Lessons Learned #2B: Addressing POV shifts
To follow up on the lesson I posted yesterday, here’s a tip someone told me about how to keep POV from shifting within a scene. Many writers don’t even seem to realize they are doing it and this will help.
Take the role of the POV character and write in first person. This method insures you only write what that character would feel, see and think. You wouldn’t refer to your own eyes as “mediterranean blue,” right? So neither should your POV character. If anything sounds out of place when you use “I” or “my” you know it needs to be fixed.
Once you are done writing, go back in and change to 3rd person. You shouldn’t have any head-hopping or out of POV issues to worry about.
This works with scenes already written. Just read through using “I” and see how it works.
Reading out loud is a good habit to get into. You can more easily spot repetitive words, phrases and sentence patterns when you speak them.
Hope that helps!
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