The Rune Skelley Theory of POV

We like to tell big stories, with lots of characters. And we like to give lots of those characters point-of-view. And by “lots” we mean, like, eight or so POV characters in a novel. We don’t do first-person or omniscient, but a very close third. We let the personality, diction, and knowledge of the POV character seep into the narrative.

Not every cast member gets that honor. Of course someone needs to be interesting to be considered for the job, but all of our characters are interesting. (Honest!) So, that’s no help in narrowing things down.

One of the few actual rules we stick to is that nobody’s allowed to have just one POV scene in a book. Once we take a ride in someone’s head, we’re committed to doing it at least once more. Having this rule has seldom been an issue, but sometimes it seems convenient to slide into some secondary character’s thoughts just for one particular thing. This is a temptation that must be resisted. It’s lazy, and leads to too much head-hopping and a disjointed narrative. If you have only one scene revealing someone’s interior, how can you craft a journey for them?

When a singleton arises, we have two options. We can find a way to convey the info from one of the established POVs, or we can write more scenes — legitimate scenes that earn their wordcount — from this new one. Over the years, we’ve taken both approaches. It all depends.

Just because we have a rule doesn’t make it the only right way to do things. There are surely fine books out there that break this rule. None come to mind, but YMMV.

A writing partner is someone who doesn’t let you take shortcuts.