In praise of FPPOV, part the third (in which Diana talks about her own experiences…)

Oh, Tuesday was a great great day for news. Most of it too secret to share. Sorry, guys. Hopefully there will be info soon. I don’t know if my couch springs can take all the bouncing around I’ve been doing. (Not sure if that came out right.)

Here’s something I can share. It’s the cover for the new, hardcover essay anthology on Judy Blume, spearheaded by the fabulous Jennifer O’Connell. I’m one of the contributors.Ooh, pretty.

Also, I received a lovely review from Trashionistas on Secret Society Girl. My favorite part:

I really loved this book. Diana Peterfreund has a chatty, witty, intelligent writing style and a brilliant way with cliffhanger chapter endings. I don’t think I finished a single chapter without at least reading a couple of pages of the following one.

If you haven’t picked up your copy, I know for a fact they’re still on shelves out there. What a lovely Halloween present they might make. Or, Christmas present. Heck, go wild. (There. My pimpage for the day.)

And it’s in FPPOV, which, of course, is the topic at hand. Wonderful discussion in the comments section of yesterday’s post. I’m loving it. As some of you said, I also don’t tend to read much of a book before I plunk down my money for it. I tend to buy on cover/blurb/author. I never buy on POV. In fact, I don’t think I really notice POV, any more than I would notice any other tool an author uses to construct a story. It’s just part of the story, the way long or short paragraphs are, or certain sensory details, or story progression through dialogue vs. narrative. I’m going to get into this in more detail tomorrow, but in putting together my TT on great FPPOV stories, I had to actually go back to some books and go, “Wait, this is in first person, isn’t it?”

So where is FPPOV most common in current popular fiction? From my admittedly quick research, it’s chick lit, urban fantasy, and cozy mysteries. I was about to make a comment about women’s fiction (in the global sense, not in the current “genre title” sense) but then SB reminded me of hardboiled detective yarns, which are also often in FPPOV, and are a more natural forefather to the FPPOV cozy. (Of course, novels in general, for better or worse, have always been considered a medium for women.) Still, I feel ill-qualified to make a statement about the place of FPPOV in the past, say, 5-8 years vs. earlier than that, because 5 years ago, I wasn’t doing much reading of fiction that had been written in the past, say, 75 years. I was in college.

And I think in college, I quite possibly read as much fiction in FPPOV as in any other POV. (Heck, I read Clarissa, which is about ten normal books, and Frankenstein in three — count ’em — classes.) I also took a class called Fiction and the Forms of Narrative, where we discussed the topic in exhaustive detail, and which was taught by a team of profs with some of the most amazing names I’ve ever seen. But despite having taken and enjoyed and actually performed well in this class, I don’t think I thought much about the POV of the characters. Instead, I thought about how this POV was used to tell the story. We read Sherlock Holmes. We watched Rashomon. We read Frankenstein (my second time; my third would be in a class about the Sublime, the Fantastic, and the Uncanny). We read Maus and Daisy Miller and… hmm, I just realized that most of these stories are in first person — even if they are first person films or graphic novels. I’ll have to dig up a reading list and see what all I actually read.

Which I suppose makes my point that I read a lot of FPPOV. Therefore, I never felt much of a jarring sensation when I switched to popular fiction and found a ton of FPPOV to keep me company. Romance in FPPOV? Sure, why not?

The same for my writing. I look back at my juvenilia, and I’ve got an equal number of stories in FPPOV as in TPPOV. I was talking to Marley today about choosing POV and she said, “It’s just how it comes to me.” That was usually the same for me. I look over my past stories. The vignettes, and the things which we’d now be calling chick lit or women’s fiction are all in first person. The action stories are all in multiple third. This pattern rarely varies.

Of the novels I’ve finished, only two, Secret Society Girl and Under the Rose, are in FPPOV. When I was writing category romances, I wrote them in alternating third person, because they were category romances, and that was the thing. When I sat down to write SSG, it was in the style of a confessional, hence, first person. Who ever heard of a third person confession! So of course, given that my publication credits are all in FPPOV, what are the chances that I’d not only advocate the method, but go so far as to wonder if the switch had something to do with whatever made SSG work?

Hmmmm… more on that topic come Friday.

PS: Obligatory mention of Veronica Mars, which, of course, is mostly in FPPOV (voiceovers, anyone? And it’s very rare to have a scene that V is NOT in…) In white text for spoilage, as per usual…
Yuck. I dislike Pizz. Who is with me on this one? He’s annoying, and boring. And is Francis Capra ill or something? He’s not looking his usual drop dead sexxxxxy self. And at least Logan wasn’t boooooooorrring in this episode. Sure, it needed them to be on the outs, but still… (You’d think V. would have learned her lesson from teh chick dating the Scottish billionaire, but no…) I told SB I hope they break up. I prefer them in beautiful agony better. It makes the getting back together oh so sweet, as evinced by the final scene of tonight’s ep. Also, who played the footballer’s girlfriend? I spent half the episode thinking it was Paige Moss (you know, Buffy’s Veruca) with her hair dyed black. Anyone? Anyone? And where are Wallace and Mac? And shaved-head-girl? Why do they make these people “series regulars” if they never show them? Bleh. Okay, queing up the DVD to “Weapons of Class Destruction.” Oooh, ahhh… Okay, feel better now. No, wait… I have another query: “Claire was raped?” Um, how? She was the head of “Lilith House.” Doesn’t quite seem like the usual M.O. they’ve been pushing this season of girls getting drunk at a party would be working for in this case. She was so aware of what was happening on campus. I’m trying to figure out what happened… Which isn’t to say that’s the only way that girls get raped, it just seems to be how it’s happening in this serial rapist case. So now I’m all confused. Yep, all done for real now.