Dec 21 2007
RP: Inappropriate POV Usage
A while ago I mentioned not being in the mood to read a book in which the heroine was sexually assaulted and beaten within an inch of her life within the first chapter.
It has since come to my attention that character was not, in fact, the heroine, but her mother.
It was an honest mistake, considering the book is written in 1st person POV, and that person is usually the protagonist.
I don’t have the aversion some people seem to have for 1st person, but multiple-person 1st person? Oy.
I thought the use of present tense in the book was a little jarring, but it wasn’t enough to deter me from reading further. The POV thing on top of it, on the other hand, has served as reader repellent for me. Knowing I’m going to have to head hop in 1st person has totally put me off.
Like the one James Patterson novel I read, in which POV switched from 3rd person to 1st person for one character for no discernible reason other than to demonstrate the author’s supposed cleverness, I find toying with POV and tense distracting. Instead of telling a compelling story, the book turns into an opportunity for the author to say, ”Hey, look at my craft! See what I did there? It sets me apart.”
Sure does. Sets you apart in that stack I’m never going to finish reading. Good job.
Dean Koontz did the switch-to-1st-person-for-one-character thing in One Door Away from Heaven, but it worked because the character was a 10-year-old boy on the run, and the intimacy and immediacy of 1st person conveyed perfectly a child’s fear and coping mechanisms. It served the story. He pulled it off so seamlessly, I didn’t even notice the shift in style until I was almost finished with the book.
I want the author to disappear when I’m reading. I can count on one hand the number of times recognizing craft on a first read has been a good thing. Bump me out of the story to show off what a brilliant revolutionary stylist you are, and you’ve just lost me forever.
But I’m just a trailer park/Wal-Mart kinda reader—you know, one of those hicks who indiscriminately buys a shitload of books regardless of what more tasteful and scholarly folk think of them—so what do I know?
Loading ...
9/30
11/4
11/4
11/25
December 21st, 2007 at 3:04 am
I’m not a huge fan of first person, especially in romances. That said, one it really worked for me in was Rebecca Flanders’s WOLF IN WAITING, where each chapter alternated 1st person POV between hero and heroine (and there were, helpfully, names at the beginning of each chapter so you immediately knew whose head you were in.)
I can’t think of any other romance (or urban fantasy) where it’s worked for me.
December 21st, 2007 at 3:06 am
(I should add, though, that the female’s narrative voice, especially, was incredibly compelling, and the male’s only slightly less so. I probably wouldn’t have bothered, otherwise.)
December 21st, 2007 at 11:25 am
I prefer getting into the hero’s head in a romance, but I find I don’t miss it in 1st POV if the tone of the book is more comedic. I suppose I’m not intensely emotionally involved in those anyway, so I don’t have to get that deeply in touch with the characters. I’m in it for the laughs, in that case, not depth of feeling.
The thing I don’t like about 1st POV: It’s too much like real life. You’re trapped in this narrow frame of reference and don’t know what the hell is going on outside it. I hate that about real life. Probably what drew me to books at an early age was the thrill of seeing everything.
I’m not going to go check the shelf to verify this, but it seems like the majority of UF I’ve read is 1st, and it doesn’t bother me. With Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series, in particular, you never get David’s POV, but you get to know him very well through Jo’s, enough that I do have that connection (luuuuuuurrrrrrrve) with him.