Monday, September 12, 2005
The Readers' Role in Deciding Point of View
Perhaps the advice given most often when selecting which character's point of view (POV) to write a scene in is: write it from the POV of the character with the most to lose.
It's good advice. But there are other sides to the POV coin. So many sides, in fact, that it might better be called a sphere. The issues this decision rests on wrap around each other and blend together like a ball of twine.
For one thing, the character with the most to lose may know a secret the writer isn't ready to reveal to the reader yet. Perhaps, for example, a husband packs for a business trip. The truth is he's on his way to rendezvous with another women. His wife acts almost desperate to convince him to change his mind about going. He wonders if she knows... The reader wonders if she knows... The wife certainly has the most to lose in the scene. But the writer may choose to maximize the suspense a while longer by not revealing what the wife truly knows about the trip, which (to play fair with readers) the writer would have to do if she wrote the scene from the wife's POV.
Another issue involves emotions. If a potential POV character is expressing raw emotion in a scene, it may benefit the story to pick another character's POV to witness it through. Give readers room to imagine what the emotional character is going through. Give them room to evoke and experience their own emotions about the scene.
But the key issue when deciding POV involves readers far more directly. Whose POV does the reader want to be in? In a romance, until recently, readers wanted to almost exclusively be in the heroine's POV from page one until The End. Then about twenty years ago things changed. The hero's POV began taking over scenes, and it's quite common if not outright expected for a romance novel to have both the hero and heroine's POV (but rarely a third character's). In the subgenre of romantic suspense, the POV situation is different still. Readers find extra tension in the inclusion of the bad guy's POV.
Readers in other genres expect and desire particular POVs, too. Readers of thrillers, for example, find the POV of the villain fascinating. Women's fiction and saga readers may desire to participate in the POVs of several family members.
When determining which character's POV to write a scene in, the savvy writer's primary concern isn't the characters or herself. It's the reader's response to the POV choice.
It's good advice. But there are other sides to the POV coin. So many sides, in fact, that it might better be called a sphere. The issues this decision rests on wrap around each other and blend together like a ball of twine.
For one thing, the character with the most to lose may know a secret the writer isn't ready to reveal to the reader yet. Perhaps, for example, a husband packs for a business trip. The truth is he's on his way to rendezvous with another women. His wife acts almost desperate to convince him to change his mind about going. He wonders if she knows... The reader wonders if she knows... The wife certainly has the most to lose in the scene. But the writer may choose to maximize the suspense a while longer by not revealing what the wife truly knows about the trip, which (to play fair with readers) the writer would have to do if she wrote the scene from the wife's POV.
Another issue involves emotions. If a potential POV character is expressing raw emotion in a scene, it may benefit the story to pick another character's POV to witness it through. Give readers room to imagine what the emotional character is going through. Give them room to evoke and experience their own emotions about the scene.
But the key issue when deciding POV involves readers far more directly. Whose POV does the reader want to be in? In a romance, until recently, readers wanted to almost exclusively be in the heroine's POV from page one until The End. Then about twenty years ago things changed. The hero's POV began taking over scenes, and it's quite common if not outright expected for a romance novel to have both the hero and heroine's POV (but rarely a third character's). In the subgenre of romantic suspense, the POV situation is different still. Readers find extra tension in the inclusion of the bad guy's POV.
Readers in other genres expect and desire particular POVs, too. Readers of thrillers, for example, find the POV of the villain fascinating. Women's fiction and saga readers may desire to participate in the POVs of several family members.
When determining which character's POV to write a scene in, the savvy writer's primary concern isn't the characters or herself. It's the reader's response to the POV choice.
