Point of view
This week I’ve been working on an Editing tutorial for my RedPenners.
I’m developing a one-hour presentation to deliver as a webinar, all about ‘point of view’.
Where to start? Always, always, with ‘research’.
I Google ‘point of view’ and there are hundreds of articles to read. I am away from home with limited, slow and unreliable Internet access. I’ll need to read these articles offline.
I set up the necessary folders in Scrivener.
I have two webinars already: one on ‘Punctuation‘ and another on ‘Show versus tell‘. The point of view is number 3. I copy and paste the text from all articles that look, at first sight, interesting enough to read. Soon I have 36,273 words to study at my leisure!
The next step is to make a copy of this text file, so I have one to work on and one as a backup. Right click on the entry in the binder, and instead of ‘Add’, choose ‘Duplicate’.
The duplicated document has the same name – with ‘copy’ appended.
I rename this ‘POV slideshow’.
Now, I’m almost ready to start my research reading, and creating the text for my slides.
What would be really useful is to have sight of both the slides and the research material?
Scrivener to the rescue …
Select View / Layout / Split horizontally.
Now, I can read the material in the lower pane and write in the upper pane.
I’m still working on this. As I read and absorb the research material, I delete that text. I’m down to 34,815 words now but, of that, 1766 are in my embryonic slideshow/notes. Only another 33K to read!
While many of the articles offer examples – which are interesting – within my one-hour editing tutorial my focus has to be on understanding the terminology and appreciating the importance of making the right decision before embarking on a novel.
Of course, I’m not copying other writers’ material; I’m just gleaning information from their articles – the facts, or perceived wisdom, about POV. What I deliver to my RedPenners will be my take on POV in literature.
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Patsy
2 January 2016 at 15:42Interesting topic – and one I think is changing. It now seems far more acceptable to have multiple POVs even in short stories.
anne.rainbow@btinternet.com
2 January 2016 at 19:07Yes, my research has been most illuminating. Some of the articles were quite old and the writers were emphatic about which POVs were not acceptable then, but nowadays these are more common eg 2nd person, alternating, etc. Even over just a few years, opinion has shifted. Deep POV is the new thing! I think writers have become more daring. Self publishing has opened the doors? Also there’s disparity between genres as to what might be acceptable to the established publishing industry.