ContinuityIntermediate
POV Discipline
The narration stays inside the rules its viewpoint established.
Principle
What the POV cannot perceive cannot be reported as fact.
Takeaways
- Limited POV must not narrate other characters' inner lives.
- Omniscient POV may, but should still be deliberate about it.
- Slips read as cheating even when readers cannot name the rule.
Overview
POV discipline is the consistency of perception, knowledge, and interpretation within the chosen viewpoint. It is the most frequent technical failure of intermediate writers and one of the easiest to detect on rereading.
Examples
- A first-person narrator who suddenly knows the antagonist's thought.
- A close third that names a smell the POV character cannot have noticed.
- A multi-POV novel that briefly forgets whose chapter it is in.