God Perspective

I've been doing literary role playing of some sort for about ten years. Right? Twelve years. Most of it's been spanking role play of one kind or another. I first owned my own group... Twelve years ago, so I guess that's the right number after all. I was nineteen. I'll be 32 week after next. I've done some basic, generic fan role plays too, but I always wind up coming back to spanking and age play, because that's where my heart is.

I once had a character profile that was too long to fit on a forum. lol

POV (Point of View) is always something I carefully consider when telling a story. It's not the same thing as 'person,' though in first person, you pretty much are locked into the point of view of the character narrating the story. I say 'pretty much," because I've seen some first person stories where the narrator really is pretty omniscient, some of which actually work. I've dabbled in telling stories in second person, but that isn't easy, and only works with certain types of stories.

In third person, you have a choice. You can tell the story entirely from one character's POV. Or you can have an omniscient POV, or you can do the head-jumping thing, which is somewhere in between, in that POV shifts. All of them can work, Part of my decision in which to use is based on how much I want to tell a reader. With an omniscient POV, on some ways you have no excuse you have no excuse not to tell the reader, and if you choose to tell the reader something, you can't have a 'mistake' as you can when you're looking from one person's perspective, meaning that it can be harder to spring a surprise. On the flip side, with either omniscience or head-jumping you can give far more complete info to the reader. It's really a choice, but one that can have important consequences for effectiveness in telling a story.

In my opinion, there is no better reason to write in a single point of view throughout a story or single scene. I love messing around with perceptions!

Well, I checked. Turns out I do it all the time if I'm writing third person.. Especially when I have two main characters. Boy-girl stories. I want to tell the reader what each is thinking/feeling. This is because they are two characters on a collision course. At first I was stunned to learn that in romance writing they frown on this but then I realized, that's probably because the alpha male is supposed to be mysterious. You don't want to give away what he is thinking. But in my stories both sides are equally important, so the reader gets to know their perspective. If this is unprofessional, so be it. After all, I'm just a rank amateur. But some, at least, seem to like my stories. This is a fascinating topic.

People like your stories because they're good. Each writer uses the technique that works for him/her, and the one that's suited to the story being told. Never apologize because you don't meet other people's expectations for a particular formula. I hate formulas!

Personally I like stories with well developed characters so I actually like to know the perspectives of the main characters achieved through 3rd pers omni. I do agree though that it is best not to constantly head jump back and forth within one paragraph as this is totally confusing to read. In the stories in which I have used 3rd pers omni I have included the important thoughts of the main characters but tend not to head jump back and forth to avoid confusion, and tend to focus on the perspective of one main character.

I enjoy all styles of writing but tend to prefer stories with well rounded and developed characters, which is one of the main advantages of 3rd pers omni.

Honestly, I often find this more jarring and obstructive than the other approach. It can work if the sections being divided are long, or if the line breaks are prompted by an event in the story (like the characters going into separate rooms), but if you want to quickly show the thoughts of both characters without interrupting the flow, it doesn't work.

I'm pretty sure that's what she's talking about. I know that's how I handle it if I must cover more than one perspective in a single story. One scene ends, and another one begins from the POV of another character.

In one of my stories 'Not In Her Wildest Dreams' I used a complete scene change with a line break before switching to the other character's perspective. I presume that is what you are all meaning???

The other way that thoughts of various characters can be easily incorporated in 3rd pers omni is during the narrator's explanation of how the character acts or speaks. For example:

"Surely you're not seriously going to spank me," said John staring at the opposite wall with embarrassed trepidation.

"Do I look like I'm joking?" replied Amy with a wry smile.

This is the technique I predominantly use to develop the characters and their attitudes/thoughts in 3rd pers.

Hope that this technique doesn't confuse readers haha! As a fairly newish author(my 1st ever story was submitted in January) I think I am still in the developing stage so would welcome any feedback regarding my use of this perspective if my way of doing things adds confusion ot is technically incorrect, as this forum has made me feel a bit doubtful of my writing style haha.

No. That's not what I'm talking about. I don't have any examples from my own current stories since I stopped doing it after the first or second of the FF stories. So I'm going to do this on the fly, taking a sampling from the story that I'm currently working on while I come back and forth here.

Note: This is totally "faked." This isn't how the finished product will look! The story's written from the child's perspective throughout.


Do you see what I did there? The first part of the paragraph is from Rissa's perspective, and the second part is from Ben's. This type of thing is pretty common in spanking fiction, in my experience. Head hopping isn't unheard of even in mainstream (published) fiction. But it doesn't usually happen in a single paragraph.

More commonly, you'll see something like this:


In this case, I had two paragraphs of Ben's perspective, then one of Clarissa, then one of Ben.

Interestingly, just writing this out just now, I found the first (which is even more jarring to read than the second), much easier to write than even staying in a single headspace. The second took real effort, but I think that it reads... Alright.

A more effective way of handling this same scene, if I wanted to give perspectives of both characters, would be to stay with Ben through the spanking, then have him send Rissa to the corner, where I could address her point of view while she covered what had just happened in her mind and dealt with the pain of the spanking.

Is that any more clear what I meant in the beginning? It's four in the morning here.

ETA: Poo. I really missed my point here.

The perspective that you have in your example (Jools) really is a god perspective. In order to head-hop, you actually have to be in the character's head at some point, addressing thoughts or emotions. You can do an effective "fly-on-the-wall" story, but you won't really get into the deep feelings of the characters.

One last thing: The above were in no way excerpts from the story I'm writing. I haven't even gotten to the spanking yet!