Thursday, September 13, 2007
Writing royal court
I prefer to read fiction written in limited POV. That means that the POV is limited to one or two main characters. I find it helps me to really "get into" their heads, bond with them, feel I know them. When someone likes limited POV, or even singular POV (an entire story written from only one person's POV), they are considered POV purists. Part of me is one of THOSE people, but another part, the rebellious part, says do what's right for the story, no matter what, even if it means straying into the POV of other characters occasionally. This technique is called "multiple POV", which is different from head-hopping. It is deliberate and much attention is paid to staying in one POV for a while (at least several paragraphs). I DO NOT like head-hopping (switching POV every paragraph, sometimes every sentence) ever, ever, ever. In my opinion, there is no story that cannot be re-written or edited to be in limited or multiple POV, which (also in my opinion) would make it better. Those of us in the writing world have heard many times, "Story is King", but to that I add, "POV is queen." Well, lots of other things are important too, like GMC (goal, motivation, conflict), story arcs, turning points, first person vs. third person, grammar and sentence structure, overuse of certain words or dialog tags, pace, overuse of adverbs or gerunds, telling vs. showing, passive writing vs. active...well this list is endless. Since I like the analogy of all those things making up the royal "writing" court, I guess I'll use that. If anyone reads this blog, is there anything in what I've said that is unclear or that you don't understand? I'll answer if so.
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