Let's talk about POV

by C. Michelle Jefferies

POV is not the easiest thing to understand. Especially for the TV generation who watches TV shows with mostly omniscient POV perspective.

While omniscient point of view is great for sitcom and other television, it is a very hard POV to pull of in a book. This is why a lot of beginning writers fail with their first attempts at creating a story.

Point of view is basically who the story is being told by. Who sees the story and experiences it.

There are a few types of POV they are:

Omniscient - Which is a "fly on the wall" perspective. This perspective sees everything and can hop into anyone's head and hear anyone's thoughts. this is extremely hard to pull off and make it readable and relateable for the reader.

Exclusive - This is, honestly, my favorite POV. Exclusive is the story told from one persons POV through out the whole book. You need to present the entire story, the good, the bad, the fun, and the not so fun all from one persons perspective. There's no skipping to the bad guys perspective to tell the reader who did it, or why, or how. It is challenging, but I love the challenge.

Multiple - This is where you have more than one POV character to tell the story. This is easier because other characters can have experiences and see and hear things that the MC doesn't and they can fill in the blanks. The challenge with this POV modality is that you need to be careful that the other POV characters don't pull "duct tape moments" and save the MC when he should be saving himself.

My opinion is to try writing stories in both exclusive and multiple POV to get a handle on how to do them. Then when presented with a story idea, you can choose which POV works best for that story.

What is your favorite POV?

Have a fantastic writing day!