Writerly things
Dear authors on my flist,
Talk to me about points of view, please.
Looking back over my writing, I see that I tend to pick one character's POV and stick with it. So the whole story will be in Harry's POV, or Ginny's, or Neville's or Ron's. Part of that is because one of my pet peeves in writing is having the story switch POV in the middle of a paragraph. You know, like this:
Hannah couldn't believe her eyes. Neville just finished off twenty-three scoops of ice cream on his own and now his stomach hurt and he felt queasy.
Because how can Hannah know how Neville's tummy is feeling? Maybe he feels like he could easily eat another 10 scoops. (Bad example is bad, btw, but I'm just doing this off the top of my head)
Or when the narrative describes an action that the person who notices it has no way of seeing, like, if Ginny's the person it's happening to, and she's not looking in a mirror, so how does she know her face just went pasty white?
(I saw good examples of both of these in a fic I was reading earlier, but I can't find it now, so I can't use them, unfortunately.)
Anyway, to avoid things like that, I usually just pick a point of view and stick with it. I try really hard to write only what the character (like, say, Harry) could know. Harry doesn't know what Ginny's thinking behind that inscrutable gaze, although he could take guess and maybe even be right. He can't see that his ears just turned red enough to rival Ron's, but by golly, they sure feel hot.
But... what about writing different POVs in a story, or, like, in different scenes? I know kezzabear wrote a fic which alternated between Harry's and Ginny's POV--the same scene, told two ways. It was very effective, especially they way she did it. What about doing completely different scenes in different points of view, like if Harry's at Auror Training and Ginny's on the road with the Harpies, for example, so we, the readers, see everything that's happening, but Harry and Ginny don't have a clue about the other.
I know I'm asking a stupid question. I know it can be done. I've read it done, where we see person 1 doing X and person 2 doing Y, and neither knows what the other's doing until they get together and talk about it.
I think maybe I'm wondering...if you're doing a story in multiple POVs, how do you keep them straight? Or maybe I'm asking how someone (like me) who's been strictly tied to writing one POV in a story, can expand that into multiple POVs without losing her mind, especially given her hang-ups about randomly switching POVs. Or maybe I'm asking how you keep the suspense/conflict in the story if all the readers know what all the characters are thinking/feeling.
Or maybe I'm just completely overthinking this.
Talk to me about points of view, please.
Looking back over my writing, I see that I tend to pick one character's POV and stick with it. So the whole story will be in Harry's POV, or Ginny's, or Neville's or Ron's. Part of that is because one of my pet peeves in writing is having the story switch POV in the middle of a paragraph. You know, like this:
Hannah couldn't believe her eyes. Neville just finished off twenty-three scoops of ice cream on his own and now his stomach hurt and he felt queasy.
Because how can Hannah know how Neville's tummy is feeling? Maybe he feels like he could easily eat another 10 scoops. (Bad example is bad, btw, but I'm just doing this off the top of my head)
Or when the narrative describes an action that the person who notices it has no way of seeing, like, if Ginny's the person it's happening to, and she's not looking in a mirror, so how does she know her face just went pasty white?
(I saw good examples of both of these in a fic I was reading earlier, but I can't find it now, so I can't use them, unfortunately.)
Anyway, to avoid things like that, I usually just pick a point of view and stick with it. I try really hard to write only what the character (like, say, Harry) could know. Harry doesn't know what Ginny's thinking behind that inscrutable gaze, although he could take guess and maybe even be right. He can't see that his ears just turned red enough to rival Ron's, but by golly, they sure feel hot.
But... what about writing different POVs in a story, or, like, in different scenes? I know kezzabear wrote a fic which alternated between Harry's and Ginny's POV--the same scene, told two ways. It was very effective, especially they way she did it. What about doing completely different scenes in different points of view, like if Harry's at Auror Training and Ginny's on the road with the Harpies, for example, so we, the readers, see everything that's happening, but Harry and Ginny don't have a clue about the other.
I know I'm asking a stupid question. I know it can be done. I've read it done, where we see person 1 doing X and person 2 doing Y, and neither knows what the other's doing until they get together and talk about it.
I think maybe I'm wondering...if you're doing a story in multiple POVs, how do you keep them straight? Or maybe I'm asking how someone (like me) who's been strictly tied to writing one POV in a story, can expand that into multiple POVs without losing her mind, especially given her hang-ups about randomly switching POVs. Or maybe I'm asking how you keep the suspense/conflict in the story if all the readers know what all the characters are thinking/feeling.
Or maybe I'm just completely overthinking this.