Writing Stack Exchange
Writing Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [viewpoint]

Questions about grammatical persons (first person, third person, etc.) and how to use them.

133 questions
40
votes
15 answers

Is it acceptable to use words like "heaven" and "god" when the narrator is agnostic?

The main character, and the person whose viewpoint the story is told from, is a scientist and subscribes to agnosticism. And there are sentences in my story like: "Trees stretched into the sky forever, like the stilts of heaven."* Is this…
SealBoi
  • 537
  • 1
  • 5
  • 9
22
votes
15 answers

Pronouns when writing from the point of view of a robot

For the writing challenge, I'm currently writing from the point of view of a robot. Also another robot is frequently addressed. However I've hit a problem: Referring to the robots as “it” often gives confusing sentences. It probably doesn't help…
celtschk
  • 4,027
  • 1
  • 19
  • 29
22
votes
7 answers

Is head-hopping always bad?

The general consensus nowadays seems to be that being in the head of more than one character is bad. We should be "on the shoulders" or "in the head" of one character, and one character only, if not throughout the novel, then at least throughout a…
Galastel supports GoFundMonica
  • 58,107
  • 12
  • 176
  • 303
21
votes
7 answers

What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing in first person?

A lot of people are either on the side of first person or the side of third person. But what are the advantages and disadvantages of writing in first person for fiction?
Ralph Gallagher
  • 8,736
  • 5
  • 40
  • 61
20
votes
9 answers

I have 97 pages in my book draft. Is it too late to swap to third person from first?

I've been writing a One Piece fan fiction to improve my writing. I foolishly decided to write it in first person and now I kinda want to change it to third person - but I'm already 97 pages into the book. Should I do it? This is the first piece of…
Seann Powell
  • 351
  • 2
  • 6
18
votes
6 answers

What is "head popping" and why is it bad?

Most of my writing experience has been with first person, nonfiction stories. Now I want to try some fiction. I'm working in third person, but I'm a little bit confused about how to pull something off. Okay, say I'm telling the story from character…
Tim Elhajj
  • 381
  • 2
  • 7
18
votes
6 answers

Why is young adult romance now being written primarily in the first person?

My recollection is that when I started reading romance novels in the 1980s, the majority (perhaps 60%) were written in the third person. This included some "young adult" romances with characters in their early 20s. I stopped reading them until…
Tom Au
  • 4,435
  • 3
  • 21
  • 40
18
votes
9 answers

Writing from a hive mind POV

The story: Centuries ago, humanity have been incorporated into an alien hive mind, spread by a bacterial-like infection. The "bacteria" infects the blood and brain and allows the infected to join their minds together, there is no alien overlord,…
Babika Babaka
  • 1,014
  • 12
  • 27
17
votes
4 answers

Is it okay to say what the character infers about other characters thoughts as fact in third person limited?

The story is third person limited to Bob's point of view. He is with Alice, and I have the following line. Alice sat up proudly, then shrunk back down, realizing where she was. Compare this to Alice sat up proudly, then shrunk back down,…
rtpax
  • 403
  • 2
  • 8
16
votes
10 answers

Sympathetic portrayal of devout, rule-abiding characters

I'm having trouble portraying religious, devout characters as protagonists or viewpoint characters. When I try, I get the sense that the reader - not sharing the characters' beliefs - will have trouble accepting the characters' non-rational beliefs…
Standback
  • 28,354
  • 7
  • 57
  • 140
14
votes
6 answers

What makes first person plural a tricky narrative voice?

I absolutely loved Joshua Ferris's debut novel Then We Came to the End. Critics highly praised his use for the first person plural as a narrator. The work is set in an office and the "we" used represents the group of employees. I can think of…
justkt
  • 6,705
  • 2
  • 38
  • 55
14
votes
5 answers

How to avoid repetitive sentence structure?

I've realized that I always start sentences with (name of character), he, she, it, they, her, his, the, after (a moment/that), and then. I wonder if there's any useful exercise or tip to reduce this? A sample of my writing: Adele wondered where…
wyc
  • 12,457
  • 21
  • 67
  • 128
13
votes
4 answers

Handling a small detail the POV character would not notice

I have a scene in which two characters, Boy and Girl, meet for the first time. Girl is the POV character in this section. They are about to have lunch, when Girl is called away on an emergency. She mutters that she's sorry, asks if they could meet…
Eric J.
  • 631
  • 1
  • 5
  • 15
12
votes
3 answers

Male viewpoint in an erotic novel

Most erotica today is written by and for women, and bestselling erotica is narrated from a female point of view. The "male pornographic gaze" that sexualizes the female body has been considered offensive by the predominant culture and mostly…
user41080
12
votes
6 answers

How to handle translation of a language in a comic, while preserving a sense that the language is significant?

I am producing a comic in which a fictional language is frequently spoken. This language (and which characters are able to speak it) is significant to the plot, so it's important that the reader knows when it (rather than English) is being…
TheTermiteSociety
  • 1,545
  • 9
  • 16
1
2 3
…
8 9