Point of view. A mix between who tells the story and how it is told. It’s a basic simple thing on the surface, you can’t even start a story without some frame of reference. This is your POV. Everything that is seen, felt, tasted, experienced, or explained is coming from a particular point of view. There are books on it. Many. I’ve read a few. I’ve also read a lot of stories–one of the best ways to get a taste of POV. And important to read from all historical categories–you are missing out if you haven’t read Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Pride and Prejudice, Canterbury Tales..etc.
So what is POV good for? I look at POV as the tool that adds the most to character development, subtext, and character motivations. POV defines the way these things are imparted to the reader, and at what level of intensity. It can, at times, define just how intense that emotional quality comes across. But it’s not the only tool, and can’t be used alone in effective storycraft.
POV helps to define your characters. If you are writing a story, an action story, an adventure story–character development can be on the light side. Indiana Jones. Stories in the Star Wars Universe. We are there for the heart pounding action. POV doesn’t need to go deep. Nobody feels bad that those characters are paper-thin. We aren’t missing anything–the characters and the emotional intensity of the story–match.
If you are writing about characters that have deep emotional needs and conflicts, a more penetrating POV is needed. Part of the experience of the read comes from going through the emotional struggles and changes with the characters.
Emotional struggle, though a powerful element often brought to us via POV, can’t by itself carry a novel length piece of fiction–it can barely carry a scene. Remember, I’m not talking about short story–I’m talking novel here. Big difference scene vs short story.
There has to be conflict, outer conflict–outer conflict that results in inner conflict. And it has to be the right kind of conflict.
Normally we would call this conflict PLOT. Character arc, the individual journey and/or change in a character needs be to related to the plot. Should be directly caused by events in the plot.
At the same time, the plot has to be related to the story–the emotional subtext. If the world is at war and it doesn’t touch your character–it doesn’t belong in the plot. Pretty simple? No. You’d be surprised at how many times scenes and secondary story lines develop around things that might feel logical, but make no sense.Why don’t they make any sense?
What happens is story (emotional subtext) and plot (things that should be pushing characters through emotional growth) get divorced from one another. It’s easy to see how this happens if you’ve ever plotted a novel. A lot of times when you are writing to get things down on paper, ideas just flow. You don’t know why something happens at the moment, you just throw it in there, into the cauldron it goes.
In subsequent drafts however, you really need to consider Why. Why are we here at this moment in this place?
As fun as it is to go mucking about in character’s heads and hearts we just can’t do that without having some kind of understanding how this directly relates to plot. Do I really care if the shepherd gets the princess? Only if it helps him defeat the wizard–and it better be in an important arc altering fashion. Otherwise I’ll feel like my time has been wasted in a side story romance. The more time you spend on that thread, the more I demand that it matter. That relationship has to make the critical difference between success and failure.
In the same way, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a book and chapter comes along that seems like it makes logical sense from a logical plot point of view, but it feels off. Terry Goodkind wrote a side quest in one of his books where Kahlan is off doing something and then I swear to you, it felt like she literally said at the end, “Dear Spirits! What have I done! I’ve forgotten all about Richard–let’s get out of here!”
The deeper you get into POV, the harder it is to be sure you are on track. I hate the term, character-driven story. By all the stars in heaven, if you let your story be driven by characters–they’ll drive in right into the ground. Stories with a lot of emotional theme, subtext, growth–what ever you want to call it–need an incredible amount of carefully considered under structure. The plot has to make sense on more than one level, in every scene. Good stories have a feeling of inevitability inherent in the plot. It’s driving, pushing the characters. Great stories have the plot pushing them toward emotional change.
I have read stories where everything on paper is there. If I had a checklist, everything would be checked off–but it still fails. Fails to grab, fails to convince, fails to touch and fades away the second the cover closes on the book. It’s easy to feel when something isn’t right and often hard to explain where that feeling is coming from.
Rest assured, this is the why of it. Something is out of balance between plot and story.
