Hatrack River Writers Workshop: POV Question

This is topic POV Question in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by rahamad (Member # 2946) on :

I'm using 3rd person POV, limited to one person's view at a time.

Is it OK to switch to another character's POV using a section break rather than a chapter break? I have several spots that I would like to do a small blurb from another character's point of view to enhance the story, but the sections aren't long enough to warrant separate chapters for each one.

Posted by JmariC (Member # 2698) on :

Remember, chapters can be short. Very short.

As far as blurbs in the middle of a set POV?
I'm sure there's a very tricky way it can be done, but not by novice.

If you change the POV for 1 sentence in the middle of something else, it will put breaks on any existing emotion or tension and will create a teeth jarring interruption.

I suggest thinking really really hard about it and DON'T do it if you can just not.

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

Yes, you can. It is perfectly all right. Section breaks cue the reader that there is some big change from what was happening before..either a jump in time, place, or POV. Don't forget to clearly show them what the change was within the first sentence. (ie establish the new POV in the first sentence.)

Small note of clarification. I don't know how short a section you're talking about. The shortest section I ever did this in was about a page long, and I wouldn't do that very often at all. How long are we talking here?

The reason I ask is that for all I know you're tlaking about switching over for a pargraph at a time and this tells me that you've either not chosen the right POV character, not chosen the right narrative style (ie limited vs omniscient), or underestimated your ability to tell the scene with the one poitn of view. The shortest section switch I ever had was a page long (2 ms pages...the 1 was single spaced), and that only happened one time.

Posted by rahamad (Member # 2946) on :

That helps. Mostly, the sections are long like you mentioned. However, I do have 2 sections in particular that are only about 3/4 page (in a default MS doc, not a formatted one). They're not part of the scene in the previous section so much as sideshoots of that scene.

For example, in one I have a scene with two characters, and they split up, so I want to give a short account from each POV of what they do during the 30 minutes they are split up. It doesn't seem right to put their accounts in separate chapters, but I worry they are too short to justify the switch in the POV

Posted by BuffySquirrel (Member # 2780) on :

Section breaks are fine for swapping between POVs. Short chapters are also acceptable.

Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :

Just be clear that you have changed perspective. I would hesistate strongly before changing POV between two characters in a conversation, for instance.

Posted by ChrisOwens (Member # 1955) on :

David Farland section breaked to another viewpoint character (a minor character at that) for a paragraph or so.

Of course, as it has been said established writers get away with breaking the unwritten rules.

Posted by franc li (Member # 3850) on :

I was forced to read "Narrator and Narrative Space" from Letters to a Young Novelist this past week. I'm too lazy to find the author, but I bet the title can get you the author on amazon, and then you might be able to get it through your local library system.

Mario (I do remember the author's first name) mentions that most novels will break their POV, but if your story is compelling enough, it will be justified. As an example, he gives Moby Dick which is first person up until the final struggle when the narrator fades back to omniscient. It's been a long time since I read it, but apparently part of it is written from the whale's point of view.

But the general idea is you should learn your scales before you start to perform Jazz improvisations.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

No, if two character split up for 30 minutes and something important happens to both of them in that time, the best thing you can do is stick to the one that undergoes the least surprising experience and let that POV observe the other character from the outside without knowing (and perhaps being too distracted to even care) what happened to the other guy.

It's one of the few times you'll be able to get away with a good bit of suspenseful information withholding about a POV character. The reader will want to know what happened to the other character. The reader will also want to keep reading to find out what the current POV sees looking at that character from the outside. Your audience will understand having to wait for the next time the POV switches to that other character, and look forward to it, and that is simply too precious a moment for you to waste it by doing something lame like switching rapidly back and forth between the two POVs.

I may be choosing an example that nobody else likes, but think of how Tolkien played up the tension in the first half of The Two Towers by letting the reader share in Aragorn's ignorance of what had happened to Frodo. Assuming that you read the book first rather than seeing the movie, I mean

On a related note, first person narrators are allowed to fade into omniscient or POV musings if it seems fitting for that narrator. It's related because Tolkien definitely uses a narrator rather than writing in POV, and he does both omniscient musing and POV speculation a lot. Just like Ishmael.