Write one scene and you’ll know whether your point of view holds

It’s easy to let your point of view slip in a story, because when you write from one character’s point of view, every comparison and every detail has to be plausibly theirs too. An image your character would never think of pushes you, the author, into the foreground without your meaning to. This exercise shows you whether you’ve pulled it off in your scene, because you can get feedback on the exercise right away.

You probably already know that, as the author, you have to stay with what your main character perceives. Choose a point of view, and then stick with it. Don’t suddenly hop into someone else’s head, because then your point of view no longer holds. That advice is all about which information you share and which you don’t.

Example: You think you’ve stayed inside your main character’s head the whole time, but there may still be a stray sentence somewhere that’s more yours than your main character’s. You don’t think so, because you wrote the sentence and to you it sounds right. And that’s exactly the problem: it’s your sentence, not your character’s.

In the exercise below, you write a scene through one pair of eyes, and the reader still understands what the other character feels. Then ViaScripta checks on the spot whether that works.

First you’ll find the instructions. Then you can do the exercise yourself and get feedback right away.

Paste your text into the widget at the bottom of this page. You don’t need an account.

Intermediate exercise: Everything through one pair of eyes

Write a scene with two characters, entirely from the point of view of one of them. The second character feels something the reader has to understand by the end, but you can’t look inside that character’s head anywhere. Pay attention not only to what your main character can know, but also to how they would see things: every image and every comparison has to be plausibly theirs.

• Length: 350 words
• Time: 1 hour

Learning Objective

• Practice a consistent limited point of view, with both the information and the word choice staying within the reach of the viewpoint character.

Criteria

• Boundary: there’s no information anywhere that the main character couldn’t have.
• Voice: the images and comparisons fit who the main character is and the moment.
• Relay: the reader understands what the second character feels through what the first one sees and hears.
• Stands Alone: a reader can follow the scene without the story around it.

Now write your own scene. Three hundred fifty words, two characters, and everything seen through the eyes of one of them.

Paste your response below and see right away how your scene does on the four criteria.

Want more practice? Browse the full list of writing exercises.