The following is an exchange that occurred on a writers group at Yahoo! that is particularly instructive to authors. We reprint it here for its educational value. David Woolley, an experienced and successful fiction writer, explains, in what we feel is a very compelling fashion, how to write powerful dialog, and how to deal with the question of “Point of View.” While there are successful authors that violate some of these principles, we think following the guidelines that David explains here will give you more powerful, more mature writing. The whole exchange takes two web pages. We begin on this page with a question posed by a writer:

Question:

 Unless you have an omniscient narrator, I know that you should tell a story from only one person's point of view. I know the reason given for doing this is so the reader won't get confused.
BUT——WHY CAN'T I write in italics what he's thinking and a paragraph later write in italics what she is thinking?
Let's say we have a boy and a girl sitting alone talking. I'm telling the story from the guy's point of view, but I want to be able to have the girl think some thoughts about what the boy is saying.
I just don't see how this is confusing to the reader.
Help me out here.
Thank YOU!
Mary Ann

David Hall's answer:

Mary Ann, you don't understand. It's not that you're going to confuse the reader, but that you're going to rattle the reader. There's a difference.

You should be making your writing an emotional experience for the reader. A skillful author writes to the reader's emotions. A poor writer merely tells a story. When you put us in someone's head, you want to get us to identify with that person, to feel what he is feeling. When you jump to another person's head without building up to it, you confuse the emotions your reader feels. The reader is uncomfortable because he is just getting used to feeling what one person is feeling and you tear him away and put him in another person's head.

Placing a great importance on point of view doesn't make sense if you're just telling a story. But if you're crafting an emotional experience for the reader as you should, it makes all the sense in the world.

Then we have David Woolley’s answer:

 Hi Mary Ann:

In response to your plea for help let me share a few insights that may help.

You shouldn't think of point of view as a restriction. If used effectively, it actually will liberate your creativity and provide much more depth and drama to your scene.

First, you really don't ever want to tell the reader what any of your
characters are thinking. Avoid like the plague little the phrases "she
wondered" or "he thought". They are the signs of immature writing and,
sadly, they appear far too often in publication. And herein lies the first
emancipating principle behind point of view . If you develop a strong point
of view for a character, you never have to tell the reader WHO is THINKING.
They already know who is thinking the thought and you can place them
seamlessly into the scene without adding the "she thought" or "he wondered
locution".

Take this for example from David King and Renni Brown’s Self Editing for Fiction writers:

Big Jim Billups fondled the .38 in his pocket, waddled over to the back of
his truck, and spat. Could've stopped the whole damn thing last night—-they
don't carry no guns. What was the us of doing a job if you didn't do a good
one? He rocked, shifting his weight from one leg to another and spat again.
The sound of the marchers was closer now. Soon it would be time.

Notice that the first sentence in this example is a bit of action which
prepares the reader to understand the thoughts Big Jim thinks in the next
two sentences. You understand its Big Jim and the author doesn't have to add
those pesky, amateurish he thought, she thought reminders like: Could've
stopped the whole damn thing last night, he thought—-they don't carry no
guns. Fiction has become a lot like the movies over that past 30 years as
authors rely on immediate scenes from SPECIFIC POINTS OF VIEW to put across
their stories. You can convey a great many things on film that can't be
conveyed on the page. But fiction has a reliable, powerful advantage over
film: it's much easier to place the reader than a moviegoer in someone
else's head.

So to make your interior thoughts transparent get rid of what are, in
effect, speaker attributions:

Did her really want her to die? Not likely, he thought.

And use something like:

Did he really want her to die? Not likely.

And if you're writing in third person, just write your interior thoughts
in third person:

Dying is always the hard part, he thought.

Can be written as:

Dying is always the hard part.

You can get rid of the "he wondered" locution by converting a short
passage of interior monologue into a question:

He wondered why dying was always the hard part.

Can be changed into a question like:

Why was dying always the hard part?

But these simple examples of making your interior dialogue more
professional doesn't answer your question about flipping from one head to
another and back again. If you are writing in third person you can have a
number of scenes in the same chapter written through the eyes of different
view point characters. All you need is a break (some editors put a line or
asterisks or some bit of art work) and then move on to the next character.
The scenes can be closely related in time and place as in this
just-out-of-my-brain example:

You can have some description about Sarah sneaking into the bank vault, a
little about her finding the jewels. Have her pull out the diamonds and drop
them down her blouse. Followed by a page break (asterisk, art work, empty
space that effectively ends that scene and begins another) and then: Stan,
the chief of security at Zion's bank pushed back the stainless steel bars,
stepped into the vault and there, standing in front of him was his wife,
Sarah. She spun around, her loose blouse bulging at her stomach. That was
odd, he never remembered her gaining any weight. He said, "Honey, you really
should consider a diet."

In Pillar of Fire by David G. Woolley this is used to good effect with three short,
scenes placed back to back. It isn’t a romantic scene like yours, but it
has the same purpose of bringing in two different points of view in close
proximity without breaking out of point of view:

Miriam slowly stepped to the wooden gate and knelt in the shadows of the
stable door. The lace cascading from her veil kept her from hearing clearly.
She pulled it aside and pressed her ear to the wood next to the hinge. This
time she would get every word.

Laban said, "What about the trial?"

Zadock said, "There isn’t need for one. I have all the votes I need."

"You need all twelve to behead Uriah. One dissenter and——-"

"I know the law." Zadock’s slowly paced footsteps were muted by the fresh
hay. "If any of the Elders on my Council vote to acquit Uriah, I’ll deal
with them."

"What about the king?"

"He won’t oppose me."

Oppose him? Miriam felt her face flush. She’d make certain her husband
opposed him. Laban’s horse bumped the gate, forcing Miriam to pull her ear
back, but she couldn’t move farther than a few hands. Her veil was caught in
the hinge, pinched between the boards and post. She tried to pull free but
the cloth stuck firm between the cedars.

Laban said, "By the time we bring Uriah back to Jerusalem, the Council
will have ordered the executioner to prepare his block and sharpen his axe."

"Enough," Zadock said. "We have to get back."

Laban was the first to move toward the door, kicking the hay out of his
way as he came. "We can’t be missed at the reception."

Miriam tore her veil free.



***** (Page break into another point of view and then:)



Laban stopped mid-stride. "Did you hear that?" He turned his head to
listen. When nothing but the grunting from the next stall met his ears he
jumped to the gate, kicked it open and marched out to the watering trough.
The yard stood empty with only the drip, drip, dripping of water from a
crack in the clay tank. Had he imagined the tearing sound? It seemed as loud
as the rending of the high priest’s robe on the day of Atonement. He shook
his head, rubbed his eyes and scanned the yard again. There were no servants
hauling feed, no one tending the stables and no strays loose in the grain
bins. He must have been hearing things and he bent over the trough and
splashed water onto his face. That’s what it was, his imagination playing
another trick. At least he began to think it was his mind until he turned
back toward the stall. Hanging from the hinges was a shard from a woman’s
veil, not just any veil, but a piece of a finely woven lace. It felt soft
between his fingers and smelled of perfume.

The same veil and perfume Miriam wore at the reception.



***** (Now another page break back to Miriam's point of view:)



Miriam huddled behind the water trough. She peered around it to see Laban
scanning the yard. Her hands trembled at the memory of kneeling with her
veil caught in the hinges and Laban marching across the stable. He would
have caught her listening to them if she hadn’t hid here—and she prayed he
didn’t look any further.

Laban stood above her and she could feel the heat rise off his legs. The
Captain turned back to the gate and paused. He was staring at the torn lace
stuck on the hinge and she wanted to run over and take it down and pretend
this had never happened, but it had and with the help of God she would find
a way to cover this unfortunate mishap. She had to find a way! There were
too many lives at stake.

Laban pulled the lace free of the hinge, rubbed it between his fingers and
smelled the perfume before returning to the stable and resuming his
conversation with Shechem. Once the sound of their voices filled the air and
Miriam was certain they wouldn’t see her, she gathered the skirts of her
robe and hurried across the livery and under the archway into the palace
courtyard. There was one duty she had to attend to, and heaven willing she
could do it and return to the reception before Laban found her missing.

She must send the palace informant with a message to Josiah the
Potter—-his life depended on it.



You certainly shouldn't avoid doing your novels in first person if your
story requires that kind of voice—a folksy, sitting around the pot-bellied
stove voice that has a personal I was there feeling to it. First person does
have certain limitations you should be aware of before you make your
decision to use that approach. One major point you should consider is that
when using first person your main character is always on scene whenever
anything is happening so you can't get into any one else head. Nothing can
happen without his/her knowledge which is tricky if you want any part of the
story to happen when he/she is off scene. It is also difficult to build
suspense with regard to life or death outcomes of first person stories when
the main character who is "Telling" the story is alive, well and busy
narrating the story on your pages. The reader just doesn't sit on the edge
of her chair wondering, "Will the main character survive when he goes over
the five thousand foot water falls into piranha infested waters?"—the reader
doesn't have to worry, the main character is telling the story. Of course
he's going to survive!

The first person point of view has other limitations. Your readers only get to know
one character directly. Everyone else is filtered through your viewpoint
character. One way around that is to write from the first person point of view of
different characters, as was done by Jeffery Archer, in his book "Cane and
Able", Sol Stein often uses that technique (see THE BEST REVENGE—written
from the first person POV of six different characters). Mary Gordon devotes
the last section in The Company of Women to first-person accounts by all the
major characters.

The first person POV has a number of advantages, the main one being that
it gives your readers a great deal of intimacy with your viewpoint
Character. When you are writing from the "I" perspective, your main
character quite literally invites your readers into his or her head and
shows them the world through his or her eyes. The following example is from a
workshop submission conducted by Dave King and Renni Brown and it appears in their book Self Editing for Fiction Writers:

I never thought I'd see the day when I was thankful for the oak.

I certainly wasn't thankful this last autumn when I stood with my rake in
the middle of the scraggly patches of grass that pass for the front yard and
cursed the leaves that, I swear, multiply on their way to the ground. And
come autumn, I'll probably stand and curse the tree again.

But for now, when it seems the dog days have come to stay forever, when
the sun'd bake anyone fool enough to venture off his porch and onto the
street—well, that tree is a positive comfort.

Here is another example from Andrew Greeley's GOD GAME:

It was Nathan's fault that I became God. It is, as I would learn, hell to
be God. Nathan, to begin with, is as close to a genius as anyone I ever
expect to know. If this story has any moral at all, it is that you should
stay away from geniuses.

It was in his role as impresario of software that he made me God. He's not
a programmer but rather an interfacer, a software consumer who can talk
Cobol or Pascal or whatever languages that programmers think in these days
and tell them what we folks who don't know a bit from a byte need in the way
of data-analysis packages.

He's also a fiction addict, which enables him to interface between the
programmers and the fiction addicts of the world. That's how my troubles
started.

Of course, to write from the first person POV you have to create a
character strong enough and interesting enough to keep your readers going for
an entire novel, and that's probably where publisher will say you needed to
change—your "flat" character into one strong enough to keep the readers
interest through the entire novel—heck, I have a hard time creating a
character strong enough to keep the reader interested for four pages.

The omniscient POV could be considered the opposite of the first person.
Instead of being written from inside the head of one of your characters, a
scene in the omniscient POV is not written inside the head of ANYONE. Often
the author addresses the reader directly: "It was the best of times, it was
the worst of times" or "Happy families are all alike, but every unhappy
family is unhappy in a different way."

Here's an example from George Elliot's, Middlmarch:

If you want to know more particularly how Mary looked, ten to one you will
see a face like hers in the crowded street tomorrow, if you are there on the
watch: she will not be among those daughters of Zion who are haughty, and
walk with stretched-out necks and wanton eyes, mincing as they go. Let all
those pass, and fix your eyes on some small plump brownish person of firm
but quiet carriage, who looks about her, but does not suppose that anybody
is looking at her.

The omniscient POV makes it very easy to introduce information that your

readers my need to know and its so easy that most writers writing in
third person, usually fall into the trap of actually writing a good share of
their novel using an omniscient voice, with a few moments of good third
person writing. You don't have to worry if the character would know about
what you're presenting and you don't have to present it in the VOICE of your
character. But what you gain in perspective, you often lose in intimacy.
Take the above passage about the leaves falling to the ground and rewrite it
with an omniscient POV and this is what you get (which is what most authors
do to set a setting or present information—they think they are using
narration or exposition to get that part of the story across but what they
are really doing is falling out of third person or first person and using an
omniscient POV—it's not the wisest choice since the change of POV can be
disrupting to the reader, destroy the intimacy and have the effect of
stopping the story to speak directly to the reader) Take a look (this example also appeared in Dave King and Renni Brown’s book Self Editing for Fiction writers):

In small South Carolina towns, most houses are built in the shadow of tall
trees. Each autumn, the children charged with yard care curse the leaves
that seem to multiply on their way to the ground. But in Mid-afternoon
during the dog days of August, when the blazing sun takes possession of the
streets and bakes anyone who dares to challenge it, entire families retreat
to their front porches, there to await whatever stray breezes happen by in
the shade of those same trees. One such tree, a tall oak, stood in the front
yard of the house Coral Blake rented from a man who had long ago moved his
family north. The lush expanse of the oak belied the barren nature of the
surrounding yard, where little grew except sparse clumps of grass, random
weeds, and a scraggly pair of hydrangea bushes—pale blue instead of violet.

This passage contains all the information of the previous version, but it
lacks the warmth, the sense of what it actually feels like to sit under an
old oak tree in the dog days of summer. The third person POV is a compromise
between the first person and omniscient, providing you with a mixture of
perspective and intimacy. Take a look at the same example rewritten in third
person (notice that the view point character is mentioned at the on-set,
there is no doubt who is viewing this hot summer afternoon—I changed the
last line from the way the original author submitted them to have the same
line as the first person version—I prefer "A positive comfort"):

Coral Blake mopped the sweat out of her eyes and looked up at the dusty
green underside of the oak. The dog days of August had come to stay, it
seemed, and like most of the rest of Greelyville, South Carolina, she sought
refuge from the sun on their front porch under the oak.

Her Children hated that tree. Every fall she'd chase them out to the
scraggly front yard with a rake, and every fall she'd watch them curse the
leaves that seemed to multiply as they fell. But now, with her head leaning
back against the cool metal porch column, the tree was a positive comfort.

Although the narrative voice in third person is not as strong as in the first person
version, we still get an idea of what it feels like to be Carol Blake on a
hot summer afternoon. With third person point of view you can move from
character to character more easily than with the first person. This allows
your reader to see the story from multiple perspectives. It makes it easier
for the reader to know things that will impact another character without
that character knowing what's about to impact him. It allows for the
development of plot lines of one character to cross over, collide, support,
diverge and rejoin the plot lines of other characters.

The problem you may have with third person is KEEPING YOUR POV CONSISTENT
THROUGH THE END OF EACH SCENE—keeping from falling out of character so to
speak. You have to decide which character you are going to use to view the
scene and then describe only what that character would see and hear. If the
murder weapon has been hidden behind the couch and your viewpoint character
can't see it, you don't mention it. All your descriptions, all your
observations, all your interior monologue will belong to the same viewpoint
character.

When I write, and I am writing in third person with the book I am working
on, I usually begin the first draft with a lot of omniscient stuff mixed in
with some decent third person stuff. The omniscient writing allows me to
jot down the important information that needs to be in the scene without
worrying about the voice of the viewpoint character I have selected—and a
always select the view point character who will provide the most dramatic
effect to the story (a three year old, a forty year old, a mother, a
father, a villain, a good guy, etc.) When I re-write, I ferret out the
omnisient stuff and replace it with third person POV in the voice of the
character. Some of the information has got to be jettisoned because there is
no way that a mother would think such evil, or a ten year old could be so
brilliant. And the re-writing becomes a balancing act between the voice of
the viewpoint character and the telling of the story filtered through the
eyes of that character.

I reviewed some of the opening chapters of a book I just finished writing—Power of Deliverance, by David G. Woolley—
and extracted a portion of the opening scene in each. They are all written
in Third Person, but you will see how each one opens with a strong point of
view character and hopefully stays there—-something you really should try
to do and not jump around into other heads.

The first scene is set in Palestine, January 25th 1934. Notice how the
setting and the story line are all introduced through the POV of the
viewpoint character, carefully avoiding and direct address to the reader by
introducing any information or "telling" anything about the scene. My
editors changed a portion of this first scene before it went to print, but
I'm sending you the raw, unedited version because, well, I like it better:

John Starkey left his teacup half full on the rickety ply-wood table,
pushed open the screen door to his tent and spit the foul tasting brew in
the sand. The Hebrew cook who prepared his tea would have to clean away what
he didn’t drink and with a bit of Irish luck she’d not try to make him feel
at home again. This was the Holy Land, not London, and he could do without
the trappings of his English upbringing until the expedition finished this
seasons excavations and returned to England to wait out the hot summer
months. He rubbed the spittle into the ground under the heel of his high
brimmed leather excavating boots and spit again. He wasn’t given to such a
fetid habit as public spitting, but the tea in this Promised Land had never
matured beyond the reign of the kings and the tarts had the same color and
texture as the mortar they uncovered last week between the stones in the
foundation wall of the double gate leading into the fort—pink and powdery
with a taste more like limestone than lemon. The tent door banged shut
behind him, though there was hardly a reason to have a door on his quarters,
not with the mosquitoes and flies that passed through the screens and
disturbed his sleep every night. John ran his fingers over the hole in the
wire screen. He would endure the insects along with the scorpions that
crawled in the sands by day, the late deliveries of drinking water and
supplies from Jerusalem and the long hours digging in the trenches high on
the summit of Tell ed Duweir as long as this dig provided some shred of
evidence that they had found the ancient Fort Lakhish.

In another scene in this novel a third person character takes over:

A draft filtered through the shuttered windows, down along the stone walls
and about the bedroom like a sea wind swirling off the Gulf of Aqaba—a
welcome respite after a boarder patrol, but this was not a ride through the
Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula, it was Lord Yaush’s sleeping
quarters and the draft left him shivering in his bed. He reached over and
reclaimed his portion of the lambskin his wife, Sophia, had stolen during
the night. He quickly covered his feet and stuffed what was left under his
large frame to keep her from stealing it back. It was a battle Yaush fought
every winter night and he did it without reinforcements. He was commander of
five thousand, but still managed to lose the blanket-war to Sophia despite
his large three-cubit frame that should have kept the bed covering pinned
beneath him till sunrise.

Lord Yaush was a pillar of a man like the stone columns supporting the
entrance to the palace-fort; tall, stout and quarried from the finest
pedigree of southern Judah, though last evening at dinner Sophia said he was
beginning to look like a fatted lamb. What did she know about raising
livestock? Sophia was the daughter of a perfume merchant and she’d never
shorn wool, shepherded a flock or birthed a lamb in her forty-three years,
though she did have a fine sense of smell—a talent she sprinkled liberally
on her husband. He allowed her to scent his bath water and military dress,
but drew the line when she daubed his leather sheath with frankincense. A
sweat smelling sword was not a fitting weapon for the commander of Lakhish.

And finally this in the next chapter one of the villains in the novel
takes over the storyline. Notice how the Jewish custom of hair grooming is
information introduced through the perspective of the viewpoint character:

Laban peered at his reflection in the door mount—the snarling brass head
of a lion that hung from the center plank of th palace prison door—and
parted his hair along the left side of his head. Foolish barber. He’d paid
the man four shekel for his work and he didn’t have the sense to comb in any
perfumed oils to keep the part in place. Laban’s sideburns were shaved
short, without any of the locks and curls that dangled about the ears of
zealots. At least the barber got that right. There was nothing worse than
going about Jerusalem with the grooming of a religious fanatic. And if Laban
had his way, he’d outlaw the style. It was embarrassment enough that any
Jews at Jerusalem still followed the Laws of Moses, they didn’t have to wear
their superstitions curling about their ears in locks of uncombed hair.

Laban turned his head to the side and examined his short shaven sideburns
in the brass reflection. The hair blended perfectly into the thin line of
beard gracing his jaw line. Moses said thou shalt not shave the corners of
thy beards, but what did that dead prophet know about fashion? He lived a
thousand years ago before Phoenician styles became more fashionable than the
unshaven locks of Hebrew Law. Laban rubbed the brass head of the lion for
good luck. Prophets! What a plague they were. At least Moses was dead and
Laban didn’t have to suffer the man’s fetish for foolish barbering. He
straightened his collar, and pulled the thick cloak off his shoulders to
keep from raising a sweat on his brow. As soon as Uriah was dead he’d be rid
of one more fetish. Starvation was a subtler death than by sword and though
it was a slow means to silence the man who knew his secret, he had more than
enough patience as long as it worked its miracle before Uriah's trial began.

This is not the finest writing, but you get a sense for the attempt at
third person. Each character in introduced in his setting and takes over the
story-line, but they do it through their very own, different perspectives,
seeing what they would see, hearing what they would hear, and reacting
(interior monologue) as they would react and that intimacy is the genius
behind third person. It isn't necessarily the only way to write, but most
readers and authors have come to use it more than first person or omniscient
viewpoints because of its versatility and as long as you become very good at
it and avoid falling into omniscient traps, it can become nearly as intimate
as first person. First person requires a great deal of skill, and in the
right hands, it is a good choice. Omniscience has, for the most part, fallen
into disuse because of its aloofness replaced, the most part, by third
person as the staple in the novel writing industry.

Hope this helps with some of your questions regarding point of view.

David G. Woolley