At the beginning of a scene (or when you switch POV in as scene, which we’ll talk about tomorrow), you have to clearly establish whose POV the scene is in. If you don’t, your reader will slow down or stop reading to clarify who’s talking. It’s like when there’s a long dialogue exchange and the author doesn’t tag the dialogue enough. WHO’S TALKING?
One of the easiest ways to establish POV is to call that character’s name at the beginning.
This is the beginning of Suzanne Brockman’s Over the Edge. Notice she has a few words, dripping with voice, before she names the POV character.
PROLOGUE
Four Months Ago
The moon was hanging insolent and full in the sky just to the left of a billboard for a bankruptcy lawyer, and Stan knew.
It was the full moon’s fault.
It had to be the goddamn full moon.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Stanley Wolchonok steadied himself, holding on to the the side of a pickup truck in the parking lot of the Lady Bug Lounge and praying to whatever god was listening that he wouldn’t throw up.
His fever was spiking. He could feel his entire body break out in a sweat as a flash of intense heat gripped him. God damn, of all the times to get the flu… Of course, there was never a good time to get sick. This just happened to be a worse time than any other, coming back to the States after two relentless months away.
“Senior! Thank God you’re here!”
Stan wasn’t ready to thank anyone for anything—particularly not for his command performance tonight at this cheap-shit, lowlife bar where he hadn’t come by choice in well over two years.
Which didn’t mean he hadn’t been here plenty of times in the past two years.
Cleaning up after whichever dumbass in the team had gone ballistic.
The average dumbass didn’t get more than two strikes before he was out of the SEAL teams—or at least out of the elite Team Sixteen Troubleshooter’s Squad.
Truth was, the average dumbass who was smart enough to become a SEAL learned rather quickly to be neither dumb nor an ass most of the time. But everyone had to blow off steam, particularly after two months away from loved ones, two months filled with high stress and not a hell of a lot of down time.
(I know, I could have stopped earlier, but this is such an excellent example of DEEP POV that I just had to keep going. Can you hear Stan’s voice? That’s why she’s the QUEEN.)
Here’s the opening of Forever Blue by Suz:
And the opening of Frisco’s Kid by Suz:
From True Courage, book 2 in my True Heroes series:
PROLOGUE
The first commandment of aviation: Thou shalt maintain thy airspeed, lest the ground rise up and smite thee.
Lieutenant Colonel Rick McIntyre’s PJs often attributed a sinister motivation to the mountain. Sometimes they even kept score—Yosemite, 3, Humans, 0.
But he’d never really bought into it. Now, as he watched the Black Hawk tumble down Mount Hood, he was beginning to reconsider. Retirement—fishing to be exact—was looking pretty good right about now.
And True Honor, book 3:
Only a fool would miss a party thrown by Chris ‘Angel’ Gabriel. And Will Pitkin was not a fool.
Gabe went all out. The keg was perfectly chilled, the food was amazing. Music, superb. And since only fools would miss the party, there was always an eclectic mix of people. He had the right digs, too.
Whose POV are we in here? We’re in Will’s POV, but he’s talking about Gabe.
Chapter 1 of True Courage—this one starts with the POV character talking to himself:
“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Rick whispered into the swirling snow. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on breathing in and breathing out.
So much to sort out.
Friday the 13th. Good grief. It wasn’t even noon yet, and this made it official. The mountain was closed for business. No one was going anywhere.
It’s really pretty simple. Make sure your reader knows who’se POV they’re reading.
A small digression here. You’ve noticed that I writing military romance. In this genre, every character has several “names.” For example, Eric Cruz. His call sign is Hollywood; his teammates call him either Hollywood or Cruz. Kit Sheridan calls him Cruz or Hotshot (and a few other things). I have an awesome editor who reminded me that, when I’m in Eric’s POV, he doesn’t call himself Cruz. He thinks of himself as Eric.
Here is a snippet of a scene from True Gallantry, from Eric’s POV. The original version:
The conversation with Fitz was right up there with the worst conversations Cruz had ever had.
It started out with Cruz being an irresponsible idiot, and went downhill from there. But, bless his pea-pickin’ heart, at least Fitz had the decency to clear things up with the sheriff. However, it wasn’t a quick fix.
After my editor reminded me that Cruz doesn’t call himself Cruz:
The conversation with Fitz was right up there with the worst conversations Eric had ever had.
It started out with Eric being an irresponsible idiot, and went downhill from there. But, bless his pea-pickin’ heart, at least Fitz had the decency to clear things up with the sheriff. However, it wasn’t a quick fix.
I had to go through the entire book, checking each scene for whose POV it was. Sheesh. But it was a great catch. Good editors make books so much better!
That’s all for today, campers. Questions? Observations? Bring ‘em to the blog.
Cheers, Jax
Lovely series! I just discovered these and was wondering, what about “is” vs “was”? Am I correct that “is” is correct when introspecting and “was” is correct with observations?
She is safe with him.
She was safe with him.
He was standing at her porch,.
He is standing at her porch,