More thoughts on POV...

Someone asked on a list recently:

Someone told my that stories should stick to just one POV. Do you think this is true, this single POV thing?

First, in an authoritative voice:
NO, Stories Need Not Stick to One POV.

Now, in a friendlier tone:
Generally you're better off leaving big long chunks with one POV, so as readers we can kinda sit down and get comfortable behind one set of eyes. And use *clear* demarcations when the POV changes.

Beyond that, personally, I want the POV chosen so that I get the most angst -- I want the one that's hurting most to have the mike, so I can really hear just how bad it is. If Jim's heart is breaking, maybe he should have the POV; if Jim is being all stoic, though, maybe Blair should have the pov, so he can articulate how it's killing him to watch Jim hide all his hurt.

Mind you, that doesn't mean that in a fight I need to feel each blow land -- *please* no back and forth each paragraph -- but I no longer am so rigorous as I used to be. (Old rules were, one POV per chapter; if the story was shorter than a chapter in a novel, then, well, you only got one POV...)

A quick digression. Everything I've said so far related to limited-third person POV -- the POV most commonly used in slash stories. The biggest advantage is it allows you to show the reader what the viewpoint character is thinking and feeling almost as easily as first person, while still keeping a little distance between the author and the character. The disadvantage is, you're so close to the one viewpoint character, it can be hard to tell enough important information about the other character(s) in the story -- which is why people want to change POVs within the story.

But there are lots of good fannish stories told using other POVs. On the one hand, don't feel restricted to third-person limited, just because most of the stories you read use it. On the other hand, Omniscient-third POV and second-person POV, are trickier to write. If you're interested, please actually do some reading first (I recommend Characterization and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card, but there are plenty of other good writing books out there).

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(For those of you who care: In songvids, for a while I was changing POV in the middle of the vid a *lot*. I think it worked okay for sophisticated vid consumers, but for people who hadn't watched a lot of vids, I think I just lost them in the middle, just as they'd really started getting into it. It's still a valuable technique for some songs, though.)

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