1. Pacing and Point of View
Techniques
And
Tools

2. Choosing a POV First Person Point of View: The “I” character
First person is the most intimate point of view.
First person point of view can be unreliable.
First person point of view limits the reader’s knowledge.
First person point of view can tell someone else’s story.
Intimate: the reader knows the character’s thoughts and feelings. Unreliable: the only legitimate pov in which the writer can lie to the reader. Example: Lolita, narrated by Humbert Humbert, who lies throughout the novel. Limiting: the reader doesn’t know the thoughts and feelings of other characters. Story: To Kill a Mockingbird is narrated by Scout, but is Atticus Finch’s story.

3. Choosing a POV Third person point of view: objective or omniscient
Omniscient, or objective third person POV means that the narrator/author knows every character’s thoughts and feelings.
Subjective third person, or limited third person, limits the reader’s knowledge to the character’s knowledge.
Limited third person POV reveals character, and dramatizes
events. As with first person, limited third person
has immediacy.
Too many points of view dilutes drama.
Omniscient: the reader is always conscious of the author’s voice; old-fashioned approach, as in O. Henry, or in fairy tales. Subjective: different narrative voices are available, and access to information is controlled. Two or more POV’s enable the author to dramatize rather than narrate, to reveal information one or more characters don’t know. Immediacy: The Time Traveler’s Wife, Henry’s and Clare’s POV’s. Too many: Da Vinci Code, or other thrillers, in which the reader fails to care about or connect with characters.

4. Choosing a POV Second person point of view: the “you” character
The second person point of view is largely experimental.
Second person works when used to imply an entire segment of the population, as in feminist works.
Mixing points of view is risky.
“Women in the Trees”, by Pat Murphy, from her collection Points of Departure

5. Pacing Pace is about revealing information.
The choice of a point of view can determine the pace of a story.
Third person limited unfolds slowly.
Pace: a balance between character development and revelation of plot. It must be interesting, and there must be tension; giving away too much information too soon spoils the effect. The Queen, or Gosford Park, unveil plot points one by one while we come to care deeply about their characters.

7. Pacing
Using first person limited, or subjective, point of view, restricts information, and can heighten tension for the
reader.
In The Children of Men, as in The Fugitive, the point of view is a solitary character through whose eyes we see the plot unfold. We don’t know any more than he does.

9. Use the tools
Choose one of the following situations, or invent one of your own:
A girl wants to dye her hair a strange color, and her mother objects.
A man who has just lost his wife has an encounter with a woman whose husband just left her.
A couple who had been unable to conceive their own child adopt one, and then discover that the wife is expecting.
A man and his son discover an artifact that has fallen in their backyard, and have different ideas of what to do about it.