Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Perspective

I've been reading Elizabeth Lyon's insightful book, A Writer's Guide to Fiction. She talks about the difference between objective and subjective POV, something I'd never heard discussed before. But it makes so much sense. It's easy to slip into the objective POV, to describe a scene as a camera would, devoid of personality:
The snow still lay thick on one lawn, shaded by pines to the south. Two doors down a robin sang in the tree.
But to capture a character, use subjective POV, including that character's sensory experience and their emotions and reactions to what they see:
As Willow and I walked past Mr. Stickles' house, I shivered. The snow formed a thick crust across his yard, where Willow's friend Baron used to romp. I hurried past to Sasha's house, where a robin sang in the budding dogwood tree.

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