Keeping it Real - POV

 

An incident happened the other day in my community that has everyone rallied up.  A man shot a dog while at the dog park.  My community is by no means sleepy, but it is peaceful, so this incident came as a shock.  Now everyone is talking and everyone has an opinion.  Some are against the man, some neutral, some support him, and some say lets wait until all the facts are available (that would be me).  So in other words, everyone involved has a different POV and then of course there is the truth.  Hmm?!

 This got me thinking about POV.  The topic of point of view is a big deal in the pub world lately.  Or maybe it always has been.  Recently, however, there seems to be all kinds of toying around with POV.  A few years back the industry wanted books written in first person, but now gears have shifted.  Lately, it is all about multiple POVs.  Even the movie industry is embracing the multiple POV.  It has been said that there are two sides to every story, but now it looks like stories have way more than just two sides and story tells are chomping at the bit to explore this whole new world.

 So POV is indeed very important to our writing and it can be hard for writers to know what exactly the industry may want. A writer friend of mine is currently writing a novel with multiple POVs and asked my opinion on how many POVs to include.  I told her that the best advice I've seen is to tell the story from the POV that works best for you and your story.  Trust your instincts.  The industry changes, but if you tell the best story possible, then the story will do just fine.  But then that's just my POV.  So writing community what is your POV?  How do you like your stories to be told? 


And for those of you with more than one POV to your stories, here's a site that you might find useful:
www.inkpunks.com/2013/02/22/mastering-point-of-view-a-guest-post/