Multiple POV or not? Why does it matter?

I've written here before about using multiple points of view, and all the things it can be good for. I love using more than one point of view because I love the way it can drive the plot by exacerbating the sense of misunderstanding at the same time that it lets me have special confidentiality with my reader.

But it is not always the right thing to do.

In the story I'm working on right now, there used to be more than one point of view. Why? Several reasons:

• I like doing it.
• I like alien point of view! It's fun!
• I like knowing how all my characters think, especially my aliens. It helps me characterize them more effectively.
• It helps my readers identify with my major characters

Ok, great. So I was rather dismayed when my critique partners said the alien point of view wasn't working. It was difficult to read, that I already knew, but the worst part was that it was giving away too much to those who understood it, and leaving behind those who didn't.

Not a good sign.

It wasn't until I took it out that I realized there was yet another reason why I should never have had it in the story in the first place. This story is called "The Liars." The main alien character, Op, is a "Liar." So obviously one of the main questions of the story is whether Op is really a liar or not, and what that means.

Putting the point of view in her head seriously weakened the story, because it answered that very important question right up front, thus taking away one of the major story drivers.

The minute I took the point of view out, I knew it sounded better, but the further I went into the revision, the more sure I became that the story was stronger. Now my human protagonists can agonize about whether Op is trustworthy or not. Now they can pursue her, trying to determine whether she is being truthful. They can distrust her. She can switch between being perceived as protagonizing or antagonizing. That uncertainty is doing wonderful things for the entire story.

If you're considering writing with multiple points of view, think about it from more than one angle. Not just "what readers need to know" but also "what readers shouldn't know." Ask yourself, "Does including this point of view serve the themes of my story?" "Does adding this point of view drive the story and make it stronger, or divert and dilute the story and make it weaker?"

These aren't easy questions to answer, but they are certainly worth asking.

TTYU Retro: Multiple Points of View? (originally appeared at The Sharp Angle)

Multiple Points of View?

This article originally appeared at Lydia Sharp's wonderful blog, The Sharp Angle on November 12, 2010. I highly recommend Lydia's blog for writing folk - she's insightful, cool and fun.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk about point of view - specifically, about times when we might be tempted to use more than one viewpoint character.

I use multiple points of view all the time, and I love doing it, but not all of my stories require it. For example, my Analog 2008 story "Let the Word Take Me" uses two viewpoint characters, as does "At Cross Purposes" (Analog Jan/Feb 2011). "The Eminence's Match" used five viewpoint characters (Panverse, 2010) - but "Cold Words" only used one (Analog Oct. 2009). This is not just chance; it's choice. Thus, in this post, the issues I want to deal with are why a writer would choose to use more than one point of view, and how they might go about it.

Let's start with the most basic question. Why would you choose to use more than one point of view character?

The most obvious reason is that a single point of view is limiting. I've seen lots of stories (and story drafts) where authors departed from a single point of view in order to divulge information that the reader couldn't learn from the primary point of view character. To my mind, though, information isn't really the best reason to change points of view. Point of view does place limitations on how information is presented - that's true. But those limitations can actually help you by keeping the story focused, and allowing you to maintain a sense of mystery without appearing to withhold information deliberately from the reader. If information was all you were after, you could always drop clues in the environment of your viewpoint character - clues that the reader would understand, but that the character wouldn't necessarily draw conclusions from.

So, when might it be a good idea to use more than one point of view character?

It might be a good idea if:
1. ...you want to show how your protagonist appears to others.
2. ...your main viewpoint character is unreliable.
3. ...the contrast between your protagonist's viewpoint and another person's viewpoint is central to the story conflict.
4. ...you want to show precisely how dangerous your antagonist is.

I've seen each of these different reasons used to justify introducing an additional point of view. C.S. Friedman used what I'd call a throwaway point of view - one that appeared for a single scene only - in her novel, In Conquest Born. It turned out to be a very effective way to show just how powerful and attractive yet cold-blooded her male protagonist was. I suppose this could be categorized as a combination of 1 and 4 (he was a sort of anti-protagonist).

You don't have to restrict yourself to one reason to introduce a new point of view character. It's often good if you can use more than one, or all four! In The Eminence's Match, both of the two main points of view are unreliable (#2). Imbati Xinta is unreliable because he's got bad self-esteem, which makes it important to do a little bit of #1, showing what he looks like through other people's eyes. The Eminence, our antagonist, is unreliable because he's mentally ill, which makes him a good candidate for both #1 and #4. Furthermore, the contrast between the two of them is also very important to the resolution of the central conflict, which falls under #3.

There are some things to watch out for. Throwaway viewpoint characters can disorient readers, because they can confuse them as to who is most important, and where the main conflict of the story is. I don't tend to use them at all, and certainly they need to be clearly distinguished from major viewpoint characters.

For a major viewpoint character to work, the character has to be strong enough to handle the attention. Most importantly to my mind, the character has to have goals and stakes independent of those belonging to another viewpoint character.

When I first imagined writing "Cold Words," I imagined there would be both human and non-human points of view - but not for any particularly good reason. I figured the contrast between them might be helpful for driving the story. However, my lovely friend Janice Hardy pointed out that humans had very little to gain in the story. Nothing that readers would really care about. The one who had everything to gain, and everything to lose, was the alien character. I therefore changed my mind and stuck with the single point of view. Then when I started designing "At Cross Purposes" I spent a lot of time trying to understand what each of the characters had to gain and lose in the story scenario - because I knew that both had to have independent goals and stakes for the story to work well. I managed to find these independent motivations, and therefore I kept both points of view in the story.

So what does a point of view switch allow you to do?

The list is longer than I can go into here, but I'll tell you what it does that I particularly like. It allows me to show the same situation from two different viewpoints, and show readers precisely how one character fails to understand the way the other one conceptualizes the situation. In fact, similar situations of misunderstanding underlie each of my Analog stories. Here's an example (not from an Analog story!):

Person A walks into a guarded room where Person B is reading, and Person A gets grabbed by the guard. Person B sees a potential friend being abused, takes a risk to get the guard to release Person A, and then starts up a friendly conversation with her. Person A happens to be in disguise, looking for something particular in this guarded room, and Person B is not a potential friend at all, but very dangerous. In fact, as readers know from visiting Person B's head, he isn't just dangerous, but could have her killed with a word.

Perhaps you can see the kind of tension set up by the contrast between the way the two people misunderstand this situation, as readers wonder if and when each person is going to find out the truth.

The last thing I need to mention here is "head-hopping." The term is actually a criticism of out-of-control switches in point of view. I often see people recommend that writers stick with a single point of view for the duration of a scene, or of a chapter, rather than jumping from one viewpoint to another without warning. While this is good advice, it's not for everyone. Some authors are able to control their viewpoint switches well enough to give sufficient warning - that way no one gets confused, and the switch occurs without any trouble. For example, Frank Herbert's Dune switches around point of view quite a bit, but I never found it disorienting (as I explain here in a Ridiculously Close Look).

What I'd like to add to the discussion is that, as a writer, you can send a message not only by setting up contrasting points of view, but picking when you switch between them. You can break off one viewpoint and switch to another at a moment when the second person is secretly doing something that will really hurt - or help - the first one. You can break off when one character is wondering about the other, and show a contrast between character A's expectations and what character B is actually doing. Or you can even switch when both characters are in the middle of an interaction with each other, such as switching from one to the other just when character A becomes suspicious of, or falls for, or attacks, character B. This creates a situation where you can treat the reader to witnessing both the motive for the action of A on B, and the reaction of B to that. If you happen to be switching chapters at the same time, that can make for a fabulous cliffhanger!

Those are my thoughts for today - I'd love to hear yours.

Point of view and characterization mean divorcing from yourself

I got over a hump in my story yesterday. There was a piece that wasn't working, because I couldn't figure out what my protagonist Adrian's reaction would be to one of the story events. Whenever this happens, it's a sign that something isn't holding together earlier in the story. I went back over it several times and talked through it with friends, and after quite a long while I realized I had missed a step in Adrian's thought process - the point at which he went from thinking the word "liar" was an insult to realizing that "Liar" was a name for a social group. Because my story's climax depends on Adrian fully understanding who the Liars are and what they do, developing this thought process for him is critical to my success. Furthermore, each change in his understanding has to happen on screen, so that my readers can follow it.

So what does this have to do with divorcing from yourself? Well, the reason why I got lost in the first place was that as the author, I have all the pieces of the puzzle already. I know the answer, and all the levels of it. I had put together all kinds of steps from Adrian encountering the social group of the Liars to him understanding what it was for... I had just omitted the step where he realizes for the first time that it is a social label. It sneaked by me because I was concentrating so hard on all those other steps. In order to get this to work for readers, I have to step outside myself into Adrian's point of view so completely that I can understand what he learns and when he learns it (and how) without being blinded by my own knowledge.

Standing outside yourself is hard, especially when it comes to fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality.

I remember the first novel protagonist I ever attempted. I had a scene where she was walking out of a vehicle into a beautiful field of golden grass at sunset. She was loving how beautiful it was, ignoring all the people around her, feeling the free air, etc. All the things I myself would have done in her situation. The problem was, she wasn't me. She was a character from the undercaste of Varin - someone who lived underground, had never seen the sun or felt air move except when it was moved by a vehicle. Moreover, she was someone constantly at risk of abuse or persecution by people around her. What the heck was she doing ignoring people and walking out full of wonder and joy into a field at sunset? The result was that she didn't feel like she belonged in the world, and she didn't feel like she could be the age she was.

The age question is a subtle point, and something that many people run into. It's one thing to tell readers that your protagonist is a certain age. "She's nineteen," you say (however you choose to fit it in). But having her act like she's nineteen is something else. The way I wrote my protagonist in the field scene might have worked with her age if she'd been an Earthly nineteen-year-old. But given the social situation of Varin, that kind of attitude made my protagonist feel like she was much younger and more naïve. At the time my critique partners told me she didn't seem like she was nineteen, and I couldn't figure out why they hadn't "noticed" when I specified her age. But then one of the more analytical of them told me that someone of her age in Varin would have learned quite a bit more caution, fear, and manners... and that those would be on her mind in this scene in addition to a natural fear of the surface and the outdoors. This kind of questioning of very basic assumptions is one reason why it's taken me so long to make Varin work to my satisfaction - so many of the assumptions are different that I can't be consciously mindful of all of them at once. I have to identify assumptions, change them, get used to them and learn to use them subconsciously...and then identify the next level, and go through the process all over again.

Really I don't think characterization, point of view, and worldbuilding can be separated from one another. They are all deeply inter-related. Your character has to "come across" to readers in a particular way within the context of your world. Yes, you won't be able to avoid certain aspects of the real world coming in, as readers bring a lot of real world assumptions to their reading. But that's just another reason why worldbuilding is so important to your character's success (as a character). As you introduce your character, you also have the opportunity to introduce those aspects of his/her social context that provide background for the interpretation of their character that you want readers to take away with them. And in order to do this, you need to get as far as possible outside yourself, your basic knowledge sets, and even your knowledge of where the story is going.

It's something to think about.

Re-envisioning a scene without rewriting it (originally appeared at The Other Side of the Story)

I'm going to talk about situations where you want to re-envision a scene without actually rewriting it completely.

To explain what I mean, I'll start by telling you about an interesting - and to me somewhat baffling - experience I had a few years ago. I met a young and talented writer in an online writing community and happily agreed to look at some of her work. I liked a lot about the story, the characters, etc. It did have issues, though, so on a couple of sections I gave her an in-depth critique, with my opinions, including how she might go about changing it to sharpen the focus. For each section she thanked me and sent me a revised version.

The revised versions were completely different.

It wasn't rephrasing, or even reworking. The scenes had been moved to entirely different locations, and just about everything about them was different. Again, they were quite well-written, but with issues. At that point I didn't know what comment to make any more, because I was terrified that I'd make her feel she had start all over for a second time.

What I tried to tell her then (with my apologies!) is what I'm trying to explain now. You don't need to start over. You can completely change the significance of a scene - what the scene means to the rest of the story - while hardly changing anything that happens in it. All you have to do is change what the events mean to your protagonist.

I have an example for you - I spent quite a while finding this one in my old files, but I had to. Why? Because Janice Hardy mentioned this very sequence when she asked me to do this post, which originally appeared as a guest post on her blog. In this scene, Dana is trying to make friends with her new roommate, Shannon. This tiny interaction went through four different iterations as I tried to figure out how Dana felt about Shannon's interest in the fact that she writes notes in her novels. Here's how it starts:

"Well," I [Dana] said, "a lot of famous authors write in their books. It's a sign of active engagement in the message."
And she didn't miss a beat. She put her hands on her hips and said, "God, Dana! 'Active engagement in the message' - that's awesome, you should totally major in English."

What changed was the few sentences that followed, specifically Dana's reaction to Shannon's comment. Here are the four versions, and my summary of the effect produced:

Version 1:
"Yeah, maybe," I said, all daring. "I love to write." For a second I thought that was it, I'd done it, my year with her was made.
And then Brian walked in the door.
Summary: Dana tries to be brave enough to accept Shannon and Brian wrecks the moment

Version 2:
I was speechless. Without even thinking, she just tore my secret hopes out of the safety of my heart and turned them into some stranger's ultimatum! How could she?
Before I could think of anything to say, Brian walked in the open door.
Summary: Dana resents Shannon's nosiness and is rescued by Brian.

Version 3:
What an amazing thing to say! She hit my dream straight on, as if she'd seen right into my heart; for a moment I was utterly convinced I'd had it right about her and me becoming friends. But before I could put words to my delight, Brian Bateson walked in our half-open door.
Summary: Dana feels a moment of true connection with Shannon but Brian interrupts.

Version 4 (final):
For a moment I was utterly convinced I would make it through, and that I'd been right about her and me connecting. But then she said, oh-so-slowly, "So, do you think you could tell if somebody was reading a magic book?" It felt like an insult. She was watching me intently, waiting for something, God knows what. Slowly I realized that this had to be some kind of test, maybe Shannon seeing if I had enough sense to laugh at my own escapist taste in literature. Before I could think of how to respond, Brian walked in our half-open door.
Summary: Dana hopes for connection with Shannon, but is subjected to a personal test, and Brian keeps her from knowing if she passed.

The difference between each these versions completely changed how my readers felt when Shannon and Brian got into an argument later in the same scene, and that influenced how their relationship came across for the entire book. That was why I spent so much effort fine-tuning it.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "Do I really need to do this?" Well, consider that you're sparing yourself the trouble of redoing the entire scene. Here are some spots to look at:

• The context in which a new character enters the story, which sets expectations about their future behavior.
• Any places where readers need the point-of-view character to give them a proper read on the motives of a minor character.
• Places where tension drops, character arcs seem to lose their drive, or character motives don't seem to match their behavior. (I'll return to this one in a minute.)

Any of these are good places to reconsider your protagonist's state of mind, and refine his or her reaction to the existing events. The third bullet point is my way of saying that this doesn't just apply to small interactions within a scene, but can also apply to larger sections of the text.

Here's an example of a chapter motive alteration from my current novel project.

Summary of the scene:
A young servant, Aloran, has a job interview with a family he's hoping to work for. It's the first time he's met the mistress, the person he would be working with most closely. Unfortunately, she's heard he's coming, and is terribly angry with her husband for inviting him (because he's firing her current servant without permission). She goes into a rage right in front of her husband and Aloran, making Aloran feel that he has failed in the interview. Later, however, he learns that she is actually going to hire him.

In version 1, Aloran went in feeling really keen to get the job. His apparent failure in the interview was a terrible disappointment, but he was so shocked by the mistress' behavior that he figured it was probably a good thing he failed. Then when he learned he was going to be hired, he was shocked and alarmed.

It made some sense, but something about it felt weak, and the chapter didn't seem to sustain tension and story drive. So I broke it down to look at the lead-in, the scene itself, and the exit from that scene, as follows.

The lead-in:
Here I found the first problem. Aloran's knowledge of the family had a lot of gaps. This helped explain how much he wanted the job, because he might not have wanted it if he'd known how twisted they were. But it was also implausible. Because of his resources (school advisor, etc), he would be able to access more information about the family than that.

The scene:
Another problem. The mistress flipping out seemed superficial as a reason for him to change his mind so thoroughly and dramatically.

The exit:
Because he changed his mind completely in the scene, that justified his reaction of shock and alarm later when he found he was hired - but it wasn't well-supported because of the problems mentioned above.

Obviously I needed to revise, but it wouldn't have made sense to get rid of the scene entirely. Aloran he has to get the job somehow, and the interview is an important step in this. Aloran also has to learn something important about the mistress during the scene, so he can't fail to see her. Showing it in a different point of view wouldn't make sense either, because it's what Aloran learns that he has to carry forward. Changing the mistress' reaction in the scene would call for a major change in her character that would gut the rest of the story. In fact, every word that is said in the scene remains the same, because the mistress and her husband have precisely the same relationship and interaction, and though Aloran might feel different, he can't show his feelings in front of a potential employer!

So the interview scene stays, along with the blocking and the dialogue. The difference lies in the internal states of the point of view character.

The new lead-in:
Aloran has plenty of information to make him feel ambivalent about this family. He comes into the scene hoping for some opportunity to screw up on purpose so that the family will reject him as a candidate. His only regret about this chosen course of action is the fact that he's heard about the mistress and how wonderful she is in comparison with the other family members.

The new scene:
Aloran is totally broadsided by the mistress' reaction of extreme anger. Because of his shock, he forgets his strategy and doesn't do anything deliberate to sabotage his chances. He decides that her behavior means he has been rejected.

The exit:
To his surprise, Aloran feels hurt by the mistress' reaction, and by the fact that she hasn't even given him a chance to show his quality. This is not a reaction he expected after planning to fail, but a gut reaction to the betrayal he feels after having heard how wonderful she is. Thus when he learns he has received the position, he is confused and frightened to be entering the family, but still harbors a hope that he hadn't expected, of seeing behind the mistress' anger - which motivates his actions once he starts working for the family.

What I'm asking you to do here is to consider how you might use your character's internalizations and mental states as a tool - a powerful tool that can completely change what a scene means, even while it leaves the essentials of the scene unchanged. It can help you keep your story drive, make sure your main character feels motivated, and keep the story flowing along smoothly. This is especially useful when you have a scene where you know a lot is right, but something feels wrong.

If you find yourself looking at a scene like this, break it down and consider:

1. the lead-in to the scene. Is anything missing? What does your character know, or feel, or anticipate?
2. the scene itself. Do the minor characters behave in a logical way? Can their actions be changed? How do they contribute to the overall flow of the arc or the larger story?
3. the exit from the scene. Does it fit well with where this character's arc needs to go next? Is it positive, or negative, or ambivalent? How does that contribute to the drive?

Good luck with your revisions!

What does choice of point of view (POV) mean? How does it challenge a writer?

I can't tell you how many lengthy discussions I've witnessed, and participated in, on the topic of point of view. With every visit to Absolute Write (a terrific site for writers, so check it out if you haven't) I'm almost guaranteed to find a discussion of point of view going on in one form or another... so I thought it was about time I revisited the topic.

Most people come to the topic of point of view through the basic categorization scheme of first person - second person - third person. It's not too hard to learn that first person means "I," second means "you," and third means "he" or "she." Where things get tangled up is in the further categories that get imposed, particularly on third person. So for today's post, I'm going to start by talking about some general characteristics of point of view, and then make a checklist to talk about what effects each basic pronoun permutation has, and what challenges it presents to the writer.

The most basic thing that point of view does is allow you, as a writer, to control information. In any given social situation there is so much available sensory information that you can't possibly capture it all. This was brought home to me in quite dramatic fashion by one of my professors in grad school. He asked the people in the class to write down everything he did from the point when he said "go" to the point when he said "stop." Then he went outside the door, said "go," walked in and up to his desk carrying a book, set down the book, looked up and smiled, and said "stop." After doing that, he had each person read the description he or she had written. Every single one of twenty descriptions was different from every other.

As a writer, you're in charge of what information makes it into your story. What gets in there should be whatever information is most important for the reader to understand - this is true whatever pronoun you choose to use. The different pronouns, however, create different effects - especially when used in conjunction with different verb tenses. I'll try to lay out some of the differences, and the complications that come with them, below.


1a. First person present tense (sometimes, "first person concurrent")

• How we identify it: "I" is in the subject position when the narrator acts; main action verbs are in present tense, "am," "go," "walk," etc. though there will also be progressives ("am doing") and modals ("should be").
• The narrator is the character reporting while in the process of experiencing the story. That means that his/her knowledge is restricted. Unless he/she has experienced something, or been told something, he/she cannot know it. He/she cannot know anything about what will happen before it happens. However, he/she is free to speculate, and to judge, and to regret, etc.
  
• The narrative feels very myopic and immediate. Often readers will feel an extreme sense of intensity. This makes it a good choice when you want people to identify with the visceral experiences and emotions of your narrator. The narrative also carries the individual voice of the character.
  
• The writer has at least three challenges here. First is to make sure to keep all information restricted to the character's own perceptions, judgments and actions without letting author knowledge creep in. Second is to make sure to include enough information and orientation that readers don't become disoriented. Third is to make sure to exclude filter words that distance readers from the narrative, and to include enough of others' behavior, and of judgment-laced description, that the narrative doesn't fall into a constant repetitive pattern of sentences starting with "I."

Example from "Cold Words" (Analog Oct 2009):
I scent human outside the door: our linguist, Parker. He never comes to the Ice Home while I attend Cold Council - he must bring important news! I bow to haunches, then excuse myself from Majesty's presence, quickly as I can without inviting snarls from the others.


1b. First person past tense/retrospective

• How we identify it: "I" is in the subject position; main action verbs are in past tense, "was," "went," "walked," etc. though there will also be progressives ("was doing") and modals ("should have been"). Certain verbs may appear in present tense because of ongoing states.
  
• The narrator is the character reporting the story after it has happened. Some authors put the narrator in a sort of nebulous, unidentifiable later time, but I think it's particularly interesting when the later context is more specific. The character may be an old woman talking about her youth, or someone who has just survived the climactic battle reporting on events of the last six months, or possibly someone in the afterlife reporting on the cause of his/her death (so this choice doesn't necessarily make readers doubt the peril the narrator is in).
  
• The narrative feels less directly immediate than present tense narration. It may be infused with a distinct sense of storyteller voice, particularly if the narrator's context means he/she is reporting as a storyteller after the fact.
  
• The writer's challenges are similar to those of the present tense narrative, in that information must be systematically restricted to the perceptions, emotions and judgments of the main character. It is somewhat easier to keep readers oriented because of the "storyteller" factor. The narrator may also (though not necessarily) make reference to events in the future of his/her past self, because they are in the past relative to the place where he/she is currently sitting while telling the story. It's also good to avoid filter words and overuse of the simple first person subject "I" to begin sentences.
  

Example from Blue Fire by Janice Hardy:
I watered the lake violets in the front sunroom. Just busy work, but I had to do something other than sit in the town house worrying while my friends were out risking their lives. I should have been out there with them, but I'd been recognized on our last rescue mission, and it wasn't safe outside for me anymore. Not that Geveg had been all that save in the five years since the Baseeri invaded; but being hunted by the Duke, his soldiers, Geveg's Governor-General, and who knew how many trackers added a whole new level of danger.

1c. First person mixed present/past tense
I included this one because it's more unusual, but makes perfect sense if, for example, you have a narrator who is sitting and writing a diary entry, commenting on both things that have happened in his/her past, and things that are going on while he/she is writing.

Example from Through This Gate (Dana writing in her journal about trying to figure out her new roommate Shannon):
Maybe mom was hinting that Shannon has some kind of granola-head thing going and I shouldn't let myself be influenced, but I'm not sure that fits with the makeup, or the computer either. Anyway, when the last box was in, Mom looked around my empty half of the room as if she didn't notice the bare blue mattress or the battered furniture. "This is great," she said, gesturing - I swear, the woman could conduct orchestras.


2a. Second person

• How we identify it: "You" is in the subject position when the narrator acts.
• The narrator is placed in a position which is the same as that of the reader. An assumption is made that the reader will accept an alternate assignment of identity. However, the protagonist is not actually usually the reader, but a character in the story as one would expect with other pronouns.
  
• The narrative feels demanding and provocative. There may be a sensation that the actual protagonist is standing behind the reader, acting, but mostly invisible.
  
• The writer's challenge grows directly out of the problem of narrator=reader. In order to enjoy the story, the reader must accept that they are conditionally being placed in the position of both character and reader. Not all readers are willing to do this. The actual identity of the narrator will grow out of that narrator's judgments and actions. Because of the sensation that the character is standing invisibly behind the reader, the identity of the narrator becomes a major factor in driving the story. Story entry is of special importance, because often the reader will have an easier time accepting this unusual subject position if the writer eases them into it slowly, rather than saying something extreme like, say, "You're a cyborg and you want to take over the world!" It's also important to keep the focus of the point of view restricted to the perceptions and reactions of a single character. If it's hard for a reader to accept being one other person, adding extra information will only make it harder.
  

Example from If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino:
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want you to watch TV!" Raise your voice - they won't hear you otherwise - "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.


3a. Third person limited (also, "close third person")

• How we identify it: "He" or "She" is in the subject position when the narrator acts.
• The narrator is a character in the story. The information in the narrative must be restricted to what that single character knows, perceives, experiences, or judges, just as if it were written in first person.
• The narrative feels idiosyncratic, carrying the character's voice. This voice may differ depending on the placement of the narrator either in the action (present tense) or after the action (past tense), but it reflects the character's identity.
• The writer's challenge is to manage the story while maintaining the limits on the information a character can experience. Since both the protagonist and other characters will be marked with "he" and "she" pronouns, it can sometimes be harder to keep this discipline. Some authors using close third person point of view choose to change from one character to another over the course of the story in order to drive the story from different directions, so that no single character has all the information that the reader does. The challenges in this case become keeping the narrative voices distinct when using different characters to carry the narrative, and making sure readers don't get confused when point of view switches occur. A common means to reduce confusion is to mark point of view changes with chapter or scene breaks.

Examples from "The Eminence's Match" (Eight Against Reality, 2010)
POV 1
Shadowless in the light of two hundred and twelve electric bulbs on his vaulted stone ceiling, the Eminence Nekantor frowned down over his naked ribs. Look: two gold buttons at the waist of his silk trousers. Fastened, both of them, completely fastened. Deceptively fastened. They had been fastened wrong: lower-then-upper, not upper-then-lower. The difference stuck to the buttons like fingerprints. The difference felt like fingers pressing on his mind.
POV 2
Xinta bent into a half-bow, watching a gang of six noble boys surround him. They had a new leader today: Grobal Rennerik, with reddened knuckles on his right fist that matched a mark beside the former leader's left eye. The followers' gazes flickered hungrily between them. Clearly this encounter was to become Rennerik's demonstration that his leadership was deserved. That would mean a difficult task - but if he could carry it out, he could prove his worth in love and loyalty to all of them at once.

3b. Third person omniscient

• How we identify it: "He" or "she" is in the subject position when any character acts.
• The narrator is not a character in the story. This makes third person omniscient different from any of the other points of view mentioned above. It means the narrator is free of any restriction of person, time, or place that the story itself may impose on characters.
  
• The narrative feels distinctly as if it is being related by a storyteller. Sometimes the voice of the narrator is distinctive (grandfatherly, or like an epic poet, etc.), and sometimes it is more invisible, but it does not match that of any character in the story. Readers don't share the myopia of any single character, though the narrator may show it to them.
  
• The writer's challenge is to decide how to restrict the information included in the story. The narrator knows all - everything about the setting, about the characters' motives, perceptions, judgments, emotions and actions - but cannot tell all, for the reasons I mentioned above. Generally the narration will stick relatively close to the main character, because the goals of that person, and the stakes that person faces, are what keep the main conflict of the story driving forward. However, some narrators will create tension and drive by showing how different characters misunderstand one another. Because the narrator is not a character and has his/her own distinct voice, authors are free to show different characters' viewpoints in relatively close succession. The challenge becomes keeping the sense that the narrator is located in a place outside the story, distinct from the viewpoint of any character, so readers don't get confused when they are told what one character experiences so closely after hearing about another.

Example from A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
"Here we are, Sara," said Captain Crewe, making his voice sound as cheerful as possible. Then he lifted her out of the cab and they mounted the steps and rang the bell. Sara often thought afterward that the house was somehow exactly like Miss Minchin. It was respectable and well furnished, but everything in it was ugly; and the very armchairs seemed to have hard bones in them.


You may notice at this point that I have not discussed some other variants of third person, like third person limited, or third person distant. These are questions of narrative distance, which I don't have time to discuss in this post. I'll try to take them up in the near future. For now, though, I encourage you to pop over to Janice Hardy's The Other Side of the Story, where she's going further with questions of omniscient point of view.

Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop: Managing the Juxtaposition of Normal and Abnormal

Welcome back to Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop (Week 3)! For those who are visiting for the first time, I do these sessions every Wednesday, using 500 word excerpts generously provided by my readers. If you're interested in submitting, you can find the link on the left underneath my photo, or here (which will take you to that same page). I'd love to see what you're working on!

I had a question from someone on the forums regarding whether I should take submissions of descriptions of people's worlds, rather than excerpts from stories using those worlds. While I think I might have some things to say about a world description/outline, I think the story excerpts are what I can work with most effectively. I'm always looking for submissions, so please do pass the submission link on to your friends and neighbors!

This week's submission comes from David Marshall, who has worked with me on worldbuilding before - long ago when I was first doing worldbuilding workshops in a quite different format. Thanks for submitting, David! As in previous weeks, I've marked the worldbuilding words and phrases that I notice in color, but this week I'll be using two colors. I'll bet you can tell why; I'll discuss it below the excerpt.

***
The black marble slabs that paved the entrance hall cracked under my feet. This required a great deal of effort on my part, for my cloven hooves were sharp-edged and petite, and not really made for stomping on stone. And even though my batlike wings were still immature, more delicate fairy-gauze than leathery flight membrane, I was so angry that they kept slashing the air and lifting me off the ground.
Not very far off the ground, but far enough to spoil any chance of a good, hard, satisfying stomp.
I forced my wings to fold, and the sacred things promptly sprang open again! I lashed my barbed tail, snarled, and tried to keep my feet firmly on the ground. With limited success.
I tried stalking down the hall, but what I achieved could more accurately be described as bouncing. Wherever I grounded, I left cloven hoofprints with a halo of radiating cracks like stylised lightning bolts.
I had undergone the tortures of Inhuman Health & Hygiene classes, so I understood what the metabolic sparks shaking my body were supposed to do. Some day soon, those irritating sparks that bubbled through the ichor in my veins would become a raging inferno of potent alchemical reactions, ensuring my reaction to any given situation would be either Fight, Flight or Fornicate.
But how the heaven would an alchemical know which F-word was most appropriate in any given situation?
I had grown long-limbed and lean over the past year, but I hadn't filled out into anything like my mother's dangerous curves. And I still wasn't used to the way my body had changed. The way my body was still changing. I was always tripping over, or bumping into things.
Sometimes I felt like my body was a fallen empire that had fractured into a bunch of warring city-states. If this was puberty, you could keep it.
Mother said I would fill out soon enough. She said I would develop finer control over my muscles and limbs. You're too eager, too impatient, she said. Give it time, she said. You're just a late burner, she said.
She said other things, when she thought that I couldn't hear her. She said that I remind her of a stiletto, slender yet dangerous, but wielded by an untrained, clumsy hand.
Well, this stiletto had just been sheathed, after being ichor-stained once too often.
At least my mother was working late. Again. I had at least four hours to kill before I had to explain myself. Again.
Time enough to think of some excuse. Surely.
'Arriach!'
My wings collapsed, slamming so hard against my back that I feared that they were going to break my ribs, wrap themselves around my spine, and come to rest in my lungs. My tail whipped up under my skirt, in an attempt to find an even less dignified hiding place. Electric sparks crackled across my skin, raw magic earthing itself in my squirming embarrassment.
***

David is being ambitious - and deliberately humorous, I believe - by creating two worlds at once. One of these worlds, referenced by the purple words, is relatively normal to us. It's the world of the spoiled teen girl, using words like "petite" and "Health&Hygiene classes" as well as "puberty" and "F-word." The other one, referenced by the blue words, is not normal. It's a devil world with black marble floors, cloven hooves and magic. The total effect of the excerpt thus lies in the juxtaposition of one world with the other. I'll comment in the text below - please excuse all the crazy colors; it just worked out that way!

***
The black marble slabs that paved the entrance hall cracked under my feet. **[At this point there's no reason for me to believe that marble slabs in the entrance hall and feet are inconsistent, world-wise. I imagine a castle, perhaps an evil one, and a person there in trouble. A pretty quickly accessed setting, if not an elaborated one.] This required a great deal of effort on my part, for my cloven hooves were sharp-edged and petite**[this qualifier seems external to her. Does she wish to be seen as petite? Can you indicate that?], and not really made for stomping on stone. **[The great deal of effort comes as a surprise, which I think was your intent, since it appears to imply that the cracking of the slabs was accomplished by the feet. However, there is a direct contradiction between "feet" and "cloven hooves" as I see it.] And even though my batlike wings were still immature, more delicate fairy-gauze than leathery flight membrane, I was so angry **[this is the first phrase where we see the subject pronoun "I," and it tells us only that she is angry, which we already knew.] that they kept slashing the air and lifting me off the ground.
Not very far off the ground, but far enough to spoil any chance of a good, hard, satisfying stomp.
I forced my wings to fold, and the sacred **[This and "heaven" below fit well with humorous devilry as direct opposites of the words that would be used in the teen girl world.] things promptly sprang open again! I lashed my barbed tail, snarled, and tried to keep my feet firmly on the ground. With limited success.**[Is she trying to break the floor, or trying not to break the floor? It's not clear to me.]
I tried stalking down the hall, **[To accomplish what?] but what I achieved could more accurately be described as bouncing. Wherever I grounded, I left cloven hoofprints with a halo of radiating cracks like stylised lightning bolts.**[This makes it sound like she thinks they look cool, but I thought she was irritated with the bouncing.]
I had undergone the tortures of Inhuman Health & Hygiene classes, so I understood what the metabolic sparks shaking my body were supposed to do. Some day soon, those irritating sparks that bubbled through the ichor in my veins would become a raging inferno of potent alchemical reactions, ensuring my reaction to any given situation would be either Fight, Flight or Fornicate.
But how the heaven would an alchemical know which F-word was most appropriate in any given situation?**[This is commentary on her physical state. The juxtapositions here are amusing but I'm missing a sense of the meaning and drive of her current situation.]
I had grown long-limbed and lean over the past year, but I hadn't filled out into anything like my mother's dangerous curves. **[Interesting perspective on her mother.] And I still wasn't used to the way my body had changed. The way my body was still changing. I was always tripping over, or bumping into things.
Sometimes I felt like my body was a fallen empire that had fractured into a bunch of warring city-states. **[This makes me wonder where our devilish creature would come up with this idea.] If this was puberty, you could keep it.**[This whole phrasing fits in the teen girl world.]
Mother said I would fill out soon enough. She said I would develop finer control over my muscles and limbs. You're too eager, too impatient, she said. Give it time, she said. You're just a late burner, she said.**[This is a nice phrasing of juxtaposition]
She said other things, when she thought that I couldn't hear her. She said that I remind her of a stiletto, slender yet dangerous, but wielded by an untrained, clumsy hand.
Well, this stiletto had just been sheathed, after being ichor-stained once too often.**[makes me wonder what just happened. Should I be wondering what just happened, or what will happen now?]
At least my mother was working late. Again. I had at least four hours to kill before I had to explain myself. Again.
Time enough to think of some excuse. Surely.
'Arriach!'
My wings collapsed, slamming so hard against my back that I feared that they were going to break my ribs, wrap themselves around my spine, and come to rest in my lungs. **[I wonder if this kind of hyperbole is part of her personality!] My tail whipped up under my skirt, in an attempt to find an even less dignified hiding place. Electric sparks crackled across my skin, raw magic earthing itself in my squirming embarrassment.
***

Overall I think this piece has a lot of good juxtaposition points in it. A great deal of humor and interest can come from this kind of two-world management - though I'd be careful of all-out contradictions, which can come across as the writer having a joke on the reader. I'm seeing a missed opportunity for world-building, however, in the lack of drive from the protagonist. If she is our ambassador (to borrow a phrase from week 1), then I don't think she's doing all she could to help us understand her world, because she's not doing much acting, or choosing, or judging of her own actions.

The two worlds here are clearly drawn, but only in relation to one another and a situation, not a person with a problem. It's important to see this protagonist as the subject of sentences early on, to allow her to show us just what kind of problem a person bridging these two worlds would have - rather than focusing on body parts or development alone to draw the contrast (which creates distance despite the first person narration). I think this would add to the humor rather than detracting from it, and draw the world juxtaposition more clearly by giving us a more solid grounding in the protagonist's character. She is the reason that the juxtaposition exists, and it is her world, and her sense of that world that brings the two contrasting sides to unity.

The other thing that your protagonist can do, which she isn't doing to full effect here, is give us a sense of what is normal and what is not normal in her world. What is normal in one of the worlds presented here is not normal in the other - so what is normal to her? The things that someone considers normal will typically not be at the top of her mind, or indeed noticed at all, unless they have been called into question in a specific way. Revealing the nature of this young (ahem!) lady's problem may be just what you need to show us what about her normal life has been called into question. The myriad great juxtapositions here are inadvertently pulling us to greater distance from her because they don't allow for any sense of normality within the context of her judgment. However, if you give her a problem to solve and something to do, those things that are normal to her can fall into their proper background context (even if they are quite striking). And you probably won't need everything you have here for the first 500 words, so you can save a lot of this great stuff for later story action, when more directly relevant elements of her life are called into question.

Thanks for being our brave Week 3 submitter! I hope you find these comments helpful. The constructive discussion is open.

Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop: the Narrator is Your Ambassador

Welcome to Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop! I couldn't resist the alliteration. It's been great to see the response from so many people, and I'm sorry I can't discuss all the submissions. However, I will keep them in my files so that, if I get fewer or no submissions in a later week, I'll have some to go back to.

Let me start by saying that this workshop is all about supportive critique. I have no problem with the idea of readers commenting on each post, but I'd like you all to think about this as what I think of it as, a Work In Progress. So please, be civil and helpful. If you desperately want to comment on something you think is an issue, you might say something like "I was confused by..." etc. I want the people who submit their work here never to feel intimidated. I'm happy to hear supportive suggestions for my approach as well.

What I'm going to do today is show you the excerpt, colored up to show you where I'm picking up world information, and then put some comments in to explain my marks and talk about the relationship between a narrrator and his/her world. I'm hoping that these comments will be helpful for some of the other folks who submitted, even though I wasn't able to use all the submissions.

Here's the excerpt:

***
King Aidan looked towards the town of Sabin and further towards the sea. Coldness filled him. Black lines weaved in the sky, edging their way into the heavens. The coastal town was burning.

"My Lord."

Aidan forced himself to turn to Martin, his man at arms and a solid presence in the face of chaos. His expression stoic.

"They are upon us with no warning. What evil gives them breath?" the King said.

"My Lord, fire precedes them. Our men cannot see this foe from the sky."

"And so it begins." King Aidan turned back to the sky. "All things return to a place of beginnings," he murmured. And so it did. The once peaceful lands of Vengarion would be no more. The evil came through the night giving rise to the destruction at hand. Aidan knew this day would come. Foreseen before his birth, he prayed it would not come to pass during his lifetime. But men held no power over such things...until now.

"My Lord," Martin broke his reverie, "'tis Airellen. She has begun to birth."

"Fetch the midwife. There is nothing we can do but fortify our defenses here. Theonor will see to the soldiers."

Martin bowed and walked off.

King Aidan gave one more glance towards the sea before retreating back into the castle, his heart a wedge of stone, heavy in his chest.

The beautiful Airellen, pale as ivory bone, lay on blood stained sheets, propped up against a pillow. Her fine brown hair stuck to her face in wet strands. Aidan knew at that instant she would die. His beloved wife, Catherine, had met such a fate bearing his son, Wilhelm.

“My dear,” he said his voice optimistic. “You have chosen such an unfortunate hour to birth.”

Airellen smiled. “You know me. Full of surprises, my lord.”

Aidan remembered why he grew to love the once vibrant, Airellen. He had refused to accept Wilhelm’s decision in his choice to marry her, but she surprised him. He learned to see what Wilhelm saw in her, and learned why he loved her.

“Wilhelm?” she asked.

Aidan forced a smile. “They have not yet returned.” He looked from Airellen to Edalene, wife to his eldest son. “We are at war milady,” he went on. “I sent word to the provinces and Edmund’s forces but fear it may be too late. The enemy has been given speed and will be upon us soon.”

“You must take Edalene,” Airellen said. “Caelen is Phillip’s daughter and your heir. She must live.”
Should both his sons fall into darkness, Caelen would be the true heir, his only heir. Edalene let out a loud sob.

Airellen’s voice fell to a whisper, “Tell Wilhelm I love him. Tell him never to lose hope.”

The room fell silent. Edalene wept.
***

First, let me thank the brave E. Arroyo for submitting this and letting me talk about it. One of the things I like about this excerpt is that there's a clear main character, King Aidan, who is experiencing an event, the birth of a child during an attack on his territory. Both of those things are great assets for worldbuilding, as they give you tools to use and they keep the narrative moving rather than having it feel static like nothing is going on.

To give you a sense of how the blue-green words give me world entry, I'll go through them, just for the first couple of lines. King Aidan tells me this is a world where there are kings, and they can have existing Irish names. I immediately conclude we're dealing with humans (or possibly fantasy-humans). The town of Sabin isn't one I know, so I start to suspect that we may be in a fantasy world - but I'm not sure at this point (there are a lot of towns I don't know), so I'll keep my eye out. The sea is also a potential hint, because this is a phrase very commonly used in fantasy contexts. From the word weaved I know we have weaving in this world (or in its past, but I already suspect hand-weaving happens in the time period in question). The heavens is another marker: it suggests religion, but relatively vaguely, a choice often made in fantasy contexts. The coastal town, like the sea, places us in a location not far from the ocean, which could have interesting consequences later.

The speech of the characters has an archaic feel to it, so I'm not surprised to find Martin being described with the word man-at-arms, nor am I surprised that the king is in a castle. However, I'm not certain enough about the alienness of the town name "Sabin," so it's not until the phrase "the once peaceful lands of Vengarion" that I am absolutely certain we're in a fantasy world, rather than, say, an alternate medieval Earth. This is then backed up by the way "evil" is treated as a force in itself, and things are "foreseen."

I find a couple of unexpected social things here. The king tells Martin to fetch the midwife, which isn't what I'd expect of a typical king of this era; it either means he's more concerned about the birth than a typical king, or that the social rules here are slightly different. At the moment I can't tell which. You also tell us that the king didn't approve of his son's marriage choice but came to love Airellen. This is very unusual in the context of the medieval social contract, and stands out.

The narration generally seems to track with King Aidan's point of view, his thoughts and emotional reactions. However, it has relatively distant moments. The king is referred to as "King Aidan," "Aidan" (closer) but also "the king" (more distant). There is also some distant narrative telling, as for example when we are told "Aidan remembered why he grew to love the once vibrant, Airellen."

Here I'm going to admit my bias toward close point of view. Not everyone feels the same way I do, but the reason I have this bias is that close point of view helps you put in a lot of world information. Works like Kij Johnson's "26 Monkeys: Also the Abyss" have also shown me that even if you don't get really, really close, you can still use the narration to show more things about the narrator and the world.

The narrator - in this case, Aidan - is your ambassador. It's in his understanding of his own world, and his actions within it, that we're going to understand it too. That's why it's so important that we are not only considering him, but doing things with him (more opportunities for showing as opposed to telling). There are a lot of great opportunities in this little piece to enhance our sense of where we are and what's going on.

I always recommend giving an obvious fantasy-world marker right up front. Aidan has an Irish name, so you'll be working against that (which may be why I wasn't sure about Sabin). Maybe you could also name the sea. The other thing I'd recommend is to show us, quite early, what makes your fantasy world different from others we've seen. That's not as important in the first two lines, but within 500 words we should have at least a hint of its unique quality. Actually, I'll qualify that: my world of Varin acts like fantasy but has technology, and people get mad at me (literally) if I don't make that clear immediately. So I decided to put a reference to lightbulbs in the first line of "The Eminence's Match" to set expectations.

As you consider this piece, ask yourself what each place might mean to the king. For example, has he been to Sabin? Is it full of his people? Is he a kind king, and does he ache for them as they are burned? Does he want to flee? Does he want to fight with Edmund instead of being where he is? Why is he standing in his castle (actually, I'm not sure it's his, given that you say "the castle," but I'm assuming so) while this is going on. Is it his home? Or is he being hosted there? Is it familiar to him? Also, you have a lot of characters here, which means a lot of names, and I lose track a little of who's who. Make sure to keep Aidan referring to them by terms that show how they relate to him, and give us emotional cues to the relationship where you can.

This applies similarly to the events at hand. Has Aidan been waiting for the birth? Or preparing his people to flee? Has he been paralyzed by the thought that the doom foretold will be falling on his head? Maybe he has, and Martin's arrival gets him to break out of it, to move. Maybe he has to put on a show of bravery for his man-at-arms that he doesn't have to for members of his family - or maybe he has to act brave even while watching his daughter-in-law die. Maybe Airellen's death, and its parallel with the death of his own wife, makes him feel an even greater sense of the futility of what he's trying to do against the forces of prophecy and history. The piece will be stronger if we have a sense of his goals and how the events affect them.

Below I'm going to put comments into the text. Before you panic, please be aware: these are not corrections. My style of commenting is to have a little conversation with what I'm reading, about things I notice or don't understand, or places where I see an opportunity to do more. Given that opportunities for worldbuilding are all over the place, and that I want to be as specific as I can, that means lots of chit-chat! But I wouldn't expect our writer to change things in every place I mention, nor to add a whole lot of extra detail - this is about thinking about the text in a different way. If I can pique you to think about what the text is doing, and what it might be capable of doing, then I'm happy.

***
King Aidan looked towards the town of Sabin and further towards the sea [not clear if Sabin is on the coast or between castle and coast. How expansive is this area?]. Coldness [what kind of coldness? Could you hint about his belief system or environment?] filled him. Black lines weaved in the sky, edging [black lines weaving seems to contrast with "edging" here. A more thorough weaving-grounded metaphor might illuminate the world interestingly.] their way into the heavens. The coastal town [Is this Sabin? If so, use the name, maybe with an adjective to show Aidan's attitude toward it...] was burning.

"My Lord."

Aidan forced himself to turn to Martin, his man at arms and a solid presence in the face of chaos [maybe, "the attack" or something more specific? We don't know why Sabin is burning yet]. His expression stoic. [nice point-of-view with "forced himself" "solid presence" and "expression stoic"]

"They are upon us with no warning. What evil gives them breath?" the King said. [I wouldn't probably use "the King" here, because it feels external. Is he trying to steady his voice? How does he feel? What impression is he trying to convey to Martin?]

"My Lord, fire precedes them. Our men cannot see this foe from the sky." [is the foe coming from the sky? or are the men in the sky? I initially thought the black lines in the sky were smoke, not adversaries, but now I'm not sure. You might want to make this less ambiguous as we aren't entirely solid with the nature of the world yet.]

"And so it begins." King Aidan turned back to the sky. "All things return to a place of beginnings," he murmured.[maybe indicate if this is quoted from a significant text?] And so it [they?] did. The once peaceful lands of Vengarion would be no more [this would have more impact if we knew what peace in Vengarion meant to Aidan himself; it would deepen both the place and the person]. The evil came through the night giving rise to the destruction at hand [what does he know about what it is? evidence from reports? hints from prophecy?]. Aidan knew this day would come. Foreseen before his birth, he prayed it would not come to pass [maybe give us a specific agent here. What does Aidan know about who has come to attack him?] during his lifetime. But men held no power over such things...until now.[this is intriguing and I'm hoping to know more. Why is he so certain that men now hold power over things when they didn't used to? This looks like something to pursue as you go forward.]

"My Lord," Martin broke his reverie, "'tis Airellen. [What is Martin's status relative to Airellen? Maybe he should call her "the lady Airellen"] She has begun to birth."

"Fetch the midwife. There is nothing we can do but fortify our defenses here. Theonor will see to the soldiers." [I can tell Theonor's not important to this scene by the way he's mentioned here. I wonder how Aidan feels about what he's telling Martin]

Martin bowed and walked off. [He walked off...where? This is a great opportunity to make specific where they are in the castle and what it is like, even if you only give us three or four words about it.]

King Aidan gave one more glance towards the sea [is it the sea he's looking at? Why? Or is it the destruction?] before retreating back into the castle, his heart a wedge of stone, heavy in his chest. [the wedge of stone is a very appropriate metaphor for the setting you've created. Good use of metaphor to back up both emotion and setting]

The beautiful Airellen, pale as ivory bone, [this is a bit tricky as worldbuilding goes. Ivory suggests elephants as well as just color. Bone is more flexible to alternate settings.] lay on blood stained sheets, propped up against a pillow. Her fine brown hair stuck to her face in wet strands. Aidan knew at that instant she would die. His beloved wife, Catherine, had met such a fate bearing his son, Wilhelm. [make sure you indicate in this paragraph who Airellan is to Aidan. Perhaps with an adjective that is more paternal than "beautiful" in the first sentence? And you could indicate how sad he is that his son will now share the experience of paying for a child with the life of his wife (or worse, losing both child and wife).]

“My dear,” he said [keeping?] his voice optimistic. “You have chosen such an unfortunate hour to birth.”

Airellen smiled. “You know me. Full of surprises, my lord.”

[What is his instant emotional reaction? Something like "how like her!"? That might show him entering his memories of her rather than telling us.] Aidan remembered why he grew to love the once vibrant, Airellen. He had refused to accept Wilhelm’s decision in his choice to marry her, but she surprised him. He learned to see what Wilhelm saw in her, and learned why he loved her. [how would he feel these memories internally?]

“Wilhelm?” she asked. [Is she worried? Weak? What does Aidan observe, and how does it fit with his expectations from his own past experience?]

Aidan forced a smile. “They [who? a group of soldiers? Specificity would help tie down the larger situation.] have not yet returned.” He looked from Airellen to Edalene, wife to his eldest son. [it might be good to know from Aidan's entrance that she is in the room. Is she also the midwife?] “We are at war milady,” he went on. [is he informing her of this for the first time? Does he mean to tell Airellen as well? Would he try to protect Airellen, convinced as he is that she will die?] “I sent word to the provinces and Edmund’s forces [is this his eldest son? It's not clear. If so, Edalene probably knows that he has forces and is in the provinces. This might be a good place for Aidan to say how he knows Edmund is a good man and will hurry, but it's too far from X place for him to bring his reinforcements here in time] this but fear it may be too late. The enemy has been given speed and will be upon us soon.”

“You must take Edalene,” Airellen said. “Caelen is Phillip’s daughter and your heir. She must live.” [We don't know Caelen yet, nor her relationship to Edalene or Aidan, and the reference to Phillip won't tell us their precise relation. If she's Edalene's daughter, maybe Airellen could say something like "Take Edalene if you flee; Caelen can't live without her mother." and leave Aidan to provide the information about Caelen being his heir]

Should both his sons fall into darkness, Caelen would be the true heir, his only heir. [Aidan's internalization seems distant here. His sons are now in mortal danger; how does he feel about that? Under attack himself? Suddenly recognizing Caelen's significance? Also, since this is Aidan's internalization, I'm surprised when the next person mentioned as subject is Edalene.] Edalene let out a loud sob.

Airellen’s voice fell to a whisper, “Tell Wilhelm I love him. Tell him never to lose hope.” [I can't help wondering where her baby is. But that might be explained outside of this excerpt!]

The room fell silent. Edalene wept. [I would love to see Aidan's reaction at the sight of Airellen breathing her last. It's a moment of intense emotion, and you could take advantage of this to parallel current events and his sense of hopelessness with the sense of hopelessness that he had watching his own wife die. Or have it differ from that moment, giving him more fight and a drive to go into the next piece of the story.]
***

Thank you so much again, E. Arroyo, for sending me a piece of your story. I hope you find these comments helpful, and I would love to hear further thoughts from you. The discussion is open!

Note: I want to keep comments open and unrestricted here, so I'll switch on moderation only if I start to see problems with incivility.

Point of view: triangulating pronouns, names and description

I just finished writing a scene in close third person limited point of view where I switched from one person's point of view to another's halfway through. I insert a chapter break at that point, but it occurs during a single ongoing event. At a certain point it struck me that this might be an interesting little microcosm to consider for point of view questions. Same room, same four people present for a continuous sequence of events, but at the point where you make the switch, the two different points of view have to feel completely different in spite of their third person pronouns, or there will have been no point in switching points of view at all!

The characters are as follows:

Grobal Garr, 56 years old, powerful member of the Grobal nobility and Speaker of the Cabinet.
Imbati Sorn, 58 years old, Garr's manservant (political assistant, valet and bodyguard).
Grobal Tagret, seventeen years old, Garr's son.
Imbati Aloran, eighteen years old, member of the servant caste interviewing for a position with the family.

The two points of view are the two boys, Tagret and Aloran. How do we distinguish their points of view?

First, by the way they indicate the other people in the room. Sometimes you know by gut feel how they'll do it, but it can't hurt to plan this out if you're feeling unsure. Keep in mind that how people are referred to, including titles, names, etc. depends on their social position, their relative rank, their special identity relative to one another, and the surrounding context. Here's what my characters call the others in the room:

Tagret => Garr

• "Father" when speaking or when thinking.
  
• "Garr" only if he's really mad.

Tagret => Sorn

• "Sorn" when speaking
• "Sorn" or "Imbati Sorn" when thinking of him as an individual
  
• "Father's Sorn" when thinking of him relative to his father.

Tagret => Aloran

• "Imbati Aloran" for first reference (the first time he refers to him in a stretch of discourse).
• "Aloran" for references thereafter, OR
• "the Imbati boy."
  

Tagret's references to his father and his father's servant reflect intimate knowledge. His references to Aloran suggest formality but also higher status. He's free to refer to him as Aloran even though they don't know each other well; he can also refer to his caste affiliation (his caste name).

In Aloran's point of view, things are very different.

Aloran => Garr

• "sir" when speaking.
• "Grobal Garr" when thinking, for first reference or thereafter, OR
  
• "the Master."
  
• in reference following a focus on Tagret: "his father."
  

Aloran => Sorn

• "sir" when speaking privately with no Grobal caste members present.
• in Garr and Tagret's presence, he doesn't speak or refer to Sorn at all.
• "Garr's Sorn" when thinking, for first reference.
• "Sorn" for references thereafter, OR
• "the senior servant."

Aloran => Tagret

• "young sir" when speaking.
• "Grobal Tagret," when thinking, for first reference or thereafter, OR
• "the young Master" OR
• "the Grobal boy."
  
• in reference following a focus on Garr, "his son."

Aloran's use of terms reflects both his lower status and his status as an outsider. He is not socially authorized to utter the names of any of the individuals in the room, and he must think of them formally. He is permitted to think of them by full name, or by caste rank (Grobal), by their relationship to each other, or by their status relative to the Household he is attempting to enter (Master/Young Master).

It's interesting to note that neither boy thinks of Garr as the Speaker of the Cabinet. This rank is not relevant to Tagret (obviously) but neither is it relevant to Aloran, who is not trained in politics and is not expected to engage with Garr in his capacity as Speaker but as a member of his Household.

You may notice that I talk about "first reference" here. This is a topic I've wanted to engage with for a while, but I find it tricky to discuss in a meaningful way. I'll do it briefly now. In discourse, and by that I mean stretches of narrative larger than a sentence, we don't use the same terms to refer to people or things every time we mention them. Typically it works something like this:

For objects:
first notice - a table
subsequent reference - it, OR
if some text has gone by and we need to be reminded - the table

For people:
first notice - a person
subsequent reference if gender is known - he/she, OR the person
if we know the person's name, first reference - full name appropriate to status and context
subsequent reference - he/she, OR shortened version of the name appropriate to context, or description of identity relative to social position

You can see that the introduction of the object or person generally includes the most information, and thereafter we relax a bit because we can refer readers back to that information by using pronouns or shortened references. I've seen cases, particularly in beginning writing, where people are not following this pattern, and it tends to be jarring.

Okay, back to differentiating two points of view. There are some other little things you can do to enhance this. When I am in Tagret's point of view, I try to use his name as little as possible (people don't typically think of themselves in third person). Since all three characters are male, however, I do need to use his name quite a bit to differentiate him. When I use it, I try to keep it in subject position rather than object position, so that we get the sense of the character being someone who does things, and to keep it out of anything resembling internalization. Here's an example:

Speechless with disgust, Tagret allowed Father to escort him to the Master bedroom, where Imbati Sorn opened the door to let them in. It didn't matter any more what this was about - the faster he got in, the faster he could get out and go back to Mother.
In his parents' room, daylights shone in the windows, and cast delicate shadows through the sheer curtains of the bed. The chairs from the lounge corner had been pulled out into the room. Between them, with his face expressionless, stood Imbati Aloran.

Then, of course, you also can differentiate by showing the two characters with different mental states and attitudes. Tagret is angry; Aloran is scared and trying to make a good impression. As you can see in the above description of the room, Tagret is in his home territory and knows every object there (note how he uses "the" for everything). He notices only particular conditions of light and furniture placement that might be different from other times he's seen the room. Aloran is not on home territory; he knows little about Garr and less about the lady he's supposed to be interviewing to work for, so he approaches what he sees entirely differently. Here's an example from immediately after the transition:

Aloran fought the urge to tense his arms and shoulders. Distance yourself, the lesson said. [...] The calm mind is observant and prepared.
He forced himself to review what he'd learned from the room. A wide bed with a filmy canopy indicated the Master and Mistress did sleep together, and the brocade curtains on the wall behind it hinted of manservants' doors. The watches atop the rich wooden dresser suggested it was the Master's, while a table of smoked glass set in a delicate gold-plated frame demonstrated the Lady's tastes.
His mind struggled, though, trying to drag his attention back to Grobal Tagret. If only he could be alone with Grobal Garr as before!

Point of view is not just about those pronouns we're always talking about. It's about tuning names as well, and also about putting the character's judgment into the way you treat everything else that is happening. Physical descriptions reflect social position and mental states just as much as internalization or action. In close point of view (whether it be first person or third), the judgment of the character affects everything that person notices or describes. Even actions are not just actions, but that character's interpretation of the action and what it suggests about the other character's motives.

It's something to pay attention to as you switch from one point of view to another.

Interviewing characters? Interview yourself!

I'm sure you've heard about this technique, often used by writers, of conducting impromptu interviews with characters in order to get to know them better. I've written posts suggesting questions for such interviews myself (like here).

Answering questions like these will often provide you with useful information about your character. If you've asked the right questions, this information can help your story a lot. However, a simple interview format has one large disadvantage:

It isn't good at capturing how the character would think and talk about him/herself.

I've tried to alter the questions I use to improve my results in this regard, but the real problem isn't the questions. The problem is the questioner. Think about it this way: would you talk about your life and your concerns in the same way to yourself, or your spouse/best friend, as you would to someone who came from a foreign country? Of course not.

However, when you ask questions of a character who resides in a world not our own, the answers you are likely to get are those you might give to someone from a foreign country or another world. You'll discover that all kinds of distance markers start creeping in - names that you'd never use, ways of defining oneself that we never think about unless dealing with outsiders.

How can you defeat that tendency so that you'll learn more about what your character should sound like on the inside? It's definitely a challenge. In the post I linked to above, I have a list of eleven questions that I've deliberately tried to phrase in a way that encourages you to use your character's voice to answer. Another thing I'd suggest is interviewing yourself, or having a spouse or close friend interview you. If you find yourselves laughing at the questions because you both know the answers, that's a good indicator of shared knowledge that insiders wouldn't bother to mention. If you don't feel you can do an interview without becoming more distant than you should, try looking into a diary that you've written, or letters that you've composed to someone you know well. Look at how you describe your setting and social situation. Look at what you label (group membership) and don't label. How much of it would an alien or outsider really understand? I'll bet you any money that you don't find anything resembling the phrase "Americans do this/believe this because..."

After your interview or research is over and after you have a draft of your narrative voice, try to edit it with an eye for distance markers. These include "Americans" or "Californians" or "noblemen" or anything people use to describe themselves to outsiders. Look for places when you've used "there" instead of "here," "they" instead of "we." Think about what information is normal and what stands out, what is important to your character and what is beneath notice. Make sure you've used "the" to refer to objects or concepts the character knows or has perceived before, and "a" for new information.

Getting into a character's head is a very valuable point of view technique, but the interviews that you conduct are limited by the fact that your character lives in the world you've created, and you don't. Since your subconscious knows that you don't live in this place, I'd encourage you to experiment with an "insider interview" approach or a diary approach to see how you talk about your own world - and then see if you can apply what you've learned to the worlds you're creating.

Should writers "follow the rules"?

I've been following a discussion recently on the Absolute Write forum about point of view and the idea of head-hopping (there are now two threads! 1/2). At the root of that discussion was the question of whether readers notice an author's use of point of view, and whether it's done consistently, etc. One of the issues that came up was the question of rules, since point of view (POV) follows "rules" that people say you should follow. There are also rules about not using adverbs, rules about show don't tell, rules about three-act structures, etc., etc., all through writing. One of the common exchanges that I often see coming up in discussions of rules looks like this (and let me remark that I'm not specifically referencing the AW discussion/participants here, but all the different instances of rule discussions I've seen):

Person A: "But really good writers get to break the rules all the time."
Person B: "You're just saying that because you don't know how to write."

This saddens me every time I see it. Usually person A isn't actually saying that because they're trying to cut corners, but because they've heard this refrain about breaking rules. If you've been writing for any significant length of time, you've heard this - just as you've heard the rules about adverbs and "show don't tell," etc. At the same time, person B is often not trying to attack person A, but to defend the idea behind the rules.

So why are the rules there? Can they be broken?

When these questions come up, I'm extra glad of my experience in Pragmatics - because this is be a perfect time to talk about H. P. Grice's Cooperative Principle. This principle says, "make your contribution to the conversation optimally relevant and appropriate." As I've remarked before, this may seem terribly obvious. However, it is quite powerful, because the assumption of cooperativeness allows us to draw conclusions about other speakers (and in our case, other writers).

When you assume that the writer is being maximally cooperative, you're essentially relying on two things (both of which we assume about people in speech all the time):
1. The writer knows the rules
2. When the writer breaks the rules, he/she breaks them intentionally.

This is to say that following grammatical rules establishes a default value for language - a way of using language in which everything flows and nothing stands out or gets noticed. Consequently, breaking those rules causes a marked state, a state in which things stand out as having possible hidden/additional meaning.

Compare the workings of grammar, point of view and story structure to a room with which you're very familiar. You leave the room in a particular (default) state, and have a basic memory of that state when you return to the room. When you return, if something has been moved in the room, a. you notice it and b. you draw the conclusion that someone or something has moved that thing. Depending on what has been moved and how, you can easily conclude that someone opened the window and the wind blew some papers, that your husband picked up the envelope you left for him, that your cat knocked over the plant, or that you've been robbed.

To quote from my 2006 IROSF article on Point of View:

"The voice of a narrator is usually so transparent that we feel it without needing to analyze it. [...] But then, every so often, we run across a sentence like the opening of Alfred Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit" (Science Fiction 101, p.100, emphasis added):

He doesn't know which one of us I am these days, but they know one truth.

Suddenly, the words used for point of view are not only visible but provocative. "What is he doing?" we ask. "Four different pronouns in the same sentence?" Then quickly we move on from our initial surprise to ask, "What special situation or alternate reality can this signify?""

Readers - and I'd think, particularly readers of science fiction and fantasy - will be willing to do a lot of deduction to figure out precisely what special situation is being described. Personal taste is involved, of course. Some readers find certain departures from the norm bothersome, while some don't notice those much and object to others. However, to keep reading, readers must feel a level of trust for the writer. If a departure from the rules violates that trust, perhaps through making some change that the reader finds particularly irksome, or by using language loosely so that some grammatical changes don't paint a consistent picture of an alternate situation, then the reader will stop reading.

All right, so what about those famous folks we all know about who violate all kinds of rules (grammar, point of view, structure, etc.) in inconsistent ways - yet people read their books voraciously anyway?

I'd say there are a few core elements that have to be in place grammatically - like, say, that it's really convenient to be able to identify who your characters are and keep track of who is doing what, etc. Beyond those really fundamental confusion-inducing principles, though, the kinds of rule violations that are a matter of taste can potentially be outweighed by the content of the story. Usually that has something to do with the situation, the characters in the situation, who they are and what is at stake. When the story content is exceptional, a lot of readers will ignore faults of the writing. But not all of them - take my husband, who is not a writer but is a voracious reader and was absolutely furious by the time he finished The DaVinci Code. Okay, yes, he finished it, but he's unlikely to pick up another book by Dan Brown. I personally picked up Twilight to see what it was all about (because something about the story had to be exceptional) and couldn't stand it long enough to get past page 3.

The fact is, I love a good story. But I love a good story well written even more.

If you're a writer out there wondering about rules and whether to follow them, you're asking the wrong question. The question should instead be what it means to follow them, and what it means when you break them for specific effect.

Language is a marvel. Its patterns are complex, and multilayered. I discover things constantly that put me in awe of its beauty and complexity, as well as its flexibility as a tool. If writing is your passion, and you want to make it your life, it's worth the time and effort to explore what it can really do.

P.S. Since I wrote this post, Janice Hardy has put up a companion piece dealing with story, that other critical aspect of writing - and the part that tends to make people ignore problems of grammar etc. Go here to check it out!