Babble on POVs

[donutsweeper]

Just a question, and I'm not sure of the correct terminology here, but when reading (or writing), do you prefer a tight 3rd person POV  (where all events are seen and interpreted through one character's eyes) or switching between people's 3rd person POV with obvious page breaks or markers to show the new POV?

For example- my entire Charming the Pants off the Pashahads SGA/Jack crossover is told from Sheppard's POV, there is no scene where we see what Jack thinks about falling into the Pegasus Galaxy.  At points there are Sheppard's interpretation of Jack's actions (he notices a hedged answer, an avoided question, but doesn't know why Jack  answered that way).  If it had been written with switching POV's there could be the scene from Shep's perspective, noticing what he notices and wondering about it, followed by the same scene retold from Jack's, where he explained the reasons for saying what he did.  There also could have been scenes left out from the story the way I told it- I never did explain how Jack managed to get his hands on the Pashahads (because Sheppard wasn't there and wouldn't know).

I've been noticing more and more of the latter showing up in stories lately.  Presuming this babble actually makes sense to anyone, do you notice the difference between those types of POV styles and do you like one more than the other?

Comments

[unfeathered]

I don't mind POVs switching as long as it's not every other paragraph. And as has already been said, sometimes it's what the story needs.

Like my Angel/Jack fic - I got completely stuck on that because I was trying to tell it all from Angel's POV. Then I tried switching POV and it all fell into place. I think I did only switch back and forth about four times though, in a 4K+ story.

What's weird is that most of the stories I read when I was young were - um - I think the word is omni-POV? Where you tell the story from the POV of a *group* of people, occasionally dipping into someone's head and then popping out again. Now, because it seems to be more fashionable to use a strict one person POV, I find that sort of thing extremely distracting, and yet it's how I wrote all my early stories.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

oh yes, omniscient POV, I remember reading a lot of that, especially when younger. I'd probably find it distracting these days as well.

The Jack/angel fic worked, you got the flow between POV's right which is what's important.