Does Point of View (POV) terrify you? Thank all those critics and teachers who don’t know anything about being creative yet told you countless “rules.” POV is actually quite straightforward, though some individual POVs may be more challenging to write than others. #WritingTips pic.twitter.com/1DDiqCy0a4
— Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, Ph.D. (@Alexandria_SZ) August 31, 2018
Don’t confuse POV with things that have nothing to do with POV: writing in past or present tense, using flashbacks or foreshadowing, good character development or realistic dialogue. None of those is POV and POV is not concerned with those separate writing issues.#WritingTips
— Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, Ph.D. (@Alexandria_SZ) August 31, 2018
Don’t confuse literary Point of View with people expressing different opinions in real life: in writing, different characters’ views of the same events is Perspective, not POV. Point of View is HOW something is written, and there are very few POVs in writing. #WritingTips
— Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, Ph.D. (@Alexandria_SZ) August 31, 2018
Points of View
• Unlimited, in grammatical 3rd person: he, she, it, they
• First Person, in grammatical 1st person: I, we
• Inner Limited, in 3rd person: he, she, it, they
• Second Person, in 2nd person: you
• Outer Limited, in 3rd person: he, she, it, they #WritingTips— Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, Ph.D. (@Alexandria_SZ) August 31, 2018
Unlimited POV is the only one that has absolutely no limits to the information an author presents to his reader, hence its name. Author reveals EVERY character’s thoughts, feelings, motivations, past, although not always at the same time. The easiest POV to master.#WritingTips
— Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, Ph.D. (@Alexandria_SZ) August 31, 2018
Unlimited POV is generally considered “reliable,” i.e., you can “trust” the story as it is presented to you (though some things may still be open to interpretation). This POV is generally considered to reflect the authors’ view of their characters. A very popular POV#WritingTips
— Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, Ph.D. (@Alexandria_SZ) August 31, 2018
Unlimited POV may be ambiguous if the author (occasionally or often) presents multiple interpretations, or uses qualifiers / semantics.
Emma was not unhappy, Emma was very happy = Unlimited POV
Emma was perhaps not unhappy, Emma seemed happy = ambiguous Unlimited POV#WritingTips— Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, Ph.D. (@Alexandria_SZ) August 31, 2018
Multiple perspectives can be presented in Unlimited POV w/o changing POV, as @GRRMspeaking does in his Game of Thrones books. Each section/chapter reveals events from a different character’s perspective, but all the characters’ feelings are revealed in each section.#WritingTips
— Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, Ph.D. (@Alexandria_SZ) August 31, 2018
Unlimited Point of View
• written in grammatical 3rd person: he, she, it, they
• the ONLY unlimited POV = no limits to information author gives to readers
• can show different characters’ perspectives without changing POV
• easiest to write
• easiest to read #WritingTips— Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, Ph.D. (@Alexandria_SZ) August 31, 2018
I’ll do another POV next Friday: there’s simply too much information to do POV full justice in #WritingTips. (I mean, really, I wrote an entire book on POV.) Can’t wait till then or have questions? Read this: Who’s Afraid of Point of View?#WritingTipshttps://t.co/112r8aTYFk pic.twitter.com/TinfcRavy7
— Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, Ph.D. (@Alexandria_SZ) August 31, 2018
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Related Posts
First Person Point of View
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Inner Limited Point of View
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Second Person Point of View
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Who’s Afraid of Point of View?
Writing Tips
(all my #writingtips on one page)
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