POV, that hateful bitch

[lunabee34]

One aspect of my writing that I continue to struggle with is POV. I have trouble remaining consistent with the POV I choose and have to proofread carefully for that mistake. Once I’ve chosen a POV, I have difficulty deciding how to include necessary information that the character from whose perspective I’ve chosen to write wouldn’t know. And then there’s the whole thing where I can’t seem to successfully manage any POV except third person limited.



My least favorite POV to read in fanfic is first person. First person feels too intimate for fanfic. As most of you know, fanfic for me is all about the self-insertion. I put myself in the place of one or more of the characters and so enjoy reading on two levels—one in which I am a voyeur/participant in a character’s body and the other more detached level on which I am appreciating plot and language and character insight, etc. When the fic is in first person, I feel like what I’m inhabiting is the author’s version of that character instead of the character. Which I know is an incredibly inarticulate way to say what I mean as of course all characters in fanfic are the products of their authors’ versions, regardless of POV. But first person feels too intimate, too close to me. I need the extra layer of distance that third person affords.

I usually don’t enjoy second person, mostly because I find it annoying and highly alienating to the reader. I also haven’t come across much fic written from this POV. However, I have read a handful of second person fics that I think work really well. For example: You Never Had it So by mandysbitch: You don’t ask Sam why he’s remembering Reno in Texas. Ten minutes ago he asked if you remembered the time he caught you getting a blowjob from a waitress behind a diner in Arkansas. You told him ‘no’ because there are some parts of your shared history that do not warrant nostalgia. Sam finds it amusing now, but at the time you were both horrified. He was thirteen and he still looked up to you. You liked to think you sheltered him.

I generally write from third person limited, and find myself worrying to an extraordinary degree (like scary out of proportion degree) that I remain consistently within the POV I’ve chosen. For example, the last SPN fic I wrote was from Dean’s perspective and included this line originally: Sam notices the clench of Dean’s jaw and relents. “You just had a twenty-four hour bug. Your fever was pretty high, and that’s probably why you don’t remember anything.” On proofreading, I changed the line to read: Sam finally remembers his survival instincts, or else notices the Very Serious clench of Dean’s jaw, and relents. “You just had a twenty-four hour bug. Your fever was pretty high, and that’s probably why you don’t remember anything.” I’ve never back-buttoned a fic because of a lapse in POV, or really even noticed that being much of an issue in fic that I read period, but apparently I am terrified that there’s some flame wielding contingent of fic readers who will immolate me if I’m not slavishly consistent to POV.

I think the second-most difficult POV to write from is third person omniscient. It seems like that should be the easiest POV to write. I certainly enjoy reading it. There I am inside everyone’s heads equally and nobody can keep any secrets from me, no sirree. But when I attempt to write from that POV, I invariably default to third person limited without even realizing it. I find it really difficult to stay inside the heads of an entire cast of characters when I’m writing.

Close third person is my absolute favorite and, I believe, the most difficult POV to write from. This is the third person limited POV in which both the narrative, expositiony bits and the dialogue are all written in the POV character’s voice. ana_grrl is the queen of this POV for me. (From The End that Crowns Us: "I'll haunt your gorram ass, don't think otherwise," he says, giving Jayne his best hard look. And Jayne, he's never believed in ghosts, but he figures that Mal would do something like that. Just to be difficult. Once he's dead, once the oxygen wears out, once his body's blue and frozen and drifting along in Serenity. But Jayne still ain't going to promise not to mess with Inara, once they're off in the shuttle. Hell, he knows better than her what needs to be done. He should be in charge. So he ain't making promises to a man what's going to be dead soon enough.) I’d never been able to get this POV to work for me until recently when I started writing in SPN. I tried with Firefly fic but bombed, mostly because I could get Jayne’s dialogue right, but couldn’t stop the narrative bits from waxing poetic in words the big lug would never dream of using.



All of which leaves me with the following questions:

*What are your issues with POV?
*What about the occasional and subtle lapse of POV in fic? Eyeball bleeding deal breaker? Doesn’t even register? Somewhere in between?
*What are your favorite and least favorite POVs to write from? To read? Why?
*What are your reasons for choosing to write in a certain POV? Do your POV choices change depending on the fandom, the character you’re highlighting, the plot of the fic, or something else?

Comments

[that_mireille]

(Here via metafandom):

*What about the occasional and subtle lapse of POV in fic? Eyeball bleeding deal breaker? Doesn’t even register? Somewhere in between?

Something in between. If it's occasional and subtle, it registers, but it's no worse than the occasional typo--it happens; nobody's perfect. If it's frequent and glaring, it's a deal-breaker. (If I'm beta-reading, all bets are off, and I will leave big red notes about the POV shifts, often with punctuation abuse: PICK A POV!!!!! (but then, the person I beta for most often is someone I know very well--I wouldn't be quite that emphatic to a stranger. ;) )

*What are your favorite and least favorite POVs to write from? To read? Why?

Writing: My favorite is a very close third-person. With particular characters who have very distinctive speaking styles, in fact, I find it hard *not* to write in close-third person. With others, I tend more toward a more distant third-person limited (though again, without that super-distinctive speaking style, it can be hard to tell). I've never thought of those as different POVs, though; I consider them both third-person limited, and the voice in the narrative passages to be a stylistic choice.

My least favorite would be first-person. I don't like writing it (either in fanfic or original fic).

Reading: I still prefer third-person limited. In original fic, I don't mind first-person at all; but in fanfic, it is my least favorite choice--unless it's a story written by an author I trust, or a story that requires it (an epistolary fic, for example), I don't read first-person fic. Second-person is off-putting as a rule, but when it's done *well,* it can be really effective, especially in something quite short.

*What are your reasons for choosing to write in a certain POV? Do your POV choices change depending on the fandom, the character you’re highlighting, the plot of the fic, or something else?

I can really only think of one time I didn't write in third-person limited, and that was a conscious stylistic choice. The entire story was built around a fortune-cookie fortune I got that read, "Suppose you can get what you want," and I used second-person for that. I think it worked, but I'm in no hurry to try it again.

But since you're considering close third-person to be a different POV to third-person limited... it does depend on character. There are certain characters I write that really *demand* of me that everything be expressed in their voice. Xander Harris is one of them. If I need a more detached POV for the narrative, I probably won't choose to write Xander's POV. (In fact, in a longer story that I'm working on, where there are multiple POVs (in different scenes), that's one of the reasons I choose to use/not use Xander's POV for a particular scene.)

In a shorter story, I tend to pick one POV and stay with it. In a longer story, I may opt for different POVs in different scenes (I stick with one POV per scene, generally), and I base it, a great deal, on "whose perceptions would add the most to this scene?" Does someone have knowledge they're not going to reveal out loud, but that the reader needs? Whose thoughts would be the most helpful in getting across what I'm trying to say? And sometimes, whose POV would avoid the most clunky dialogue where one character has to explain things to another at great length when there's no reason for him to even mention it, because the reader needs to know it?

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, you brought up something I should've mentioned in my post: epistolary fic. I don't mind first person in those, either. Somehow, when it's interspersed with third person narration, small chunks of first person don't read off to me. (Particularly in a fandom where we've seen the characters write letters to each other or make diary entries; I'm thinking HP here for a good example)

What is it about Xander's character that you think demands a close third person limited POV in your fic? I speculated above to musesfool that one of the reasons that Xander ends up narrating so much of Buffyfic is that he's not as emotionally guarded as, say, Angel, or Lindsay.

[that_mireille]

I think it's more of a failing of mine as a writer--I find Xander's voice very easy to write, and so when I'm in his POV, my natural instinct is to zoom in, and write the whole thing in his voice. I'm too lazy to work against that. *g*

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think it's a failing at all. I've read your work before and very much enjoy your Xander!voice.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Apart from Xander's relations to his emotions, or his delight in language, it's the "fray-adjacent" who get to do the war corresponding. Think of Henry V, where Henry had to ask the Herald who won the battle.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent point.