IWW
Practice-W Exercise Archives
Exercise: POV
These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to
provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are
welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found
them at the Internet Writers Workshop
(http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/)
Prepared by: Lani Kraus
Posted on: Sun, 4 Feb 2001
POINT OF VIEW.
Point of view refers to the perspective from which the story is
told. In
most contemporary fiction, the third-person limited POV is standard.
That
means that your story will be told, although in third person (he, she,
it),
only from the perspective of a single character. Your reader can only
learn as much as that character knows. For example, if your POV
character
cannot read the other characters' minds, then you cannot tell the
reader
what the other characters are thinking.
Your assignment: Write a scene which involves a 30 year-old retarded
man
and his wealthy, uppity social worker. The social worker is trying to
make
the man understand the importance of bathing.
Write this first in the male's POV (approx. 300 words)
Write the same scene in the social worker's POV (same word count)..
Lani Kraus's wrap-up
Posted on: Sun, 11 Feb 2001
Well, fellow/sister writers,
Great week, and great work. One of the most important things I
learned
this week is that writing exercises is NOT my strongest suit. :-)
On the other hand, I think we all learned that POV is not clear-cut
and
simple. If you stick very strictly to "limited third person" POV, you
cut
short your variability in voice, style, and observed details. If you do
not watch that POV, your writing can be jarring and distracting as you
waffle from one brain to the next.
Recently, I've been tutoring my daughter in her college English.
Basic
grammar skills and what-not. We are currently focusing on dependent
clauses and how the use of a dependent clause, all by itself is a
sentence
fragment (as is the use of the appositive phrase I employed as the
second
sentence of this paragraph.) So Jenny said to me, "But, then, why do I
see
those sentence fragments all the time when I'm reading?"
Know what the answer is?
If you know the rules, then you can break the rules. If you break
the
rules because you don't know any better, then your lack of skill will
show.
Once we have the POV rules down pat, we can consciously choose to
employ
all sorts of variations -- and do it with panache.
I hope you all enjoyed this week's exercise.
Lani
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Gayle Surrette.
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