Well, I’m doing it. I’m throwing my two
cents worth into the ring labeled “POV.” It’s something I’ve considered
blogging about for a long time, as it’s one of the biggest, gangliest, toothiest,
hairiest, wartiest, most frequent, and most significant technical issues I come
across when I am editing and teaching. Some of what I am going to say is absolutely
personal opinion, but it’s a studied personal opinion, developed over years of
being a kid and a reader, a lifetime of reading kids’ books, and many years of
editing and teaching.
Ok. So. I rarely feel that an omniscient POV works in books for kids. I am personally
not a fan of omniscient POV’s in books for kids. (Note that: books
for kids. Bold. Italics. Underline. Fiction for adults is another
matter entirely.) BUT, there are notable exceptions.
Reading as the kid I used to be (which is partially
how I approach all kidlit) and reading as an avid adult reader of kidlit (as I
am now), plus reading as an editor (which I get paid to do), I almost
invariably feel a greater connection with the protagonist of a story when scenes
in which he/she is present are written in either first person or limited third
person. I think I’m far from alone in this, and I’m certain this is why you
really don’t see omniscient POV’s all that often in kidlit today, even in
fantasy.
POV? Huh? Limited whatsit? Ok, let’s back up
a bit.
Point of View, POV for short and when
scribbled in the margins of manuscripts, is the technical term for describing who is telling the story and what their
relation to the story is. This person, if a character in the story, is
called the viewpoint character. The
only other person it can be is the author.
—
Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering
the Craft
First Person: “I”
is the viewpoint character. All information comes through “I”’s perspective. We
can only know what "I" thinks, feels, sees, hears, etc. We infer what
other characters think through what they say, how they behave, and through what
“I” thinks about them.
Limited Third Person: “he” or “she” is the view point character
and tells the story. Only what they think, feel, perceive etc. is told. We infer what other characters think through
what they say, how they behave, and through what “he” or “she” thinks/observes
about them.
Tactically, limited third is identical to
first person. It has exactly the same essential limitation: that nothing can be
seen, known, or told except what the narrator sees, knows, and tells. That
limitation concentrates the voice and gives apparent authenticity.
—
Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering
the Craft
Omniscient: Numerous viewpoint characters. Writer can
tell us what anyone is thinking/feeling and interpret that behavior. Sometimes
narrator has a strong voice.
Sometimes the omniscient narrator has a strong voice…
in fact, unless the narrator has a strong voice, I really don’t feel an omniscient
POV works. Yes, that’s my opinion.
In fact, I think POV shifts are fraught with danger
and must be done with skill and complete awareness—if at all.
It’s also very easy to slip outside the viewpoint
character’s POV without realizing or to hover half-in and half-out—to not be
deep enough inside that POV. ALL INFORMATION (unless using omniscient) must
come through the viewpoint character’s emotional, physical, cultural,
psychological etc. filters. Yep, in my opinion.
I feel that:
·
When your
main character is present, everything should be seen through
his or her or its limited third person POV. Or first person, of course. Other POVs
are acceptable in scenes when your protagonist is not present, but there should
be far less of them.
Why?
- To go from
protagonist’s POV to those of secondary characters is actually “head-hopping."
- We may
never manage to fully and completely connect with your protagonist. You may
relegate your protagonist (whom the reader expects to know inside and out) to a
minor character at times.
- POV
changes and many characters’ POVs may make an your story unnecessarily frantic or
confusing at times. Your young reader may have trouble keeping track.
- When you step
outside your character and refer to them as the
girl for example, that also has the effect of taking us even further
outside her POV, away from her experience, as he doesn’t think of himself as
“the girl.” She would think of himself (in third person) as “she” or by her
name.
- As a
(young) reader, I don’t want to go right into an antagonists’ POV. I don’t want
or need to go into minor character’s POVs, and if I do, I may be confused about
their importance to the story.
- I want to
stay in the head of the protagonist (when he/she’s in the scene), and that’s
where my greatest empathy wants to lie. I want that chance to feel empathy for
the protagonist, but it takes contact and consistency of POV (when he/she is in
the scene) for me to care about him/her. I want to experience the story through
the hero, so I can be the hero for a
little while.
- If you go
into the mind of another character when your protagonist is in the scene, you
distance me from your protagonist. You don’t give me a chance to see the world,
other characters, and the action through your protagonist’s eyes, so I lose that
connection with him/her. Just as he/she has to do, I want to be able and should
be able to infer what other characters are thinking and feeling by the way they
act. If their feelings and thoughts are ambiguous, that forces an even greater
empathy with your protagonist, as we are fully immersed in his/her experience—even
if his/her experience is one of confusion or lack of full knowledge. We get the
chance to be a confused, troubled young person/animal-person/alien
creature/etc. under great duress.
- By
extension, I would rather view an antagonist from an external view and make up
my own mind about what he/she is thinking and feeling by the way he/she
behaves, just as the hero has to do.
- As a
(young) reader I don’t care what most adults think and I don’t want to be
inside their boring grown-up heads. I am interested in the concerns of kids my
own age. I don’t care very much about politics or grown-up relationship stuff
like that unless it’s all part of an exciting plot, which is presented very
clearly to me in a way I can conceptualize through my young perspective,
without too much boring background or stuff about the weird, boring stuff
adults do, talk, and think about. Again, that means don’t let me inside adult
heads. I care more about what kids (especially the protagonist) are thinking
and feeling.
In my opinion, this is one of the things
that makes Harry Potter so incredibly
successful. Rowling (after some interesting POV stuff as she establishes
character and voice in the first book) is a master of POV. And she does
extraordinary amounts by staying exclusively in Harry’s limited third person
POV (except when he is not present in a scene…and that’s quite rare, but she
handles the POV change in a separate chapter). We never go into Hermione’s head
or Ron’s, but we know what they’re thinking and feeling through Harry’s experience
of them. And we especially don’t go into Snape’s or Voldemort’s heads…but that
does not limit our understanding or experience of them in any way. It does, in
fact, enhance it while keeping the tension between protagonist and antagonist
high.
For a very successful example of limited
third person with two protagonists, take a look at the first in The 39 Clues series, The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan. The
two characters are a brother and sister and their two POV’s are handled in
separate alternating chapters.
If you stay in your protagonist’s POV when
he is present in a scene, that means we cannot know what your other characters
are thinking or feeling unless they show us by what they say in dialogue, or by
what they do physically: facial expressions, movements, reactions etc.
In scenes in which your protagonist is not
present, then you might take a more third person omniscient approach, but
really I’d aim to avoid what’s called ‘head-hopping,’ even in those scenes, and
mainly just show (yes, show, not tell) us how the characters are feeling or
what they are thinking by what they say in dialogue and how they act.
Omniscient POVs are VERY tricky to do well,
and they’re something you don’t see that often, really. There are some books
with omniscient narrators on the market and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is a fairly well known example,
and then there’s Kate DiCamillo’s brilliant The
Tale of Despereaux—at least those are the two which spring readily to my
mind. One thing you’ll notice about those books is that the narrator has a
very strong and distinctive voice.
If a writer wants to develop an omniscient
POV, then they would be (again, in my opinion) advised to develop a stronger narrator’s/storyteller’s
voice, but they should be be wary.
Will an added voice detract from the story
and style? Is it something that the story doesn’t actually need? Is there already
quite enough going on (including a lot of characters and subplot points to keep
track of), without needing an additional speaker’s voice into the mix?
I recently posted on my Facebook page an
article about head-hopping (http://www.floggingthequill.com/flogging_the_quill/2004/12/an_executive_ed.html)
and I expressed my feelings about
successful omniscient in children’s fiction, which some very well-known editors
and agents immediately went on to share on their pages, agreeing heartily that
head-hoping has no place in kidlit. So, as you see, it’s widely felt.
Here are some links about POV in general:
Now, I expect a bit of spirited debate about this.
What do you think?
