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After every important action or observation, I want you to ask yourself, what does this mean to my point of view character right now in the moment? So not in general, not eventually, right now, in this moment, given what they know, given what they want, given what they're trying to do, what does this mean to my point of view character right now? And then write the line in your draft that answers that question.

Point Of View Sets The Lens

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Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo, and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable, and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started. In today's episode, we're talking about point of view. Specifically, the five most common point of view mistakes I see writers make. And here's the thing about point of view: it's one of the trickiest layers of fiction to get right because it controls how the reader is going to experience your story. It determines whose head we're in, what they have access to, what they're allowed to know, and how close they feel to your character on the page. And so if you've ever had the experience of reading back through one of your scenes and you've had the thought that something here isn't quite working, but you can't figure out what it is, then point of view is one of the first places I recommend you look, especially if the scene has the right events, but still feels confusing, distant, flat, or emotionally disconnected. And so in this episode, I'm going to walk you through the five most common mistakes I see in regards to point of view. I'm going to share what each mistake looks like on the page, why it pulls readers out of your story, and what to do instead. But before we dive into that, if you haven't already decided on the point of view that you're going to write your story in, or if you want a little bit of a primer on point of view, I want you to go back and listen to episode number 90 where I walk you through how to choose the best point of view for your story. That episode will give you the foundation and this one will help you troubleshoot what's actually happening in your manuscript. All right, so one more time, that's episode number 90, and you'll learn how to choose the best point of view for your story. I will link to that in the show notes for easy access

Mistake One Head Hopping

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as well. All right, now let's dive right into the five mistakes, starting with mistake number one, which is head hopping. And this is probably the most common point of view mistake I see, and it's also the one writers are usually most surprised to find out that they're making. Now, just to make sure we're on the same page, headhopping happens when you start a single scene in one character's perspective, and then without a scene or a chapter break, you slip into another character's thoughts, feelings, or internal experience. So let me give you an example of what I mean. Let's say that we're in a scene and we're in Sarah's point of view and she's having a really tense conversation with a character named Mark. So the scene is building nicely because we're having this tense conversation. We're in Sarah's point of view, experiencing how she's feeling, what she's thinking about, and stuff like that. And then we get a sentence that says, Mark could see that she was about to cry and he hated himself for it. Now that might seem harmless, it's only one sentence, right? But that sentence is no longer in Sarah's perspective. And that's because Sarah can't know that Mark hates himself. She can observe his face, his posture, his voice, or the way that he looks away from her, you know, things like that, but she can't directly access what he's feeling inside. And this is the real problem with head hopping. It breaks the reader's anchor. What I mean by that is that when the reader is inside Sarah's perspective and her experience, they're relying on Sarah to filter the events of the scene for them. They're seeing what she sees, noticing what she notices, feeling what she feels, and interpreting Mark and the events of the scene through her limited perspective. So when the narration suddenly reports Mark's internal state, the reader then has to reorient. Even if they don't consciously think, wait, whose point of view are we in? They definitely feel that little wobble. They were just grounded in Sarah's perspective and now they've been pulled out of her perspective. Alright, so hopefully you can see what I mean by head hopping here. And the good news is the fix is really simple, but it takes discipline. So what is the fix? Well, it's just sticking to one character's perspective per scene. If the scene belongs to Sarah, then the reader gets Sarah's thoughts, Sarah's sensations, Sarah's emotions, and Sarah's interpretation of what's happening around her. So instead of writing something like, Mark could see she was about to cry and he hated himself for it. Instead of writing that, you might write something like this instead. Mark looked away, his jaw tightening. For one awful second, Sarah thought he might apologize, but he only gripped his coffee cup harder and said nothing. Right? So we're still getting Mark's reaction, but we're getting it through Sarah's perspective. She sees his jaw tighten, she notices him looking away, she interprets his silence, and because she doesn't know exactly what he's thinking, the moment actually has more tension. All right, so could you see and feel the difference there? Now, this is the part that writers sometimes worry about because they'll say, okay, this makes sense in theory, but then how do I show what the other characters are feeling and thinking if I can't go into their head in a particular scene? And the answer is that you don't. Instead, you want to show it the way your point of view character experiences and interprets it. So how they interpret or experience what the other character says, how they interpret what they don't say, right, how they interpret the other character's body language, their facial expressions, their tone of voice, any movements or actions they take, including things like hesitation, avoidance, contradiction, right? All those things that the other character does, we want to experience it and interpret it through your point of view character. Now, in the example we talked about earlier, the reader doesn't need direct access to Mark's thoughts to understand that something is going on with him. And if you think about it, when we have to read him through Sarah's perspective only, we are actually more engaged because we're also interpreting the moment right alongside of her, right? So it's actually more effective to stick to one point of view character's perspective per scene. Now, if you're writing a multi-point of view story, then you can absolutely switch point of view characters. But those switches need to happen at clean breaks, usually a scene break or a chapter break, not mid-sene, not mid-paragraph, or not mid-emotion. Okay, so that is mistake number one, head hopping. And the key takeaway for this first mistake is this: don't jump from head to head or perspective to perspective. Instead, I want you to choose the character who owns the scene, stay inside their experience, and let every thought, observation, and interpretation come through that character. This is what's going to keep your reader anchored and immersed in your scene and in your story.

Mistake Two Omniscience Leaks

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Alright, now mistake number two is what I call the omniscience leak. And this one is subtler than head hopping, which is why it can bother readers without them ever being able to point out exactly what's wrong. So what is an omniscient leak? Well, an omniscient leak happens when your point of view character notices, describes, or knows something that they couldn't actually know from inside their own experience. So if head hopping is when you jump into another character's head, the omniscient leak is when the narration quietly gives your point of view character access to information they shouldn't have. And it often shows up in really small ways. If you're writing in the first person point of view, a character might describe themselves from the outside like my green eyes flashed. And again, that might seem minor, but unless they're looking in a mirror, they can't see their own eyes flash, right? And most people won't be thinking about the color of their own eyes in that way either. Now, if you're writing in the third person point of view, this mistake might show up like this. She didn't notice the man in the corner watching her, right? So again, sounds simple, but if she didn't notice him, then she can't be the source of that information. All right, now the most common version of all of this is when your point of view character knows exactly what someone else is thinking or feeling, not as a guess, not as an interpretation, but as a fact. And a really simple example of this is imagine that we're in Sarah's point of view and she's looking at Mark, and the text says something like, Mark was devastated that his secret had finally come to light, right? So in that example, it's stated as a fact that Sarah knows about him. But because we're limited to her perspective, she can't know that about someone else. She can infer what she thinks Mark is thinking or feeling or experiencing, but she can't know that for sure. All right, now here's why this matters. The moment you pick a point of view character for a scene and your overall story, you're also choosing their limits. They can only know what they could plausibly know from where they are with the information they have in any given moment, right? So they are limited to what they can know at any given time. I know that sometimes writers feel like limiting what a character knows is almost like handcuffing their ability to write their book, but those kind of limits aren't a problem, and they're actually part of what makes choosing a specific point of view or a specific point of view character really powerful. And that's because when we're inside one character's perspective, we don't know everything. We know what they know, we notice what they notice, we misunderstand what they misunderstand, and that's where tension, intimacy, and reader engagement comes from. So when you suddenly give readers information that a point of view character couldn't possibly have, then the scene stops feeling like it's happening to a person and it starts feeling like it's being narrated about a person. And that tiny shift can be enough to pull readers out of the moment. All right, so let's talk about what to do if you have made this mistake in your draft. And the fix is to run what I call the proximity test. And so what I want you to do is anytime you find a line or piece of text that feels a little off, I want you to ask yourself, could my point of view character actually know this in this moment, from where they're standing, and with the information they currently have? If the answer is no, then rewrite the line so the information comes through observation, inference, or a moment when the character could reasonably learn it. So let me give you an example. Instead of writing, Mark was lying, she could tell he was thinking about the money. Instead of writing that, you might write this instead. His eyes flicked away too quickly. He was lying, she was sure of it, about what she could only guess. Right? So same emotional charge, same suspicion, same tension, but now the information is filtered through what she can actually observe and infer. She doesn't magically know what he's thinking. She's only reading his behavior, drawing a conclusion, and bumping up against the limits of what she can know. And that limit is what keeps the point of view clean. All right, so mistake number two is what I call the omniscience leak. And the key takeaway here is this before you give readers any piece of information, make sure your point of view character could actually know it from inside the scene. All right, now let's move on to mistake number three, which is right up there with head hopping in terms of how often

Mistake Three Camera Not Consciousness

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I see it. And mistake number three is when you write your point of view character as a camera, not a consciousness. And what I mean by this is that the point of view character is technically present in the scene, but they're only reporting what's happening. So they're reporting what's happening, but they're not reacting to it, they're not interpreting it, and they're not registering what any of it means to them. So the camera feels more or less steady, but the consciousness behind the camera is missing. And this usually creeps in when writers learn to keep their point of view tight to that one particular character, but they misunderstand what that tight point of view is supposed to do. So, what I mean by this is if you're trying to keep your point of view tight to one particular character, this doesn't mean stripping away your character's thoughts and reactions. Instead, it means filtering the scene through a specific person's experience. And that experience always includes what they notice, what they feel, what they want, what they fear, what they assume, and what they make things mean. And without that layer, any scene, no matter how exciting it seems on the surface, is going to start to feel flat. So an example of this is imagine a character walks into a bar, the character orders a drink, the character notices a man in the back booth, the character watches him stand up, right? Technically, all of that might be in one point of view, but none of it's going to land because there's no person experiencing it. We're seeing the room, we're seeing the bartender, we're ordering a drink, but we're not inside the character walking through it. All right, so the key thing I want you to remember here is that scenes don't land or resonate with readers just because of what happens in them. They land and they resonate because we're inside a person's consciousness when it happens. And this is where interiority comes into play. If you're not familiar with this term, interiority is just basically the layer underneath the action where your point of view character is reacting, interpreting, wanting, fearing, deciding, and making meaning of events. If you want to go deeper and learn more about interiority, go back and listen to episode number 94 that's called How to Reveal Your Character's Inner Life on the Page. I'll put that link in the show notes for you for easy access. All right, now I just said that interiority is the layer underneath the action where the point of view character is reacting, interpreting, wanting, fearing, deciding, and making meaning of what's happening. And I know that sounds like a lot, but it doesn't have to be heavy. A single line of interiority can change the entire experience of a scene. For example, imagine a line of text that says, Justin walked into the bar. That's a camera reporting on events, right? But now imagine the same line of text that says, Justin walked into a bar and immediately wished he hadn't. That's a lot better, right? And it's because there's a person inside the action. The event is the same, but the second version gives readers something to lean into. Why does Justin wish he hadn't walked into the bar? What did he see that made him feel this way? What does he know that we don't know and what's about to happen? Right? That is the power of interiority or consciousness on the page. So what's the fix if you've made this mistake? Well, after every important action or observation, I want you to ask yourself, what does this mean to my point of view character right now in the moment? So not in general, not eventually, right now, in this moment, given what they know, given what they want, given what they're trying to do, what does this mean to my point of view character right now? And then write the line in your draft that answers that question. You don't need a paragraph of internal monologue, you don't need to stop the scene and explain everything your character feels. Sometimes all you need is a sentence, and sometimes you only need a clause. But the reader needs some sense of why this moment matters to the person living it. So let me give you one more example of this. Imagine your point of view character is in a scene at a funeral. The objective camera version might sound something like this. She stood by the casket, the flowers were white lilies, her aunt was crying quietly in the front row. Now there's not technically anything wrong with that, right? You can picture it, we can kind of infer what might be going on inside different characters' heads because of where they're at and why they're there, but we're not really inside anyone's consciousness yet. So now let me read you this example. She stood by the casket. The flowers were white lilies. He'd hated lilies and nobody had thought to ask. Her aunt was crying quietly in the front row, the way she always cried, like she was apologizing for taking up space. Same basic information, but now we know something about the person experiencing these events. We know how the point of view character feels about the flowers. We know she's carrying a little bit of resentment. We know how she sees her aunt. We know this funeral is not just a funeral to her, it's personal, specific, and emotionally loaded, right? And that's what point of view is supposed to give us. So mistake number three is treating your point of view character like a camera and not a consciousness. And the key takeaway here is to not just show us what your point of view character sees, show us how they're interpreting events, show us what the events of your plot mean to them, and let us inside their head. Because that's what readers come to fiction for, and that's what's going to immerse them in your scenes and your story and make them really connect with your characters. All right, now moving on to mistake number four.

Mistake Four Info Dumps In Thoughts

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Mistake number four is info dumping through your character's thoughts. So if mistake number three that we just talked about is interiority that's gone missing, this one is interiority that's gotten hijacked. And it happens when you use your character's thoughts to deliver information instead of letting them actually experience the moment they're in. And this usually starts from a very reasonable instinct. You need the reader to know something, maybe it's a piece of backstory, maybe it's a detail about your world, maybe it's the history between a couple characters, right? Whatever it is, you don't want to stop the story to explain it. And you've also heard info dumping and adding exposition is quote unquote wrong, so you tuck the explanation inside your point of view character's thoughts instead, and you hope it feels natural. But a lot of the time it doesn't. So let me give you a typical version of what this looks like. As Jennifer walked into the bakery she'd worked at for five years, ever since she'd inherited it from her grandmother, who had emigrated from Poland in 1962 and started the business with nothing but a recipe for babka, she breathed in the familiar smell of yeast. So again, we can picture what's happening. Jennifer walks into a bakery and she breathes in the familiar smell of yeast. That's fine. But the interiority here reads almost like the beginning of a Wikipedia article. We get information about the grandma, the bakery, the history, the babka, and all of these things might matter. So the issue is not that the information is bad. The issue is that the moment hasn't earned this information yet. And what I mean by that is real people don't usually think in full backstory blocks just because they walk into a familiar room. Their thoughts are triggered by what's happening, what they want, what they're afraid of, what they're trying not to think about, or what that particular moment puts under pressure. So Jennifer might think about her grandmother's history on the anniversary of her death. She might think about it while making her grandmother's recipe. She might think about it when a customer says the bakery feels outdated. She might think about it when a developer offers to buy the building. There are tons of little moments where Jennifer could think about her grandmother and where the author of Jennifer's story could weave in this information. But if she's just walking into work on a normal Tuesday, the full family history probably doesn't belong there. And that's why this mistake pulls readers out of the story. So to say this in another way, when information gets dropped into a moment that wouldn't actually trigger it, the reader can feel the author's hand. It stops feeling like a thought the character is having and starts feeling like the writer pausing the scene to explain something. And the moment the reader feels that pause, they are outside the story instead of inside it. So what do you do if you've made this mistake? Well, the fix again is pretty simple, but it does take practice. So the fix is to let the context arrive when it matters most. So when it matters most to the character, when it matters most to the scene, when it matters most to what's at stake, you want to let the context arrive when it matters most. So before you include a piece of backstory or world building in your character's thoughts, I want you to ask, why would this person think about this detail right now? What triggered this information, this memory, or this thought? And then how does that piece of information affect what they want, what they fear, what they decide, or what they do in this scene? And if you can answer those questions, the context will probably feel earned. If you can't answer those questions, it may need to move to somewhere else. So going back to the bakery example, instead of giving us Jennifer's grandmother's entire history the moment she walks through the door, you might wait until later when someone offers to buy the bakery. Because then suddenly the history matters, right? Now the bakery isn't just a place where Sarah works, it's the thing her grandmother built from nothing. It's the family legacy, its identity, its pressure, it's a choice, right? And because the scene has activated that history, the reader is more likely to care. All right, now the other thing I want to say here is that you don't have to give the reader everything right away. And in fact, most stories are stronger when you don't. So trust the reader to absorb context as it becomes relevant. Let them learn what matters when it matters. That's going to keep your scenes moving. It's going to make your interiority feel real, and it's going to help the information land with more emotional weight. All right, so mistake number four is info dumping through your point of view character's thoughts. And the key takeaway here is that I don't want you to use your character's thoughts as a hiding place for exposition. Instead, I want you to let their thoughts be triggered. By the moments they're actually living. Alright, now let's move on to the last mistake, mistake number five, and this is a point of view voice that keeps slipping.

Mistake Five Voice Slipping

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This mistake is the subtlest of the five. It's why I saved it for last. And it's also where point of view and voice overlap the most. That's because in first person or close third person, the narration is not neutral. What I mean by that is the narration belongs to the point of view character. It's shaped by how they see the world, how they think, what they notice, what they value, what they avoid, and the language they would naturally use. So when the voice drifts, the point of view tends to drift with it. Let me give you a quick example of what this could look like on the page. Let's say you have a teenage character who sounds like a teenager in chapter one and then starts sounding like a 35-year-old observer by chapter 12. That's one example of how this mistake shows up. Another example is say you have a character with a dry, sarcastic voice who then becomes earnest and poetic for half a chapter and then snaps back into being dry and sarcastic with no explanation. Another way this shows up is let's say you have a character who usually notices practical details only and then suddenly starts describing every room like an interior designer would, right? So just a mismatch or a slip in the point of view voice. Now, this one is especially tricky to catch because sometimes each individual line will sound fine on its own. But the problem is that together they don't sound like they're coming from the same person. And that's why this mistake matters. Voice is one of those things that tells the reader which character they're with. And when the voice is consistent, the reader feels anchored to a specific person. But when the voice starts to slip, then that person or their identity blurs, and the reader stops feeling like they're inhabiting one character's mind, and they start feeling like they're being narrated to by someone shifting in and out of character. Now, why does this happen? It happens for a few different reasons. Sometimes this happens because your author voice is leaking into your characters. I think that's probably the number one reason this mistake happens. Every writer has a default cadence, a default vocabulary, a default way of constructing thoughts, right? And when you're tired, when you're writing fast, when you're more focused on the action of what's happening than who's experiencing it, then your author voice can quietly take the wheel. Other times this happens because you're still discovering who your characters are. And that's normal as well, especially in first drafts. Sometimes you're just not able to fully hear a character until you've written them and their perspective for a while. So in either case, this is not really a first draft issue. Some of the other mistakes are things that you can worry about in your first draft, but I would say don't worry about voice too much in your first draft. Just be aware of it and keep an eye out for it as you can. And that actually relates to the fix for this mistake. So the fix is to do two passes through your manuscript. The first pass is really just getting your first draft down on the page. So as you're doing this, as you're getting your first draft down, that's where you're learning and experimenting with what your character's voice actually is. So as you're working on your first draft, you want to ask yourself things like what words would this character use? What words would they never use? How do their thoughts show up? Are they coming fast? Are they short and clipped? Are they long and looping? Do they have a lot of imagery in their thoughts? Are they practical? Are they dramatic? Are they dry? Are they judgmental, hopeful, suspicious, right? However that shows up. You also want to think about what they notice first in a room, what they tend to ignore, what do they maybe make fun of either in their head or out loud? What do they take seriously, right? Just think of what makes your character unique. And then once it's time to revise your first draft, you'll want to do a voice audit. So this is the second time you'll go through and think about character voice. And when you do this kind of audit, you'll want to read scenes from different points in your manuscript and ask yourself questions like, does this still sound like the same person? Do the words, observations, rhythms, and judgments feel consistent? Are there places where my author voice has slipped in or taken over? Are there places where the character sounds smarter, older, more polished, more poetic, or more detached than they actually are? And as you go through it, just highlight anything that doesn't sound like them and then rewrite it when you're revising. Sometimes that's going to mean bringing earlier chapters up to match the stronger voice you found later. And sometimes it's going to mean pulling back on the later chapters to be in line with the voice you established at the beginning. Either way, the goal is not necessarily to make things sound better in a generic sense. The goal is to make the voice sound more like the character. Because when you're clear on your character's voice, they feel like a real person throughout your entire book. And when you're not clear, they can sometimes read like you, the author, in a costume. And readers can feel the difference even if they don't know what they're feeling. Alright, so mistake number five is a point of view voice that keeps slipping. And the takeaway here is that you just want to make sure the narration or the voice sounds like the person whose perspective we're in, not like you, the author, stepping in to explain, polish, or perform the scene for

Recap Prevention And Next Steps

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them. All right, now I know we just went through a lot, so let me recap the five most common point of view mistakes I see when I do developmental edits for writers. Number one is head hopping, so that's jumping from one perspective to another within a single scene. Number two is what I call the omniscience leak, and that happens when your point of view character knows things they couldn't possibly know from their perspective. Number three is when you treat your point of view character like a camera and not a consciousness. So this happens when you're basically just reporting what's happening without showing us how the point of view character is interpreting it or experiencing it. Mistake number four is info dumping your character's thoughts. And mistake number five is a point of view voice that keeps slipping. Now, here's the bottom line on all five of these mistakes. All five of these mistakes will pull readers out of your story. So when readers feel disconnected from your story or your characters, point of view is one of the first places I want you to check. Because point of view isn't just about who's telling the story. It's about how the reader experiences the story. It determines what the reader knows, what they don't know, what they notice, what they feel, and how closely they're connected to the person at the center of each scene. And yes, a lot of point of view problems will get diagnosed in revision, which is great. You can absolutely fix them in revision, but a lot of them are easier to prevent than they are to fix. And prevention starts early in the process when you make foundational decisions about your point of view and your point of view characters before you draft. So foundational decisions like who's telling this story, how many point of view characters will I have, what will each of those point of view characters know at any given time, and things like that. And when those decisions are made up front before you draft, many of the page level point of view mistakes that we just talked about become much easier to avoid. This is literally why I have a whole lesson dedicated to choosing the right point of view for your story inside my notes to novel course. We also have a full lesson on interiority, so writing your character's thoughts and feelings. And that's because point of view and interiority are central to almost everything else you're going to do when writing a book. If the reader isn't grounded in a character's perspective and their experience, then the plot, the conflict, the stakes, and the emotional arc won't land the way they're supposed to. Notes to novel isn't open for enrollment right now, but doors are opening again soon. And if you want to be the first to know when they do, then make sure your name is on the wait list. You can find the link in the show notes, or just head over to Savannah Gilbo.com forward slash waitlist to get on it. All right, so that's all I have for you today. If you found this episode helpful, I would love for you to leave a rating and a review. It just takes a minute and it helps other writers like you find the show. And while you're there, make sure to follow or subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope your writing is going well, and I will talk to you next week.