No Character POV is a Reliable Narrator

Have you ever had any alpha/beta readers tell you that your Point of View (POV) was off? I have. Several times, actually. And it was a long while before I ever grasped what exactly they were talking about, because it’s not enough to hear the solution to a problem. No matter the subject, the greatest advice in the world is worthless to you if you aren’t equipped to apply it.

It’s a lot like some wealthy someone giving your eight-year-old self the keys and title to your dream car, while also covering the taxes and insurance on it forever. Great! Only eight to ten more years of looking at it until you can finally drive it. Let’s face it, at eight, your dream car is probably a firetruck, a spaceship, or a unicorn, but this is going some place so bare with me.

Writing is a technical skill. There are a lot of rules shaping it, and while you may not like all of the rules, you have to remember who your story is for. Is it for you? If so, great! But why share it? If you’re sharing it—aside from receiving critique—then your writing isn’t for you; it’s for your audience. And that’s where rules serve their purpose, because a well-read reader is going to expect the writing to be presented in a certain way. When it’s not, it disrupts the story for them. You don’t want that.

No character POV is a reliable narrator

My mentioning of ‘firetruck, a spaceship, or a unicorn’ wasn’t completely random. While I do have my moments, there was purpose here. Because we’re talking about POV, and as a child, we’re going to want unreasonable/unrealistic things.

When we talk about an unreliable narrator, we’re talking about someone who gives inaccurate, misleading, conflicting, or questionable information to the reader. So, if your narration is from an in-story character, the POV is going to have emotions and biases which paints the world and story in whatever way they view it.

If your character is part of the rebels, when it comes to providing information on the “evil” empire, he/she is going to give information based on how they feel about their enemy. And the same goes for a character working within the “evil” empire. Only cartoon villains do evil things for evil’s sake. So, a character within the empire is going to describe the rebels in a negative light.

When I was writing Twilight Wolf, my Wolf character taught me the most about character perspective. And it mainly came from his knowledge deficit. You see, both Wolf and Jack are the wolf and huntsman characters from The Little Red Riding Hood story, a Grimm Brothers Fairy Tale written in the 1800s. They were pulled into a modern world and end up aiding the protagonist—Mioko. So, I have to assume that the characters can’t know more than the author and since automobiles were first being developed in the mid 1800s, you get this exchange:

Wolf doesn’t know about cars, so his first encounter with one is more than a little unnerving. Whatever it is, it’s fast and loud.

My understanding this came from feedback in a writers group, where a reader made a simple note on my story, which was something to the effect of ‘I don’t think this character would say this.’ And that simple statement made all of the previous POV suggestions click into place.

In the snippet, Jack has a line of dialogue, but this is also Jack’s POV. So, all of the surrounding narration has to consider what he knows and how he’d describe things. For example, if he didn’t know what a barbed-wire fence was, this scene couldn’t use that wording. It would have to use alternate terminology that would in accordance with Jack’s knowledge and world view.

Here are two other examples from Wolf’s POV:

Wolf doesn’t know what radios are or what evaporation is so his narration can’t use those terms.

Using color to keep your scene in the proper POV

I included the snippets above to showcase the color. Back in The Writer’s Life: Tools of the Trade, I mentioned using highlights for my POV. After that reader made the aforementioned note, I started writing in highlighter for a constant reminder of whose perspective I was in. There were times I wanted to say things one way but my highlighter kept me on track, reminding me that I had to use this wording and not that.

Another great thing about this highlighting is that I can glance at a scene and know exactly whose perspective it’s in. The blue is Jack, orange is Wolf, and red is Mioko—the protagonist. This also made for an unexpected boon during development when I needed to backtrack to reference something. If I needed to know how Wolf previously described something, I could just sift back through the orange scenes until I found what I was after.

In the example, I’m using Scrivener and it has a lot of really calm highlight colors that are easy on the eyes. I didn’t realize how useful this was until I tried using this same technique in Word. If you think this technique can help your own POV efforts, give it a try. But if the colors are too harsh, it may not be something you want to use.

As long as you’re able to keep the proper character in mind, as well as their knowledge and mood, the POV shouldn’t be a problem for you. And being mindful of these things will help your scenes grow sharper alongside your character development.

In closing

Two last things I’d like to touch on is character disposition and mood. The following is dialogue but it’s framed based on POV. So, who do you think is saying this?

“Like Mioko, you both think you can control everything. That’s just not the case. Go stand in a river with a strong current. You’ll quickly figure out just how much control is at your disposal.”

Well, if it were a snippet of highlight, it would be blue, but that’s not the takeaway here. This is Jack, who’s an outdoorsy fellow and typically relates things to nature. But it doesn’t matter if it’s dialogue or narration, a character’s disposition is going to come through in both cases. You might find other forms of imagery in Jack’s scenes that aren’t said in dialogue, but it still shows up for the reader because it’s what Jack would say if he were speaking.

It’s the same thing with a character’s mood, which is slightly more involved and something that I too am trying to work on more. If your character is anxious, it won’t matter that they’re standing in a field of bright flowers because that’s not what they’ll be focusing on. But it’ll depend on what your character is anxious about. If she feels that there are predators lurking in this field, she won’t be stopping to smell any roses. The narration is going to be written with uncertainty, maybe she’s nervously glancing around each time the wind moves some of the field’s overgrowth. This is a bit of mood/tone and it’s shaped by the character’s experiences.

If your character is happy, everything around her seems happy. If your character is having a bad day, she’s going to feel like all the negative things happening are being done to target her specifically. And if she’s happily in love, then she might be seeing flowers and brighter colors where they don’t actually exist.

Hopefully, this shed some light on POV if you were having any problems with it. I know it took me far too long to figure out some of my learned things. And I’m not sure if it’s because I wasn’t looking in the right place for it or if it just wasn’t explained effectively.

That’s all I have for this one.

Until next time, happy writing!

JT