Everybody knows what POV is, right? Point of View. Or, if you're in the military, Privately Owned Vehicle. (This will explain a lot of my confusion early on.)
POV is fairly easily mastered. You stay in one head in one scene, right? No telling the story from a female protagonist's point of view and then having her boyfriend do a "he thought" attribution in the same scene. That's not rocket science.
The more subtle issue is distance from the character. Let me give you a few examples:
Jason was wondering what the funny green bird was called.
I wonder what that funny green bird is called, Jason thought.
I wonder what that funny green bird is?
What's that funny green bird?
Do you see how these progress from rather distant to close in?
Once you get close, you can't pull back. That's the general rule.
The reason is that you'll jar the reader. After all, you've gone to a lot of trouble to get your reader to identify with your characters and suspend disbelief and buy the entire world you're creating. You've got them inside this character's head, along for the ride, then BOOM! You pull back from the character. That jars the reader out of the story and undoes everything you've tried to achieve.
So don't do it.
Terrific point Cyn. Or terrific point of view... :)
ReplyDeleteThanks. What's been your experience with distance?
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