Monday, April 4, 2011

My POV

There so many more points of view than I ever thought possible.

First-person view
Second-person view
Third-person view
Alternating person view
Stream-of-consciousness voice
Character voice
Unreliable voice
Epistolary voice

Third-person voices:

Third-person, subjective
Third-person, objective
Third-person, omniscient

The more I look at stories from different angles, the more it affects everything I do. My husband and I watched a movie the other night and for the first time ever he was on the side of the woman and I was on the side of the man. When did this happen? But I could clearly see from the male point of view how the situation could have developed.

Of course, we agreed to disagree. This means I firmly stated that he (my husband) was obviously wrong and possibly turning into a little girl and we decided to move on from there.

But what struck me is how much the story can change depending on the point of view. I am currently using a first person female pov. This is more comfortable to me because it feels as if I am telling you the story. What are you using? And do you play with different ones? Or ever thought of how your story would change if another character were telling it?

8 comments:

  1. Okay, now I'm curious to know what movie you guys were watching that would make your husband possibly turn into a little girl! LOL

    I write in third person and use multiple POVs to tell the story, so I get to play around in a few different characters' heads. I actually think I'm slightly better at writing from a man's POV. My own female neurosis tends to slip into my female characters, turning them into annoying, whiny little b*tches.

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  2. My current WIP is told in first-person/female, and she's slightly unreliable. I never even considered writing this story from third person, though that's how I usually prefer to write.

    And, yeah, I'm curious what movie that was too.

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  3. I like to experiment with points of view, although for my serious projects it's generally third person. :) There are SO many types though, aren't there? Yet all of them can make an amazing story. I once read one in second person and loved it! How weird, right?

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  4. I'm first person, present tense. I've had many a crit partner try and talk me out of this foolishness so I left them. ;) Really I don't think there is another way.

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  5. Don't forget the tenses!

    Let's see:
    Book 1: Alternating female 3rd person objective
    Book 2: Male 3rd person
    Book 3: Female 1st person present

    However the book comes to me, I write it.

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  6. It's also amazing to me how quickly a writer can make a sympathetic character unsympathetic and vice versa. I see it on TV shows I watch...it really bugs me when I stop siding with a character I've previously sided with, all because the writer took a wrong turn.

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  7. saw your answer to Tana's Friday post about genre and just had to let you know-- I'd read that book, haha. All of my favorite TV shows rolled into one? Yes, please. Best of luck!

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  8. I struggled with this a lot in my current story. I really wanted to write in first person, but I realized that the parts that I enjoyed writing most and that came out sounding the best were the parts I tried in third, and I had to let go of that dream. I mostly wanted to do it because there aren't many first-person fantasy books out there. Now I understand why. I might even have to delve into alternating viewpoints just to convey the scope of events. This project is spiraling out of control.

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It helps to know I'm not just talking to myself.