A Strange Point of View

Point of View is one of the four pillars of fiction, the other three being Plot, Character, and Setting. What this means, I think, is that all four of these elements need to be strong within any given book. And maybe it means that they need to be equally strong —   so that the story doesn’t collapse toward a weak pillar.

For decades I never labored over point of view because it seemed to come easily to me. I usually “saw” the story being told before I began to write it, and I almost always sa...