The Power of Point of View free download from Alicia
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.
This is a Writer’s Digest Book. Don’t miss the bonus excerpt below!

Point of view isn’t just an element of storytelling; when chosen carefully and employed consistently in a work of fiction, it is the foundation of a captivating story.
The Power of Point of View free download from Alicia
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. NO RULES! POV is a tool for characterization and narration, not a rule to control your writing.
— The Power of Point of View free download from Alicia
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
You can get your own digital copy here! And sign up here for info about writing and my upcoming Scenes course, which has a lesson about Point of View.
https://bit.ly/scenes-course-info
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.
The Power of Point of View Free Excerpt!
The No-Rules Guide to Character Viewpoint
If you’ve been writing a while, you’ve probably heard all the rules. Don’t switch point of view. Or switch only after you leave a few blank lines. Or switch whenever you like, as long as it’s a weekday.
The problem is, such rules tell you almost nothing about using the writing element of Point of View to develop your characters and individualize your narrative. Rules are about confining your writing– this book is about liberating you to discover your characters’ unique perspectives and to experiment to find the best narrative for your story.
The Power of Point of View presents POV as an interaction of the writer, character– and reader. POV is, in fact, the reader’s vehicle through the story, and the writer can experiment to make that a more entertaining ride. So if you’ve been thinking there’s got to be more to POV than first-person/third-person, single and multiple, this is the book for you. A conversational format guides you through the purpose, history, types, and levels of POV, with exercises help you develop POV in your own story.The Power of Point of View:
Make Your Story Come to Life, by Alicia Rasley
Writer’s Digest Books
I had been attempting to write novels for literally decades without ever finishing a single one when I encountered this extraordinarily useful guide some years ago. With its help I finished the novel that, after several years of revisions, I sold to a major publisher. Later, when I set out to write the books my publisher had contracted for, I returned to The Story Within Plotting Guide anytime I got stuck. Working through the exercises and examples always helped me pinpoint the issues I needed to address to make my story work. “If you are serious about writing fiction, but can’t quite get your head around the intricacies of plotting, this is the book for you. No other book about writing goes into the same level of detail or gives you the practical step-by-step hand-holding you’ll find here. Jenny Brown, Avon author.
Your pedagogy is amazing, all those thoughtful usable exercises. It should be the textbook for a semester long writing course focusing on POV. You should get a PhD for it, too, and awards, along with grateful thanks. Judith Stanton, award-winning author and college professor.
I love this It is such a great resource for authors. I put a link to it in my latest blog post. I hope you get a ton of traffic. You deserve it. Cindy M. Hogan Author of Watched, Director of iwritenetwork.com
In your POV book, I liked how you demonstrated a sketch scene (for the writer’s purposes) then showed us how to translate it for the reader, revealing the characterization through thoughts, inner motivation, action and the dominant emotion. In other words, the writer “tells it to himself” and then translates it to “show the reader.” Show, don’t tell.
You are truly an amazing teacher. Tops. Paige Parnell
GOOD WRITING ARTICLES HERE: www.aliciarasley.com
Alicia
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