“You have viewpoint problems”
“Point of view problems” are one of those things that a lot of editors and beta readers cite, expecting the writer to know what the phrase means. If you take it apart, though, it assumes a fair bit of theoretical knowledge, as well as the practical skill to apply it. So let’s unpack it a bit.
“Point of view” can refer to two different-but-related things. The first is who the viewpoint character is, as in “Who’s the point of view in this scene?” The second is the type of viewpoint it is, first-person, second person (rarely), or some variety of third person.
“Viewpoint problems” means the reader thinks the writer is violating the constraints of whatever viewpoint the writer has chosen. This can occur with either of the meanings of viewpoint: If the writer is violating constraints of viewpoint character, they’re switching to someone else in mid-scene, or head-hopping; if the writer is violating the type of viewpoint, they’re switching from first-person to third-person (which is usually easy to spot, though I’ve seen this kind of POV bobble in actual published books), or from one sort of third-person to another sort (which is much harder to spot).
The problem with all this is that the “rules” for viewpoint are not clear-cut. Take head-hopping as an example. I can’t recall reading a single published murder mystery in which the author does this. In science fiction and fantasy, I’ve seen head-hopping occasionally, but it is generally considered a symptom of “bad writing” and looked down on when an author does it. In Romance novels, though, limited head-hopping is not only acceptable, but almost an expected convention.
Even viewpoint type gets a bit squishy at times. It is really easy to spot (and avoid) switches from first- or second-person to any of the other types. (“I went through the dead man’s pockets. His pants pockets held nothing to interest me, but in his jacket pocket you find a letter and a bill for $22.19 from a health club.”) Third-person, though, is a problem because it is a continuum, with highly filtered, almost-first-person tight-third at one end and completely omniscient at the other end, with no real dividing lines along the way.
So when an editor or reader says that a story has viewpoint problems, it can mean that 1) The writer has switched from one viewpoint character to another in mid-scene (while using a viewpoint other than omniscient), violating the “one viewpoint character per scene” convention; 2) The writer has violated the constraints of whatever type of viewpoint they have chosen, either by switching types (from first-person to third-person, for instance) or by doing something that is not appropriate to whatever variety of third-person they have chosen to write in (if you are writing in camera-eye, you can’t suddenly give a character’s thoughts directly, as that is something a camera can’t see); or 3) The reader has mistaken what the writer was doing – the POV character for the scene really was George right from the start, but the reader presumed it was Sally at the beginning, so when it became obvious that it was George, the reader perceived it as a switch, or the reader presumed that the story was camera-eye or tight-third, when the writer intended it as omniscient all along.
In order to fix any of these, the writer first has to know what they meant to do. That is, the writer has to be clear what type of viewpoint he/she is using (first-person, second-person, tight-third, limited third, camera-eye, omniscient, etc.), and who the viewpoint character is for each scene. Yes, there is a viewpoint character even for camera-eye and omniscient – for camera-eye, the viewpoint is the invisible camera; for omniscient, it can be variously God, the author, or a character outside the story who knows everything. The writer has to know these things because you can’t tell where you have violated constraints if you don’t know what constraints you have chosen to use.
Rather than repost here the nine-page handout on viewpoint that I used for my classes, I suggest than anyone who does not know what camera-eye, tight-third, etc. are should go here (Edit: OK, that wasn’t working, so instead go up to the menu and click “links,” and then go down the list to “Pat’s summary of viewpoint” and click that, and you’ll be there. Folks with RSS feeds will either have to go to the web site or wait until my guru gets back and figures out how to make the in-line link work again.) and then maybe take a quick look through some of the older posts about viewpoint.
As I said, it is generally pretty easy to spot viewpoint problems in first- or second-person, whether the problem is a shift from one POV character to a different one or a shift from first-person to third-person. Often, this kind of thing happens when the author has recast a scene from third-person to first-person and missed catching a line or two, or when the writer decided in mid-scene that George would really be the better viewpoint but forgot to go back and fix the first few paragraphs.
The real problems come with third-person, because even though you have a particular viewpoint character, the narration feels as if it is coming from the outside. “I did this” is me (or the POV character) telling you what I did; “He did this” feels like me, the narrator, telling you what the character did, even if that character is supposed to be the POV/narrator. Because it feels as if it is outside, it is easy to slide from “He never takes me seriously, Sally thought” to “George shook his head, wondering where Sally came up with these notions” without quite recognizing that one is, in both cases, reporting the characters’ thoughts, and that in a tight-third-person viewpoint, your viewpoint character won’t know what the other one is thinking unless they are a telepath (and in camera-eye, the camera doesn’t know what either one is thinking).
Again, the first thing to do is to make a firm decision about exactly where on the continuum of third-person viewpoints you are writing. Often, the “problem” with a third-person viewpoint is that the author is writing something that falls in the fuzzy gray area between, oh, a highly filtered tight-third-person and a somewhat looser, unfiltered but still focused third-person. This can certainly be done successfully, but if your editors and beta readers are coming back to you with “you have viewpoint problems” comments, you are not doing it successfully. The simplest solution is to shift the viewpoint up or down the continuum of third-person so that you aren’t writing in the fuzzy gray area.
The most common problems seem to arise with writing tight-third-person and randomly floating out of the POV character’s viewpoint. If you are trying to write tight-third and having horrible, horrible trouble seeing where you slide out of viewpoint, it can be helpful to rewrite a couple of the most problematic scenes in first-person. It is usually pretty easy to tell that “That’s odd, I thought” is fine, but that “George looked at me and thought, That’s odd” is not something “I” would know. If you still can’t see a problem, pick one of the characters and rewrite the scene as a letter from that character to one of the others, paying particular attention to the sentences you have to change in order to get it to work as a letter.
If it’s camera-eye you’re having trouble with, try doing a search on every synonym for “think/thought” and “feel/felt” that you can think of. Basically, you have to train yourself to notice when your viewpoint is sliding around, and one way of doing that is to force yourself into a viewpoint like first-person that has even tighter constraints on the troublesome part than whatever you are using. It is almost always easier to loosen up from a tighter viewpoint than to tighten up from a looser viewpoint.
Which brings me to omniscient, and Problem #3 (when the reader has mistaken what the writer is trying to do). I will deal with that next post, or this one will be huge, but at this point I do wish to emphasize that #3 is not a problem with the reader. It is still a writing problem. It just isn’t quite the same writing problem as the first two
