How Do You Stay in the Right POV?

by Amy Sue Nathan

If your book has an omnipresent narrator, he or she sees and knows all.  You know, like when you watch TV and two characters are on the phone, line down the middle of the screen.  You can see both characters, hear what they’re saying. You know what each is doing and maybe even what they’re thinking.  If you remember the show The Wonder Years, that show was from little Kevin Arnold’s POV.  We knew what he was thinking — and although we could see all the characters — we were not inside their heads.  If you had a kid who ever watched the old Disney show Lizzie McGuire, same thing.

In writing — if the reader is given access to all the knowledge and thoughts of every character — or even a few — this can be akin to head-jumping.  And it can be done.  It has been done.  But for those of us tampering with genres and trying to publish — it’s a good idea to pick a narrator, a POV, and stick with him or her.  When an author allows the reader multiple vantage points within the same book, chapter, page or even paragraph,  I liken it driving to a restaurant you went to a year ago,  only to find it’s now a dry cleaners.  You thought you knew where you were going, but you were wrong. You stop and think, “Wait, I thought there was a restaurant here.”  You go back over your directions, your memories, the last time you were there.

And if that happens when you’re reading — well if it happens to me — I stop.

My suggestion is to pick a head and stay in it — through a chapter at least.  In third person writing I find it makes the story more intimate, more palpable.  My method for making sure I stay in one character’s head — is:

WW_K?

What Would (your character’s name) Know?

When writing or editing  a third-person story (I find it easier in first person) this helps me stay in one person’s head.  I can’t write what he or she wouldn’t know.  I can write what they see, hear and think.  I can write whatever he or she is privy to — meaning the actions and spoken words of others, as well as the setting. No matter when I change POV’s –  within the same story — or not — this helps me make sure I’m not head-jumping when I don’t mean to — or when I really, really want to, but shouldn’t.

I’ve not written with an all-knowing narrator — have you?

How do you stay in your chosen POV?

Or…do you not?