's a *distancing* technique on the part of the character. I think of it as a character telling a story, and saying "you" instead of "me" - so I think it only works with certain characters - Remus or Snape or Bruce Wayne - men who are very good at compartmentalizing in some ways - or certain situations that might be too traumatic for the character to relate in first or close third - River, perhaps.

Most of the time, badly written second person reads like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story, and that's just not what I'm looking for. And sometimes it just feels like the author is saying, "Hey look at me! Look how clever I am!" Which also happens sometimes with other stylistic experiments which in the end don't feel necessary to the telling of the story.

I think I manage a good, tight, in character third person POV most of the time - most especially from Mal's POV for some reason - I don't know why it's so easy for me to slip into his head, but it is, and I can write for days in his voice without slipping. I have a harder time with characters who are less prone to the sort of constant questioning - I hesitate to call what Mal does navel-gazing, but I do think he's prone to overthinking, and characters like that - Remus, Sam Winchester, etc. - are the best kinds to use as narrators. Writing from Zoe's POV, for whom action follows thought like breathing - not that she's not thoughtful, but that she's not going to analyse herself into paralysis, like Mal might - or Dean, who is going to avoid thinking about a lot of stuff if he can possibly help it, or Danny Ocean, who is always running a con on multiple layers, even inside his own head - those are the characters from whose POVs I find difficult to write, because opportunities for rumination and emotional exposition are nearly nil, and you have to express all that stuff in action, especially with someone like Dean or Danny, who is going to consistently conceal his actual feelings when speaking. A lot of that stuff is great in visual media, where you can see the clench of a jaw or fist, the slump of the shoulders straightening, the quick, furtive glance away before the not-quite meeting of someone else's gaze, but those are harder for me to convey in writing.