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How To Write a Book: What's your POV?

I recently read a book written in first person that made me unsettled. A bit like a baby must feel when strapped to someone's chest facing forward. No. Really. Like I was dangling out there as the action was happening. The immediacy had me slightly unnerved throughout the read and it wasn't until afterward that I put my finger on the fact that it was a memoir of someone to whom bad things happened and I felt as if they were happening to me.

There are 4 types of POV in writing

3rd Person Omniscient: Little did she know she'd become the queen in twelve short months. Popular for children who need this kind of foretelling to keep their attention.

3rd Person Limited: She felt awkward with the crown perched on her head. This most popular point of view has someone telling us the story pretty much as it happens.

2nd Person: You are the master of your domain and self-care can be a priority. With you as the focus, I think of this as most effective for self-help books.

1st Person: I spit in his food every chance I got. I is telling the story and there are two big pitfalls with this POV. I is an unlikeable character and or they tell us things they should be showing us. There are some colossal hits written in this POV including Twilight and The Hunger Games.

Once you pick one of the 4 above, stick with it. My editor was a stickler about head-hopping which tripped me up at first because I grew up reading books where that happened like in Sydney Sheldon's Master of the Game there is this passage: 

Kate sat with her grandson looking out on the dancers and thinking when did I get so old? Robert's mother saw them sitting together and thought she's ageless.

Whose POV are we in? Kate's or Robert's mother's?

You can certainly change which person in 3rd Person Limited is telling the story, just make it clear when the switch happens. Often it's at the start of a section and you signal the change by using their name.

As Markus walked home he kept replaying the crime in his head. Now we know where we are, who we are with, and what we are doing.

The only time I was allowed to head-hop was during sex scenes. Switching back and forth let my reader experience what was happening to both people.



-- Anna Erikssön Bendewald 

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