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Grammar Guide 7 - Point of View


Myr

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Welcome to Week 7 of our Grammar Guide. This week is all about Point of View.  We aren't talking about the arguing thing though (thankfully).  We are looking at this in how it relates to rules of grammar and how it gets applied in writing.  First up, let's talk about the Grammar Point of View:

Grammar has three points of view:

  1. First person - The speaker of the sentence (I/We)
  2. Second Person - The person spoken to (you)
  3. Third Person - The person or thing spoken about (he, she, it, they)

cat pov GIF

Point of View is also used to describe how a narrative (story) is told.  Fiction stories most commonly have Third Person Limited or First Person Points of View. So, lets dive in:

Narrative Point of View - When we tell stories, the story has a voice.  The voice of the story is the Narrative Point of View.  There are generally considered 5 Narrative Points of View (that also overlap on the first 3 with Grammar Point of View):

  • First Person - The story is told through the eyes of the character (I did...) and is limited to that character's thoughts and feelings.  This is the most common POV other than Third Person Limited.
  • Second Person - The narrator is speaking to you, the reader.  This is not common in fiction.  It is common in non-fiction such as speeches and advertising.
  • Third Person - Omniscient - Narrator is all seeing and all knowing.  They can (and do) flit all between characters' thoughts and motivations.  This was very common in older writing but has fallen out of favor in recent decades.
  • Third Person - Limited (sometimes called limited omniscient)- Narrator relays outside events but can also see thoughts and motivations of the main character. Changing character point of view can occur, but there is usually a break or chapter change to indicate switching of characters. Third Person Limited is the most common point of view other than First Person.
  • Third Person - Objective - Narrator relays events of only what can be seen.  You do not see any characters' thoughts or motivations in this view. This is most common in news articles.

Deadpool Hello GIF by moodman

One of the things that can trip us up as writers is switching points of view midstream or "author voice" intruding.  An example is when you are in third person limited as a point of view and suddenly telling what another character thinks or feels.  Eh?  You can share how the narrating character might think another character feels or thinks, but unless you go full omniscient, this is a writing error.

One oddity that is not common is the "Breaking of the fourth wall" as it is called in television.  This is where a character in the action turns and speaks to you the reader (or watcher).  Kevin Spacey in "House of Cards" did this.  Deadpool does this in all his iterations.  It's not all that common in fiction writing and can upend a reader if they aren't expecting it.

Hope this helps! Let us know what you think below and see you next week!

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On 2/17/2022 at 10:57 PM, Graeme said:

If you're going purest with Third Person Limited, you need to be careful when describing other characters. If it's not the 'main' character, you can't say. "John was angry" because that's reading their mind. You need to do something like "John looked angry" or better still "John glared as he clenched his fists" which allows the reader to interpret John as being angry without telling them explicitly. It's tricky and easy to get wrong, but most of the time only a purest would object to "John was angry" for a non-main character in Third Person Limited so it's not really that big a deal.

Totally agree, Graeme, and to me it is a big deal. A writer owes it to himself to get it right, or at least understand what is correct and pay attention. Better writing is better writing, and for me that is always the goal.   :) 

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Shifts in the point of view of third-person narration aren't particularly jarring, if handled well.  Emma Darwin has some valuable tips on how to execute such shifts so that the readers won't even notice.

However, when I encounter a shift from first-person narration to third-person in the middle of a story, I always wonder how the main character is supposed to have known what happened outside his sight and hearing.  That question usually jars me out of the flow and immediacy of the first-person story-telling, especially when the third-person material appears to be a scene that the author felt a need to work out, but intended to omit from the finished work.

Yesterday, I was flummoxed by a story I was reading on Nifty, in which the "I" telling the story became a different character from one paragraph to the next.  This was in mid-chapter, and the switch came without warning.  In fact, I had to read the new paragraph three or four times before it began to make sense, but sad to say, by that point I had lost interest in finishing the story.

I once encountered a story (also on Nifty, I believe) where, I kid you not, in the middle of a chapter and with no warning, "I" shifted to a different character three times in the space of two paragraphs, and one of those shifts actually occurred in the middle of a sentence.  As you may guess, that story had plenty of other problems that eventually rendered it unreadable.  A shame, too, because the premise was intriguing and the plot, imaginative.  It would have been a good read, if the writing hadn't been quite so unpolished.  I hope the writer got himself sorted out in his later work, because he showed promise.

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4 hours ago, BigBen said:

Shifts in the point of view of third-person narration aren't particularly jarring, if handled well.  Emma Darwin has some valuable tips on how to execute such shifts so that the readers won't even notice.

However, when I encounter a shift from first-person narration to third-person in the middle of a story, I always wonder how the main character is supposed to have known what happened outside his sight and hearing.  That question usually jars me out of the flow and immediacy of the first-person story-telling, especially when the third-person material appears to be a scene that the author felt a need to work out, but intended to omit from the finished work.

Yesterday, I was flummoxed by a story I was reading on Nifty, in which the "I" telling the story became a different character from one paragraph to the next.  This was in mid-chapter, and the switch came without warning.  In fact, I had to read the new paragraph three or four times before it began to make sense, but sad to say, by that point I had lost interest in finishing the story.

I once encountered a story (also on Nifty, I believe) where, I kid you not, in the middle of a chapter and with no warning, "I" shifted to a different character three times in the space of two paragraphs, and one of those shifts actually occurred in the middle of a sentence.  As you may guess, that story had plenty of other problems that eventually rendered it unreadable.  A shame, too, because the premise was intriguing and the plot, imaginative.  It would have been a good read, if the writing hadn't been quite so unpolished.  I hope the writer got himself sorted out in his later work, because he showed promise.

I couldn't agree more. I have found that, on Nifty, as well as on Awesome Dude and similar sites, the writing is mostly about telling a story, and all the conventions of grammar, punctuation, and POV have been either ignored or never even considered. I realize that their audience is not as  concerned with the skills of the writer, as much as with the eroticism of the narrative, but I am happy to see that, on this site, proper writing is respected and rewarded. 

I am still new to this medium, but I am relieved to see how dedicated everyone is to the craft of writing. 

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