Inside The Cover Book Reviews
Reviewed by Stephanie Dickison

MASTERING POINT OF VIEW: How to Control Point of View to Create Conflict, Depth and Suspense
By Sherri Szeman
Story Press/Writer’s Digest Books
August, 2001
218 pages

I have just finished Mastering Point of View and am now wondering which voice I should use to write this. Should I use the...

It’s exhilarating to know that there are so many choices. That just opening ourselves up to the possibility of changing our perspective might be just the thing our novel, essay or poem needs.

This book is a must for anyone that spends any amount of time writing. Think about this: if you get clear on our point of view, your writing is going to be that much more clear and maybe even that much more immediate.

"If I hadn’t fallen off the mountain, I never would have believed it. Actually, I did believe it before I fell off the mountain, but the first sentence of this paragraph is an example of the most important element of fiction today—even more important than point of view—urgency. Writers need urgency in their fiction in order to have vibrant, intriguing, publishable fiction."

Wax on. Wax off. This is the guidance we need as writing disciples. And this is the kind of sage advice that you can expect from author and point of view master, Sherri Szeman.

While the text can sometimes be confusing if you aren’t up on the different P.O.V’s,

"TIP: Using inner limited point of view for victims in a crime novel allows you and your readers to think like the police and other crime investigators do. By putting yourself in the victim’s place and writing from his perspective – but using the grammatical third person rather than switching to first-person point of view—you will gain more insight into the psyches of your crime-fighters as well."

(Huh?) upon further reading, you will begin to learn where to use each one most effectively.

"One author who consistently attempted to write in outer limited point of view was Ernest Hemingway.

‘The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building.’"

Okay, now I’m beginning to see.

You will also learn about styles that you are familiar with, but have never been able to name:

"Epistolary novels are told through letters written by one or more of the characters, so they are a series of narratives written in first-person point of view."

Cool, huh?

This also gives the reader a unique look into how other books relate to their audience and what techniques have been used, even if you the reader, have been unaware of it.

Second-Person Point of View in Postmodernist Fiction

"Postmodernist fiction revels in using second-person point of view, most often to parody its use in previous centuries. Tom Robbins, in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, addresses the readers and makes them implied characters in chapter 100

Reader, will you share a cup of the bubbly with me? You prefer French to domestic? OK, I’ll make it French. Cheers!"

So, why all the confusion about point of view? Sherri explains.

"In everyday conversation, we use the term point of view to refer to different sides of a situation. For example, if there’s an accident and a police officer questions three people and gets three different versions of what happened, we say that he gets three different points of view. If we’re having a heated discussion with someone who disagrees with us, we say, ‘That’s your point of view.’ Each time we hear someone else’s version of events, we say we have a different point of view.

In literature and creative writing, however, point of view is limited to how the fiction is written. So if the police officer in the previous example hears three first-person narratives about the accident, then—in literary and creative writing terms—he’s heard three stories from the same point of view; first person. Each of these first-person narratives, though, is from a different perspective. So, in literary terms, the police officer has heard three perspectives from the same point of view. That distinction is critical for creative writers if they wish to master point of view."

Most definitely. Sherri will show you how with tips, exercises and a list of myths that will squash any worries that you initially have with the subject, such as Myth #3 – You can’t write from a man’s perspective if you’re a woman (or vice versa), even if you’re using first-person point of view, or Myth #7 – It’s easy to write in outer limited point of view because you’re pretending you’re a camera, so you just write down everything you see.

Sherri Szeman knows everything there is to know about point of view. There is even a chapter the deals with P.O.V. in erotic and violent scenes! If you are writing a book or you want to improve your connectedness with your audience, this is soon going to become your writing bible.

Second person used above. See? It really works. Now you go try it.

BUY THE BOOK BY CLICKING HERE.  

Stephanie Dickison (writerscramp@canada.com) is Reviews Editor for Write Magazine, Associate Books Editor (& Music Critic) for PopMatters.com and a regular contributor to The Writer. She is a Literacy Tutor for adults and has developed a writing class for beginners that can be taught in 6 or 10-week installments.  She writes passionately about books, environmentalism, yoga, critical theory, cultural studies, popular culture, music and ethics for a number of publications and websites. 

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