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

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Um...this ended up much longer than I expected. Apologies for the rant.

I think it depends on the story, the genre and the person writing it. When I'm writing, I know right away what POV the story has to be from. It sort of chooses itself that way.

1st Person is tricky, because, unless your narrator is someone interesting with an interesting view of the world (Harry Dresden, say, or Archie Goodwin), you're stuck with them and they can only report what they're seeing and hearing and thinking. When you have a boring narrator though (like Bella Swan in Twilight), it's not good because you only have her boring thoughts. I think this tends to work best in a 'autobiographical' way, which you're telling a long story that spans several years. Philippa Carr, for example, used it all the time in her historical romances, which worked because the heroine's whole life was the focus of the story, not just one event in it.

The 2nd person POV ('you walk down the street and notice a red balloon') trend drove me up the wall. It was sort of like self-insertion fanfic at its worst. I never understood that.

3rd person limited (where only one person is viewing the events) is limited in the same way 1st person is. You can really only tell what one person is thinking and doing, but you do have more leeway in describing the world where the characters are living. You can narrate what colour a tree is in 3rd person, whereas in 1st person, would your character really spend that much time on the trees? I notice sometimes that people start in one POV and then make just a one sentence statement about something the character wouldn't know and it just throws me right out of the story.

3rd person omniscient (where you know the thoughts of all the characters) can get confusing, but someone like Neil Gaiman tends to use it a lot to great effect. In Good Omens, say, you get the story from The Them, from Crowley, from Aziraphale, from Anathema, from Newt, from all these people and that's a really neat way to view a story. But he has very clear delineations when it switches POV. The same goes for Jim Butcher in his Codex Alera series.

So, I don't think I prefer one way or another. It just depends how good the story I'm reading is. I think multiple POVS can be very interesting, though. Like the episode of due South where you see the events in the mall from RayK, Thatcher and Welsh's POVs and you see how they all saw something different. That can be very cool too.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

1st person can be done really well. In fact there is this Nero Wolfe that, because Archie interprets events one way, we the readers do as well and it all goes to hell in a handbasket as a result.

I think you're right about 3rd person omniscient- it's the lack of clear delineations that drives me batty. It can be done well, but in fanfic it's often not.

Anything, done well, can be interesting, right?

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Yes, and 1st person works well for Nero Wolfe, too, because Archie often gets sent on errands while Wolfe is coordinating the big reveal, too, so that Archie doesn't know whodunnit until we do, a lot of the time.

I don't think fanfic requires multiple POVS, unless you're writing something really epic. There's a series of SG-1 fics that I love on ff.net, which uses all manner of POVS, tenses, and characters, but it's more a series of oneshots that somewhat interconnect than an actual one-storyline fic. I think in fanfic people aren't often confident enough to keep it to one person's POV. There's risk in that of writing another character as 'bad' or 'mean' when you can't get into their head for their motivation. Storm Front from Murphy's POV, for example, would probably paint her in a different light than we see her from Harry's POV.

I'm nattering again. :p It's an interesting topic.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

You're not nattering at all! It's all very interesting.

Very good point about Storm front. It never really occurred to me how different someone in DF might seem if seen a different way. OMG- Morgan, if seen through an omniscient 3rd person POV or through Ramirez's POV? Totally different.

I think in fanfic people aren't often confident enough to keep it to one person's POV.

That's an excellent point as well. It' much harder to write with a limited POV and still make well rounded characters.