Another day…

…another tiresome discussion about POV. Seriously, guys, when will people get over this myth that first person point of view narration is the refuge of amateur writers or, alternately and just as falsely, a recent invention signalling the rise of chick lit and the end of humanity as we know it.

It’s not. You know who writes in first person? Melville, Nabokov, Twain, Poe, Faulkner. You want older? Fine. Dante. Are these guys hacks? Amateurs? Chick lit writers? Recent? This argument bugs me to no end. All it does is reveal the ignorance of the person making it. What really bothers me is when it is writing teachers supposedly telling students this crap. WTF, guys? You can prefer a different POV, but don’t act like it just popped out of nowhere.

On the other side of the coin, we now have arguments that “multiple narrators” is a sign of amateurism. (Please note, I am not talking about the original post, but about a statement that came up in the comments thread. I want to know who these writing coaches are!) The idea is laughable, as ludicrous as the folks who say that FPPOV is amateurish. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the majority of fiction published in this country is told from the perspective of multiple narrators. All romance novels (with a few, incredibly rare, exceptions), have at least the POV of the hero and the heroine. That’s 26% of fiction right there. It’s easy to imagine that a third of all other fiction published (at least!) has multiple points of view. It’s a common trope in thrillers to have a few scenes from the villain’s or victim’s perspective, and many science fiction, fantasy (esp. high fantasy), and literary novels are also multiply-narrated.

So… we’ve got here that multiple narrators are signs of the hack, that FPPOV is a sign of the hack… What’s left for the poor writer? Omniscient? How very 19th century of you. (In passing, reading The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks right now, which is omniscient. Loving it!)

Guys, POV is one more weapon in the writer’s arsenal. It’s as simple as that. You may choose to write in 3rd person because it’s the marketable choice in the genre (such as romance). You may choose first person because you’re attempting an unreliable narrator. You may choose a POV becuase that is where your strength as an author lies, or because you have a gut feeling about the correct voice for the book in question. There’s no right. There’s no wrong. It all depends on the story.