I've seen many people here write particularly in first - but third is my preferred style.

Is it not simply a case of personal taste?

Or are there serious literary reasons for considering one particular approach to be universally preferred?

All due respect to survivor - simply curious for comments because I'm not a technical writer, so I'm not aware of potential issues.

In the POV you’ve used in the story fragments you’ve put up, it’s like watching a movie on paper. What the reader sees is only what a camera would see. This has given you particular disadvantages related to POV in relaying your story that is not seen with other POV’s.

The biggest one is that you never know what anyone is thinking or how they are reacting internally. This is a beautiful tool of fiction, and one that helps a reader settle into a story. In an actual movie, you have facial expression, bits of body language, music cues, and specific camera shots – things that just cannot be translated in full to the written word. Plus, we all know from real life that what we say/do may not really be what we want to say/do in a particular situation, and that tension adds life and depth to the fiction. Plus, such a biased response to the world is the only way a person is used to experiencing it – fiction just provides the opportunity to slip into someone else’s bias for a while.

I would highly recommend you look at OSC’s Character and Viewpoint. It has a detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of several POV’s that you might find very informative. The objective camera-like POV is included in that discussion, and he has several examples for all POVs that let you see what you can and cannot show well with each.

Good points. I guess I'm paying for my isolationism now

Do you have a link for "OSC’s Character and Viewpoint" ?

GZ is right when he says you're using third person objective POV. Because it limits the authorial voice to description of outward events, it is considered similar to a camera and is sometimes called Theatrical POV. It never gets inside the character(s), even to desribe them from the viewpoint of another character--because you're not in his head, either. It's strictly "what you see is what you get."

POV can be confusing, especially in third person, because so much overlaps and much is not entirely agreed on:

Third person omniscient

Third person limited:
Third person subjective
Third person objective
Third person limited omniscient

Third person multiple

Objective

Third person objective and Objective can be two different things, the first being limited to one character--though still not in his head, the second panning to every character like a true camera.

Limited Omniscient is similarly confusing. It can be of a single character or multiple characters, and has, depending on who is teaching the subject, either no authorial intrusions or authorial intrusions limited to description and basic narration. I favor the latter.

The best bet is to do what you do best, and research the matter, and then figure out what works best for your particular work.

[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited July 28, 2002).]

Orson Scott Card
Character & Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction Series)
Publisher: Writer’s Digest Books
ISBN: 0898799279

In my experience (in the USA) it is widely available at bookstores and libraries. The online booksellers have it too.

[Edit: Kolona, I'm a she. Name doesn't make that too obvious ]

I have strict reasons for wanting that approach - so I find it strange that there's a bad reaction to using it.

Btw - sorry, thought the OSC piece was a short online article. Located the book at amazon, but will check local bookshop first tomorrow.

Hi Survivor -

The question really is - what possible reason could I have for not intentionally choosing to write Emperor in third person objective.

I wouldn't attempt an objective viewpoint if dealing with one single protagonist, but in Emperor there a multiple protagonists. We follow them so that we may see, through a number of sub-plots, the culmination of the story in the destruction of humanity, through a combination of civil war and alien contact.

Yes, character POV in the third person limited would be useful if I wanted to dwell upon specific characters for notable lengths of time. But Emperor is written to be fast, punchy, and concise space epic. In this work personal POVs would achieve no purpose excepting to provide quite distracting and redundant character exposition.

Whatever information is required is provided through dialogue and scene description. Character states are achieved either directly intimated or indirectly inferred through facial expressions and body language. This is a powerful set of cues that we recognise innately, and should not be underestimated.

Emotional association is provided through following them through the turbulent events of the story, and how each character is affected by the growing tensions. I don’t need to enter character POV to state when a character is happy or upset, as these cues can be given directly in the behavioural expressions, especially in reference to events being experienced.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

To give examples:

- In the Chapter 1 we follow a ship through space [establishes period] and a small party landing on a moon. This is described as a frontier assignment [relative place]. Dialogue is provided to humanise the characters, and to refer [without explanation, as yet] to cultural features of this civilisation. However, the main purpose of this scene is to act as a mechanism for reaching a "first contact" situation, which is described only in enough detail to tantalise and push the story forward.

To allow character POV in this instance would be utterly redundant, and provide pointless and distracting exposition away from the pivotal intent of this scene. The three characters introduced here are only incidental to the overall story.

- In Chapter 2 there are three short scenes.

Scene One simply introduces a small number of characters, with a focus upon Nemestor. Again, there is no need for character exposition here as all the necessary details are given - it is a major assignment; he and Arollyn are nervous; the supremacy of the Great Matriarch is established; the technological frame of the civilisation is presented; the immediate concern is to set out for an audience at the coronation of a new Emperor.

No other detail is required. Emotional association with regards to Nemestor will be provided in later scenes, through his interactions with his loving family, before they are massacred. I do not need a character POV to later state that he loves them when his actions clearly declare this, nor his grief when again, we will visibly see this and hear his feelings stated through dialogue.

Scene Two provides a precognitive element to establish a growing apprehension, and help maintain pace between two slower scenes. Any details of what the city is and what it represents will be clearly revealed in the next scene involving Master Rufellus. There is again no need for character POV here - we see his tension, and his horror as the apocalyptic fire races towards him. Any character exposition here would again be redundant.

Scene Three provides pomp and ceremony to illustrate something of the political and military organisation of this civilisation. The fact that an Emperor is described and troops are referred to as legionaries should incredibly suggestive for a reader. The only character POV that would allow sight of the entire ceremony is that of Dominaris - but his motivations and concerns will be revealed in following scenes in the work, so are entirely unnecessary here.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Now, if I can quickly kick in a reader's imagination, and maintain it, then I have achieved the first necessity of writing.

If I can create reader association with the characters through the unfolding of the story, then I have succeeded with the second.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

However, it's all well and good my trying to justify my position. But if the demands of the publishing world insist upon a different formula, then that is what I have to write for.

I already have five large novels on the shelf, in need of serious editing precisely because I wrote them for myself and not for the needs of the publishing industry.

Emperor is intended to be my flagship for breaking through into the publishing world. I thought I was doing everything necessary thing right.

But if it is the considered opinion here that the publishing world will generally reject Emperor if presented without character POV, then obviously I will need to rethink my position.

First, though, I need to know if my position with Emperor, as it stands, is untenable.

Stories that never get into a characters head are often dry accounts of events. Note: I am not saying yours is!

A screen play is third objective, no emotion is given, no reason to care about what happens to the characters, because the reader only has outside events to judge the character by.

I wonder if you mean third limited? Where the story is told through one character’s or one character at a time, viewpoint? but not first person?

I write, first person, third person, and I have done a large amount in all knowing. It is a personal choice. For me that choice goes with the story.

Lets take Nemestor’s scene for a minute:

He does indeed say he is nervous, and this is his first duty. Nothing too individual about that association of situation and response.

As I look at this scene, there are many unanswered questions. Is he excited too? Has he always wanted this assignment, or is he a bit fearful of the responsibility it includes? How well does he know Arollyn – old school chums, someone he met last week? Does he like the idea of serving with Arollyn, or does he think he is going to be a liability on this trip? What does his parents think of his assignment – are they proud, worried, excited, all of the above? Is it a short or long trip? Does he maybe have a girlfriend back home? Does he have a lucky penny in his pocket, that he rubs for luck?

I’m ranging beyond what is needed in that simple introductory exchange on some of that, but including the answers to some of those questions would make Nemestor more of an individual. It will also immediately root him into reality by giving him a past. If feeling his pain later is important (as you implied from what you said will happen to his family), that individuality is going to add depth to that pain. Otherwise you run the risk of having just having him be a face and a name that yet another bad thing happens to (I don’t mean that as harshly as it probably sounds. Having not seen that part, I can’t form a fair opinion of how his characterization turns out. That is just a worst-case scenario.)

I would find this added detail not the lest extraneous (if worked in carefully), and it would add to understanding and relating this character, even if we are not going to be with him for large expanses of the novel. I would also remember his name better when it showed up again.

It is also mostly detail that cannot be satisfactory worked into conversation and written visuals without seeming forced.

Maybe an Omniscient POV would be the best of both for you. Not tied to any one character, but still lets you probe deeper into the individual for drawing out the reader’s response.

He pointed out that movies can not do this--that movie viewers have to assume the obvious motive as the reason why a character does something. (Even if the character says there is a different reason, the viewer can not rely completely on that. All the viewer can go by is what the viewer is shown.)

The great strength of movies is that because they are pictures, they really are worth thousands of words, but their great weakness is that they can't (without being hokey) put the viewer inside any character's head.

He pointed out that if you want to stay outside the characters' heads, you should write screenplays. It's a waste of fiction's great strength--exploring motivation--to use third person objective or limited camera eye (or whatever you want to call it) in fiction.

If readers read to learn what it's like to be someone else, to experience life from another point of view, to live vicariously, the author is risking a dissatisfied reader by not providing that experience.

If you look at all the epic narratives, they give a good deal of space to talking about the motivations and thought/feelings of the heroes. This is the natural way for humans to tell and recieve stories that are told using language rather than graphics.

I would be much more impressed by an actual graphical representation of your opening shot, with the spaceship and the shuttle, than I was by the passage that you use to describe the scene. Not because I like graphical literature, in fact, I never even liked comic books as a kid. But the fact is that despite a good command of powerful descriptive language, you portray nothing that could not be better portrayed by drawing an actual picture. Because you are deliberately limiting your narrative to elements that could be represented completely in a graphical/visual artform, there is no reason for you to present it as a book.

The first novel I ever completed I sent away to a place where for £50 they'd give comment. One of the biggest criticisms received was the way I used POV. I scrapped that work and ever since then I have avoided POV.

I've been an aspiring novellist for 8 years now, and there's only one single instance of using POV - first person - in a work so improvised I placed it on the net for free. I have no experience of third person POV.

Frustrated over my errors with "Chronicles of Empire", "Emperor" was supposed to be a quick fix. And, yes, it was originally going to be a screenplay.

I wanted to be published by the time I was 3-0. That was yesterday, and I feel returned to square one. I guess I'm older and wiser for it - but it's still so darn annoying.

I suppose I'll have to shelve "Emperor" as well, until I've learned to write third person POV - because at the end of the day, I do accept the criticisms offered.

I'll see about starting something new in September - have a little rest to work out the "next big one".

Damn, I hate these problems and obstacles.

I'm going to buy OSC's writing book, read some contemporary fiction, and get hold of "Grammar for Dummies" [or equivalent]. I can write prolifically when I want to, but obviously I need to be far better focussed in terms of the technicalities of creative writing, and the needs of the current markets.

Again, this group proves it's worth by daring to tell me when I'm wrong. For that, as ever, I am thankful.

Anyway, have fun,

Brian

Every story has a POV. No matter if it is a narration or what. You can't avoid it without avoiding writing.

First person is only one type of POV.

This may help a bit or start a firestorm. Before I post it--ok I do know what POV is, this is not a question. Feel free to make up all you want and call it what you want (not you Brian) anyone reading this.

Buy "Characters and View Point", get a subscription to a good writers magazine and pay attention to the "rules". There will be those who tell you the rules do not matter----they are either unpublished, or so published that the rules don't matter.

Convention and rules do matter if you want to get that first foot in the door. Yes, good writing will sell, but you have to get them to read it first! And how do you do that? You follow the rules.

I always like to ask this---I have a package of onion skin paper (thin, see through stuff) so I want to save money, on postage, don’t want to buy other paper---my writing is good, so hey if I send my sub in on this onion skin paper even though it against the “rules” it shouldn’t matter. Right?

Anyone would answer that with a resounding no. Am I crazy?

Exactly. All the other rules are the same way. Now if I were King and chose to send my manuscript in on onionskin or used TP, they would buy it, but I’m not. And King didn’t when he first started either—not that he does now.

Ok Rant done. Here is a very basic guide to POV, yes there are many variations-----but this is a basic guide.

I base my ideas on Characters and Viewpoint by OSC and on the definitions given in The Writer’s Encyclopedia by Writers Digest Books, plus information from a recent copy of Writer’s Digest on Mastering POV.

First Person---grammatical use of I and we. The story is told through one character’s eyes. Author vice is not used and the reader can only know what the POV character knows, sees or hears about. Straight forward easy to understand.

Second Person---grammatical use of you also using I. It is a first person narrator that talks to the reader trough the use of the word you. You know that day is going to go bad when a bird does its thing on you head as soon as you walk out the door. Have you ever had a day like that?

Then we get into the whole Third Person mess. Which shouldn’t be a mess, but seems to be.

There is Third Person Limited --- This uses grammatical he, she, it, they. But it is like first person. The reader sees through one character’s eyes. Each time you switch POV character you need a clear break. A scene change or a chapter break. You cannot switch POV character in mid-scene. There are different degrees here of limited—but I am talking basics here.

Third Person Unlimited (this is the much misused and overstated and mangled Omniscient). The narrator is for all purposes GOD. It uses grammatical he, she, it, they, but the reader is given all the character’s thoughts, motivations, feelings and reasons. The reader will even get the gate guards thoughts as the main character’s cross the threshold. It is also called the all knowing. Now you can have a Omniscient narrator that states thoughts and actions---Author Voice, without showing the feelings.

We already went through bird’s eye view above in previous replys.

Shawn

You silly guy, you can't and never have avoided POV. You're always writing in something. You just retreated to Objective, thinking you had a safe haven there, not realizing the pitfalls and danger, when all you had to do was discover the stepping stones through the other, less harrowing POVs. (Sounds like a plot. )

<sigh> Yes, Virginia, there may be a Santa Claus, but there are no quick fixes of any lasting value. Rewriting to the nth power, if necessary, is the path we must take to the publishing side of the force.

It is work, but it's best to learn to love it or risk driving yourself mad. (Why do you think so many writers are mentally unstable? Especially in the past, because when they messed up, they had to rewrite everything by hand, no sweep of the mouse for them.

So blow off your frustration and annoyance, and pat yourself on the back as the Hatrack writers have been doing to you. What you've already committed to the printed page is an achievement, and don't fool yourself into thinking of it in any other way.

A sabbatical, yes. Just beware the monsters Procrastination and Rationalization who may so delay your return to the printed page that your eight years will slip into oblivion and writing will become that momentary diversion with which you once toyed.

Rest a while and come back typing.

P.S. Why not try a next "little one?" Things are so much easier in small bites.

Look at the above list of POV's and write the same scene from each POV. Look through the eyes of that character and just write as if you were them. Yes, one in first person, one in second one in third.

You might be surprised at how easy it is.

Shawn

BTW happy birthday.

Let me know if you get it, hotmail is acting like shotmail today.

I thought I already was a serious aspiring writer.

Now I'm a deadly serious aspiring writer.

Spent up my birthday money and reserve funds on some material that may help. The OSC novel I bought simply as thanks for this forum - the rest should be useful as research in some way or other.

Most already bought - the rest are on order from Amazon:

Solutions for Novelists - Sol Stein
Characters and Viewpoint - OSC
How to Write a Damn Good Novel - James N. Frey
From Pitch to Publication - Carole Blake

The Writer's Guide to Character Traits
Rediscovering Grammar - David Crystal

Ender's Game - OSC
Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
Titan - Stephen Baxter
The Reality Dysfunction - Peter F. Hamilton

Hang in there, research the other side of the writing, take some new techniques out for a spin, and try to keep in mind why you wanted to do all this in the first place.

I always wrote fiction, but it was for me, no one else. When I wrote my first novel, sometime in 1978 or was it 79, not sure now. I went out and looked inside the cover of a book I had read in the same genre and sent a few sample chapters out and a synopsis.

I look back on that now and shake my head. I had no idea what the Writers Market was. Didn't even know it was a book.

I got back a letter from an editor that I thought was a horrible creature. He had written all over my three sample chapters with a red pen. He did say the plot idea was a good one, but (awful, since if I sent it out again, I would have to retype those pages) I was indignant. What did this guy think? Who was he to tell me how to write MY story?

I looked up another publisher and sent away. Now I had no idea how to do this. I headed my letter Dear Editor, it was single spaced—ect. This second editor was not so nice. He told me basically that my writing was amateur and needed a major overhaul. He also suggested I consult the Writers Market.

I set aside that manuscript and didn’t write fiction for a long time after that. I was a failure. I had written this brilliant piece of work and no one could see it.

I went back to editing, non-fiction, and teaching.

Then 5 years ago when I moved to California I was sorting stuff to make to move lighter. I found that box with that manuscript in it and I laughed myself silly at the thing. What trash! I also looked at the letter from that editor and the comments inserted into the text.

What a lot of wasted years. His comments were right on and I realized then that he would not have taken the time to comment unless he thought my idea had merit. I started writing fiction again, and have sold a few pieces of fiction to on-line markets and done a lot of free stuff. And I have those partials out there.

So my point after that long ramble is you have invested 8 years of learning. You have resources that I did not have then, the Internet ect. So go for it.

We all start somewhere, you are 8 years ahead of the game.