The Power of Point of View (A Writer’s Digest Book)
Unlike other books on POV…
The Power of Point of View goes beyond simply defining the various POV options and shows readers how to use POV to enhance and tie together all other story components.
Don’t miss the bonus articles and excerpt below!
It’s the character voice you can hear as clearly as your own. It’s the unique worldview that intrigues readers–persuading them to empathize with your characters and invest in their tale. It’s the masterful concealing and revealing of detail that keeps pages turning and plots fresh. It’s the hidden agenda that makes narrators complicated and compelling.
It’s also something most writers struggle to understand. In The Power of Point of View, RITA Award-winning author Alicia Rasley first teaches you the fundamentals of point of view–who is speaking, why, and what options work best within the conventions of your chosen genre. Then, she takes you deeper to explain how POV functions as a crucial piece of your story, something that ultimately shapes and drives character, plot, and every other component of your fiction.
Through comprehensive instruction and engaging exercises, you’ll learn how to:
- choose a point of view that enhances your characters and plots and encourages reader involvement
- navigate the levels of a character’s point of view, from objective viewing to action to emotion
- craft unusual perspectives, including children, animal narrators, and villains
A story changes depending on who’s telling it, and The Power of Point of View will help you determine which of your characters can make your story come to life.
Table of Contents:
- What is POV
- POV Choices and What They Communicate About Your Story
- POV and the Elements of Story
- First Person
- Second Person
- Impersonal Third Person
- Personal Third Person – Single
- Personal Third Person – Multiple
- Individualizing POV
- Levels of POV
- Creating Alternative and Unusual Voices
Amazon Reviews:
I consider myself a fairly advanced writer. I’ve studied POV in writing courses and on my own, and it’s a topic most writers tend to struggle with… and most tend to fall into the “safe” first person and third person, because they are easy, and easily understood.
What Ms. Rasley has done is put together an exhaustive reference of OTHER choices, complete with examples and reasons why a writer might choose them to tell a particular story. To me, that is what makes this book worth every penny of the purchase price: demystifying the choice of WHO should tell a particular story.
If I had to whittle my large collection of writing books down to just a handful, this is absolutely one I would keep!
As anyone who has read her other books or taken one of her seminars knows, the hallmark of Alicia Rasley’s teaching is that she gives you the tools you need to fix the technical problems that keep your writing from selling.
A lot of writing books play to the fantasy that you’re going to write something wonderful, but beyond some platitudes they don’t give you much help in doing that.
Not Alicia’s. She gives you example after example, chosen from many different genres, that show you what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t work, and why. She also gives you exercises that get you examining your current work in progress so you can improve what you’ve already written to make it stronger.
BONUS ARTICLES and EXCERPT: