Omniscient point of view, the god-like view where the narrator knows all/sees all, has plagued me for a long time. I just couldn’t quite grasp how to write it. Omniscient was the POV of nineteenth-century books. Later, as third-person limited came on the scene, omni-POV fell out of favor with publishers. I hear that it…
Today continues our Ask the Editor series. I write historical romance. How important is it that all details be historically accurate versus making it understandable to modern day readers? For instance, most people nowadays think of dinner as an evening meal. Not so in the 1800s when it was the midday meal. The degree of…
Should I write my novel in first person or third (or get totally wild and use second person)? Am I limited to a single character, or can I use multiple point of view (POV) characters? Who should my novel’s POV character be? You want to write a story readers can’t put down, but how do…
Point of view. Think about those words and it will help you. From whose perspective are you viewing your scene? Whose feelings and thoughts are being expressed in the scene? Example from my present WIP: Chase stared at Karl with what he hoped was a questioning, please-continue look in his blue eyes, but Karl just…
I regularly notice that writers incorrectly shift from one character’s point of view (POV) to another. That is, they give us more than one POV in the same paragraph. I know I did when I first began writing fiction, and I continued to struggle until I got my brain wrapped around what POV is. Nancy…