The Critical Point of View Mistake to Fix in Your Second Draft

The point of view you choose for your novel shapes the information that you give your readers. And it shapes how your readers receive and interpret that information.

Which means your point of view actually shapes the story itself. And that’s a really big deal!

The challenge is, point of view can be tricky to master. There are nearly unlimited ways you can craft your point of view. And there are just as many point of view mistakes you can make.

In this episode, I’m sharing the most important mistake I see writers make in their point of view. Here it is:

Being inconsistent.

Ever find yourself accidentally switching between first person and third person point of view? Or between past and present? Or between multiple characters’ perspectives?

Those are inconsistencies. And they’ll distract, confuse, and frustrate your readers.

Not to worry, though! In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why point of view inconsistencies matter
• How to spot inconsistencies in your own writing
• When in the editing process you should correct point of view inconsistencies
• What to do if you’re not sure you’ve caught them all (hint: don’t panic!)
• And more!

Plus, I’ve put together a worksheet for you to reference and practice. In it, I’ll show you what a consistent point of view looks like, and how to spot an inconsistent point of view shift.

Then, challenge yourself to spot all the point of view inconsistencies I’ve hidden in the practice exercise.

Get the worksheet at alicesudlow.com/povworksheet and practice your point of view skills.

Then, pull out a scene of your novel and clean up any point of view inconsistencies you find!

Links mentioned in the episode:

• Point of View Worksheet: alicesudlow.com/povworksheet

Transcript

Alice Sudlow: 0:00

there's a difference between a deliberate choice that you make as the writer to change the point of view. Versus an inconsistency that the reader can't follow. A deliberate choice is something that you chosen to establish for the way that your point of view works. It may include changes. For instance, you might write one chapter from one character's point of view. And then change to. A different character in the next chapter. But these are consistent changes that. That follow rules that the reader can. Pick up on and follow. And so the reader understands what's going on. Right now I want to focus on the accidental and consistencies. These. These are the little shifts in lines and paragraphs that oftentimes writers don't even realize they're making. Welcome to your next draft today. I'm going to talk about one of the most important decisions that you'll make for your book. And also one of the areas where I see the most mistakes from writers in the editing process. Here it is. Point of view. Point of view is a really big deal. It shapes the information that you choose to give your readers in your story. And it shapes how your readers receive and interpret that information. Which means your point of view actually shapes the story itself. The thing is though point. View is actually pretty tricky to master. There are so many different options that you have. You're probably familiar with the general types of points of view. First person, second person. Third person, limited third person omniscient. And second person is so rarely used in novel writing. We can basically skip it for this discussion. But within all of those types, even if we just cut second person as an option entirely, there are so many different things that you can do. So many creative choices that are available to you. The upside of this is that there are a nearly unlimited number of ways that you can choose to tell a unique story. The downside is there are just as many mistakes. Stakes that writers can make with points of view. And when a book includes point of view errors. That can make it distracting, confusing, or even boring for the reader. And yes, I've chosen the word boring intentionally, but you'll have to wait a couple episodes to find out why. Today's episode is the first in. A three part series where I'm going to share three common point of view mistakes that I see writers make. Points of view is something that you want to get sorted out in your early drafts. It's ideal to choose your points of view before you write your first draft and then use your second draft to make sure that points of view is working. But I've also seen writers. Who use their first draft to explore the story. And then they use their second draft to figure out what point of view best fits the story that they're telling. So if you're in your second draft or even beyond, and you're still trying to figure out how to make your points of view work for your story, that's perfectly fine. Use the tips that I'll share with you in these episodes to identify. Uh, potential problems with your point of view. And figure out what you. You can do in your next draft to solve those problems. And above all, make sure that your point of view enhances the story that you're telling. If you take just one thing from this episode, let it be this, your point of view is meant to enhance the story that you're telling. All right. Let's get into the first of three common problems that I see with points of view. This mistake is when writers are inconsistent with their point of view. And this mistake, these inconsistencies can happen no matter what point of view you're using. It doesn't matter if you're writing in first person. Third person limited. Or third person omniscient. It is possible to be inconsistent with your point of view in any of these situations. Like I said earlier, You have a lot of options to choose from, but what that means is if you're not very clear on the point of view you're using, it can become very messy, very quickly. Here are a few examples of what that can look like. I've read early drafts of manuscripts, where the writer. He jumps around between first person and third person points of view. Or they stick with first person point of view. But they jump around between their tenses. Sometimes the story is in present tense and sometimes it's in past tense. Or they stick with third person point of view, but they jump around between different characters heads within the same scene. Or when the book starts, it's in third person limited and the reader feels very close to a particular character. But later on it switches to third person omniscient or to another character's perspective in a way that the reader wasn't expecting. Like I said, you have so many creative choices you can make and just as many ways for things to go wrong. Here's the big thing. Your reader wants to know who is telling the story and why. They want to understand how the narration works in every chapter. And where there are inconsistencies. They get. Confused. Now there's a difference between a deliberate choice that you make as the writer to change the point of view. Versus an inconsistency that the reader can't follow. A deliberate choice is something that you chosen to establish for the way that your point of view works. It may include changes. For instance, you might write one chapter from one character's point of view. And then change to. A different character in the next chapter. But these are consistent changes that. That follow rules that the reader can. Pick up on and follow. And so the reader understands what's going on. We'll talk more in the next episode about whether you've made a deliberate choice to include too many changes, but right now I want to focus on the accidental and consistencies. These. These are the little shifts in lines and paragraphs that oftentimes writers don't even realize they're making. Here's an example. Imagine you have a scene between Sally and Bob. They're hiding behind a tree, watching a beast across a clearing. I don't know what the beast is. Maybe it's a bear. Maybe it's a werewolf. Doesn't really matter. The scene is from Sally's point of view. That means that all the information that we get in the scene is filtered through Sally's eyes. In other words, we can only know what Sally knows. Maybe The Sally doesn't know if It's a bear or a werewolf either I wrote a few lines of the scene so you can see what that means Here they are. Sally peered around the tree and saw the beast on the other side of the clearing its back turned. It's still there. She whispered. I don't think it's seen us. She wondered what the beast would do. If it noticed them, there was a chance it was friendly, but she was afraid to find out. In this scene, Sally knows that she's looking around the tree and she can see the beast across the clearing. Sally knows the words that she's saying. Sally knows what she's thinking. She's wondering about the beast. And Sally knows how she feels. She feels afraid of drawing its attention. But what about Bob? Here are a few lines about Bob still using third person, limited point of view and filtered through Sally's perspective. Bob shifted behind her, his feet crunching on the dry leaves. I have a bad feeling about this. He whispered. This is still information that Sally has access to. She's aware of Bob shifting. She can hear the crunch from his steps. She can hear the words that he's saying. So far so good. All of this fits. But now I'm going to add a couple of lines that wouldn't fit. Bob shifted behind her. His feet crunching on the dry leaves. I have a bad feeling about this. He whispered. He'd seen creatures like this before and knew that encounters with them never ended. Well, he couldn't shake the dread. He felt. Did you notice the problem with those new lines on the end? They're full of information that only Bob can know. Sally can't know Bob's past experiences. The fact that he's seen creatures like this before. She doesn't have access to his knowledge, his awareness that these encounters don't go well. And she definitely doesn't know how he's feeling in this moment. She knows her own fear, but she doesn't know Bob's dread. This is a point of view inconsistency. We established that this scene is told in third person limited from Sally's point of view. Then we include an information that Sally doesn't have access to. This is guaranteed to distract and confuse your readers. Another kind of inconsistency that I often see is related to tense. I'm going to read those same lines again, but this time with a tense inconsistency, see if you can catch it. Sally peered around the tree and saw the beast on the other side of the clearing its back turned. It's still there. She whispered. I don't think it's seen us. She wondered what the beast would do if it noticed them. There is a chance it's friendly, but she's afraid to find out. Did you catch it? The first few lines are past tense, but that last line is now in present tense. That's not an intentional choice that contributes to the scene. It's an inconsistency. A little error that will confuse readers readers. Won't be sure whether you intended to shift from one tense or perspective to another, or whether they misinterpreted a line. In fact. That tent switch threw me off so much as I was reading it. I almost corrected myself when I was reading that line out loud. These kinds of inconsistencies are really easy to accidentally include in your first draft and they'll stick around in your manuscripts until you comb through carefully to correct them. Which brings me to another question. At what points in your editing process, should you comb through your manuscripts to correct these inconsistencies? If you listen to some of the earliest episodes of the podcast, you know, that there are several stages of editing. Developmental editing is where you sort out the stories, plot structure, character arc, and other story level concerns. Line editing is where you Polish every sentence to make sure that they communicate your ideas in the best way possible. Copy editing. It's where you correct errors in grammar, spelling, and other mechanical details. And proofreading is the final check of the manuscript after it's been formatted for prints to make sure that no one missed anything during the copy edit and no one introduced new errors when they were formatting the book. You could make the argument that the occasional accidental tent slip-up falls within the realm of copy editing or line editing. I also copy edit novels and I have corrected many errors in tents and the novels that I copy at it. However, remember that the point of view you select for your novel is a foundational choice. It impacts what information the reader has access to. And how the reader receives and interprets that information. Which means it actually shapes the story itself. And decisions that shape the story itself or the realm of developmental editing. So, yes, this is detailed work. Yes. If you realize that you're prone to the kinds of points of view and consistencies that I've described. Correcting them may feel like going through your manuscript with a fine tooth comb and focusing on the nitty gritty details of every little line. But the point of view you use impacts the story that you tell your reader. If you write that scene with the beast, from Bob's perspective, that's a different story from Sally's perspective. So correcting these points of view inconsistencies to the best of your ability. Is something that's well worth doing in the developmental edit. If you have any lingering and consistencies that slipped through a line editor or copy editor will catch them and point that out to you. So you don't have to worry about editing a perfect draft here. In fact, I would say you never have to worry about editing a perfect draft. You always have the opportunity to give your manuscripts another pass and catch a little bit more. But the time you take to learn to recognize and correct these inconsistencies will pay off in the book. You're editing now. And in all the books you write and edit in the future. So watch out for the shifts that you might not even realize that you're making. And when you find them rewrite them to be consistent with the point of view that you've chosen for your book. Now I know that learning to recognize and correct. These points of view. Inconsistencies can be a little tricky at first after all, if you knew that you were writing. Writing a line that didn't fit within your established point of view. You wouldn't have written it that way in the first place. So I've created a worksheet for you to reference and practice on. Sometimes it's easier to see these kinds of inconsistencies when they're written out on the page. So I've taken my little scene with Sally and Bob and I've turned it into a worksheet. Sheet. In that worksheet, you'll find an example of that Sally and Bob scene, where the point of view is consistent. In other words, it works. You'll also see an example where the point of view is inconsistent and flip-flops between Sally's and Bob's perspectives. And you'll see an example where the tents is inconsistent and switches between past and present. In all of these examples, I've marked the inconsistencies. So you can see what they look like. There are sort of reference guide. So you know what to watch for. And then there's a practice sheet. I've actually expanded on that scene between Sally and Bob. And I've included both kinds of inconsistencies and they're not marked, you get to look for them yourself, use that scene to practice and see if you can spot them. And yes, there's an answer key where I'll show you where each inconsistency is and explain why it doesn't work. Download that worksheet and take a look at those scenes so that you know what you're looking for in your own writing. Then take your new skill of Eagle eyes, inconsistency, spotting, and apply it to your own manuscript. Get that worksheet by going to Alice Dot com slash P O V. Worksheet. And I've linked straight to it in the show notes. So it's easy to find. And of course I have an assignment for you to do right now. Obviously, you're going to go grab that worksheet and practice your point of view, consistency skills. But the real magic happens when you apply this to your own manuscript. So I want you to pull out a scene of your manuscript. Any scene that includes more than one character will do. Before you start reading the scene first, ask yourself. What is your point of view? Is it first person, third person limited. Third person omniscient. Past tense, present tense. And who is the point of view character in the scene who is filtering the information that the reader receives. In other words, what points of view have you chosen to establish for your novel and specifically for this scene? Think of the answer to that question. In fact, write it down so you can literally see it there on the page. Now. I want you to read the scene very carefully, go through it slowly line by line and ask yourself, does every single line fit within that point of view? Or are there moments where you've slipped from Sally's perspective and to Bob's perspective? Like I did in that example earlier, Remember, you can use that point of view worksheet as a reference to remind you what these inconsistencies can look like. So be sure to. To grab that worksheet. At Alice. Dot com slash p o v worksheet And thin venture boldly into your manuscript to catch and correct all those pesky points of view in consistencies like a pro you've got this happy editing