I NEED HELP.

[sonjajade]

I'm all kinds of confused...  It's been pointed out to me that I have a VERY hard time picking a POV and sticking with it.  I thought I was writing from 3rd person limited (mostly) but evidently I'm not, and even with being in 3rd person I should still pick 1 character to observe from (and break when it switches).  I'm getting this from multiple betas that I need to pick one and stick with it, but honestly dunno what I'm doing wrong.

Any ideas on how I can start to catch myself or how to make it all click in my mind??  It's so frustrating to me that I continue to do this and don't realize I'm doing it!  GRRR!!!!

Comments

[bay115.livejournal.com]

One thing you can do is in your doc write something like "Roy POV" so that you know you're going to do the scene in Roy's POV. As for making sure you don't switch the POVs in one scene, there might be some indicators that you can learn catching like "Ed thought Roy was being ridiculous" or "For the first time in years Ed was content with Roy" if the scene is suppose to be in Roy's POV.

It's more or less you writing the thoughts, feelings of the characters and their surroundings and then realizing if you suddenly wrote down the thoughts, feelings, etc. of another character in the same scene if your story is going to be third person limited. Don't be too hard on yourself as third person limited isn't easy to do. I hope this helps as I'm not too good explaining POV. ^^;

[sonjajade.livejournal.com]

I sat down with my school teacher friend and we looked it over and she showed me WHY it was wrong. I think I got it now. At least it will be better from now on. I see now what I was doing.

But I wouldn't have even known there was a problem if you and some other people hadn't pointed it out to me in the first place! so THANK YOU for being kind enough to be honest with me!!!

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

actually you don't have to. Third person ominiscent (i.e. head hopping) is perfectly legitimate. However, a lot of readers don't like it. The easiest thing is to pick your character and be sure you are only using exposition from that point of view, what he/she would think or feel.

If it's Roy's point of view and you're suddenly talking about Havoc's feelings about something (In exposition) then you've broken your third person limited point of view

[sonjajade.livejournal.com]

I dunno why I didn't understand that before. I didn't know (or likely forgot) that there were 2 forms of 3rd person. But I think I got it now. Hopefully this won't be an issue anymore!!

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

good l uck