POV and Me

[Laura Moore]

Okay, chalk it up to being a novice writer or a borderline OCD personality or just standard human doubt of self worth, but I have now rewritten my entire manuscript changing from its original first person POV to third person. Not an easy task, I might add. Now I have two completely different versions of the same story. At first I chose 1st because it is easier to write and my protagonist is a telepath so I saw little need to see things through other peoples eyes. However, after reading more books on writing and taking to writers, etc I learned the true power of third person. I felt confident in my new direction, I changed the manuscript, and added many powerful scenes through the eyes of other players and even afforded myself an opportunity to "see" my protagonist.

So now I sit with two versions, one I am intimately close to and the other I feel is stronger. Help!? Any hard and fast rules out there for POV? Any thoughts on what POV and the beginning writer? POV and publishing chances? I welcome any and all discussion, opinions, and rantings about POV in fiction.

All by myself...herself...myself...Laura

[Julie Compton]

Laura, it sounds to me like your process works for you. You wrote the first draft in the POV that made it easier to get the bones of the story down, and then you later revised to a third person POV, making it stronger. You didn't stubbornly stick to your first choice just because it was your first choice.

I'm working on a novel now where, for the first time, I'm writing from the POVs of several different characters. In the past, I've always stuck to 3rd person, close, from the POV of my main character. So this is new for me. I think the only "hard and fast" rule I stick to is this: don't wander between POVs within a scene. It makes things very confusing for the reading and, IMO, just doesn't flow well. Even switching POVs between scenes can be tricky, I think. It needs to be done in such a way that the reader knows he/she's in a different POV right off, and yet not be too jolting. You don't want to take your reader out of the story. It's a fine balance. In general, I just write in the POV that comes to me naturally at first, and then revise later if I decide something else works better. It sounds like you do this, too.

Re: publishing chances, I've heard it said that agents/publishers are skeptical of first person POV from new writers, and the reason is, generally it turns out to be poorly disguised memoir. A lot of new writers have that "personal" story they need to get out before they can move on to real fiction. If that's the case, often it's better to put that one in a drawer! (and let the second novel be the "first" -- if you know what I mean). But in the end, if it's well written and has a great voice, I think it won't matter what POV it's in.