When I made the transition from writing magazine articles to trying my hand at fiction, it didn’t take long to learn that although I was a published writer, I wasn’t an author. I knew nothing about the fine points of writing fiction–but like many writers venturing into an unfamiliar genre–I thought I did.

My first rude awakening involved a favorite of agents and publishers. Point of view. Known as POV, this plagues authors and causes immediate banishment of their manuscript from the  to the proverbial “round file.” Whether the manuscript is returned with a nice form letter, or if you’re lucky, a hand-written comment on the first page, or nothing whatsoever, the message is the same: “Although your manuscript has merit, it’s not for me. And, your point of view is all over the place.”

Sound familiar? Let’s think about that for a minute. What does it really mean?  After my sister (also previously published in other genres) and I received a few such rejections for A Corpse in the Soup, our first Silver Sisters comical crime caper, we simply assured ourselves they had to say something to justify not wanting our masterpiece.

We actually got a little belligerent. What in the world did they mean? The conversations in our novel were focused, weren’t they? We were lucky when it came to rejections, if there can possibly be a silver lining in that cloud. Why? Because we got several personal notes, encouraging us to work with a manuscript editor or consultant. Many added that if we could master POV, we would have a publishable manuscript. As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened, and a few years later, with many edits, A Corpse in the Soup was named Best Mystery Audio Book 2007 by USA Book News.

But it took several more rejections with handwritten comments all saying the same thing, until we agreed that this was, indeed, a problem. So we did what they suggested. We reworked our entire manuscript with the help of a consultant, and in the process learned what we didn’t know about POV.

Essentially, you can’t keep jumping from head to head in a scene or chapter. You can’t have your characters spouting things or deducing solutions with information they simply can’t have. The more we worked with our consultant, the more we became aware that we had managed to make every classic POV error. Many novice writers use this “jumping” technique, if it can be called that, because they think it makes the chapter or scene more interesting.  In the reality of the writer’s world, it doesn’t. It may not bother some readers, but in many cases it confuses the very person you’re trying to reach with a jumble of thoughts, statements and situations that are clearly unrealistic.

Even basic classes stress that a scene must be owned by ONE character. If they have knowledge, make statements about events, or refer to actions, it must be something that is readily available to them. If multiple characters are involved, there must be a scene break to indicate that this is now a different person’s head.  Information can be transmitted through dialogue, physical changes in the scene, mastering the art of flashbacks if not used too frequently, and other devices, but you simply can’t hop from head to head and not expect to get that “Sorry. Not for me,” response.

Try a simple exercise. You are the main character and want the story to unfold. But things are happening that you can’t see or know about. Figure out how you can weave these facts and details into the story without losing the focus of one or more character’s POV’s. Next week, we’ll use some examples to show how this is done.

Related posts:

1. What’s the Point of “Point of View?” – Part 2
2. Opening up Your Options: Making a Choice – Part 1
3. Opening up Your Options: Making a Choice – Part 3