Oh, The Horrors of POV!

My novel used to be over 60,000 words, and not yet complete. I was well on my way to a decent length for publishable fiction, closing in on that lovely number agents like to see in query letters (at least that’s what they say on their blogs; I have yet to actually query).

But then something horrible happened. I changed the POV from a decent third person limited to a first person. A first person who is not writing his/her own tale, but that of someone else. So first person who sometimes writes in third person. (Oh, and he/she is not androgynous, I simply do not want the internets at large knowing things like that about my story. I know, I’m weird.)

When I made this POV change, the stars aligned, the heavens opened up, the outline fell together and all the characters rejoiced!

Until I got to chapter 18.

Those of you who follow me on twitter may be aware that chapter 18 of my work in progress has been quite the ball and chain recently.

My poor narrator ran into a problem: He/she had never been to the major scene in chapter 18, nor had any of her informants. What to do? Put one of her informants at the event? No, too many unbelievable plot twists. Change to another POV for this chapter? No, too inconsistent with the manner of the telling.

So, finally, I made my decision. The lovely scene I had so looked forward to writing got cut. Gone. Finito. Thin air. Funtoosh. I simply couldn't make it work.

And this, I think, is among the hardest things writers have to do. We must separate our wheat scenes from our chaff scenes and throw our chaff in into the fire. (Actually I recommend saving them in a separate chaff file, to be retrieved during your third draft when you decide to change the POV back to third person omniscient. Just in case. You can, however, name the file “unquenchable fire”.)

POV is an important decision. It can make or break your story. In fact it can make and break your story at the same time. So beware!