Humanities
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Choosing a Point of View for Your Novel

6 CQ

In this lesson, learn about different point of view options for novels, discover how to choose the right one for your story, and review how to use tense.

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    6 Comments
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    Dorothy K
    Can you switch points of view? What problems/advantages does that cause?
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    Curious .
    Switching points of view mid-story is rarely advised. It can feel very jarring to your reader. But if you establish from the outset of the book that you will have multiple POV characters (maybe in rotating chapters, for example) people are generally fine with that. I read a book once that had 10 POV characters and enjoyed it, but the author was very careful in how she structured those chapters.
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    Lalo G
    Thank you for your answer, Teresa. :) I think that having a "very vested and personal interest in the story" doesn't mean the same as being the one with most at stake. I have a story in which a man tells how everybody's life is destroyed by a terrible woman. The story is a psicological description of how and why she becomes the monster that she is and why she feels there's so much at stake for her that destroying everything is crucial. The narrator is vital, but not the one w most at stake.
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    Curious .
    I agree.
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    Lalo G
    I do not agree that necessarily the point of view character is the one with the most at stake!
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    Curious .
    Interesting! What is your opinion? Typically, the POV character is the one with the most at stake, although that gets confusing when discussing Omniscient in which the narrator owns the POV. There is also 1st Person Peripheral, in which a minor character is the POV character observing the main characters. That character doesn't necessarily change much over the course of the book, but I would argue that he/she still has a very vested and personal interest in the story.
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