Many writers find it extraordinarily hard to master point of view (commonly known as POV). They can't fix up viewpoint slips because they don't really understand what this means. What IS a 'viewpoint slip'? How do you know whose viewpoint you're in? Why can't you just let readers know what is going on in everybody's mind?

At this stage I could start talking about omniscient viewpoint, and third person limited, and first person etc etc... but I'm not going to. Why? Because you can type those terms into Google and find a heap of information on them. The problem is that you could read all the information there and STILL not know what you're doing. So here's what we're going to do: we're going to have a kind of fireside chat about viewpoint, and see if that helps to clear anything up. (I'm going to refer to the character as 'he' and the reader as 'she' to save all that tedious politically correct he/she stuff - you can assume that we know that a reader can also be male.)

Viewpoint Understanding No. 1 - "Becoming' Your Character

When the reader opens your book, she will identify with your main character. She BECOMES that character. She feels the character's pain; she taps into his thoughts; she shares his joy. To a lesser extent, the same thing happens in a scene featuring any other character's viewpoint.

Let's stop for a moment and think about what happens in everyday life. If YOU were in pain, or thinking about something important, or feeling happy about something... how would you react to suddenly being yanked out of your own skin and dumped into someone else's? Imagine it... you've just received an acceptance from an editor. You're jumping up and down shrieking with joy. Then suddenly you find you've been transplanted to your neighbour's body and forced to share his thoughts about getting the car registered and buying fertilizer for the lawn.

Huh?????

You would NOT be happy. You're focused on events that mean something to you. You don't want to know about what your neighbour is thinking. You don't want to be forced into someone else's mind to see how they view the world.

Yet this is what writers do to readers all the time.

"But Marg," you say, "It's different in a novel. If I switch between characters, and they're both in the same scene, then they're thinking about the same thing, aren't they?"

That's mostly true (although you can have one character not paying attention and thinking about something else entirely). However, the principle is the same. You have the reader comfortably settled into ONE character's mind, "becoming" that person - then you play God and reach down, pluck her out and deposit her in a different character's mind. ("Time for you to know what this person is thinking!")

At worst, this can enrage your reader to the point that she will close the book and look for something else to read. (No, wait... at worst she will vow never to buy one of your books again.) At best, it can leave the reader with a faint sense of dislocation - they know something doesn't feel right, although they can't put a finger on just what.

"But Marg, I've read lots of books where authors do that. And some of them are bestsellers. Are you saying that those best-selling authors are wrong?"

Yes and no. It's true that skilled writers can shift viewpoint in such a subtle way that readers barely notice they're in someone else's viewpoint. However, most of the time those authors don't NEED to do this. So why risk upsetting the reader when you don't have to? Besides, the blunt truth is that most writers are NOT skilled at shifting viewpoint. If you're uncertain of your ability to shift viewpoint smoothly, don't take the risk. If you really must show what is going on in the other character's mind, start a new scene and stay in that person's mind for the whole scene. Which leads us to...

Viewpoint Understanding No. 2 - Maintaining Suspense

Sometimes writers say things to me like: "I switched viewpoint there because I wanted readers to know that he didn't really mean what he was saying to her. He was really being torn apart, but he wanted to appear cold and unfeeling so she'd leave instead of spending the rest of her life with a loser like him."

Ahem. Ever heard of building tension? If you can't wait to show readers that there's really nothing to worry about, then you immediately cut the level of suspense to zero. (I know, I know, your main character is still distraught because SHE doesn't know what is in his mind - but that's not the point. The point is that your READER will now stop worrying... she'll assume that things will work out.) It would be far, far better to let the reader share your main character's agony at the way she's being treated by the hero. Take care that you stay deep within your main character's viewpoint - seeing only what she sees; hearing only what she hears. Let the reader suffer with the character. The payoff when things end well will be so much more intense.

Viewpoint Understanding No. 3 - Looking OUT or Looking AT?

Many, many times I have scribbled in the margin of a manuscript I'm critiquing: "POV slip. She can't see her own face."

Let me explain. If you're deep inside a character's mind, then (as we've already explained) you BECOME that person. Therefore you experience life from the INSIDE.

You can't know what another person is thinking. You can only guess at it, from their words, facial expressions and body language.

Nor can you see your own facial expressions or the colour of your eyes or the way your hair shines in the sun. Therefore it's a viewpoint slip to write things like "My face went white with fear" or "Stacy's face went white with fear (if Stacy is the viewpoint character). You CAN say "I felt the blood drain from my face" or "Stacy felt the blood drain from her face" because you're simply reporting what the viewpoint character FEELS. Similarly:

WRONG: "Stacy's hair shone in the rays of the early morning sun." (She can't see the sunlight on her hair.)

RIGHT: "Stacy felt the rays of the early morning sun warming the top of her head."

WRONG: "Stacy's cat-like green eyes fixed on his." (She can't see that her eyes look cat-like and she's unlikely to be thinking about their colour, unless she's got a big ego.)

RIGHT: "Stacy's eyes fixed on his."

Save descriptions of Stacy for when you're writing a scene from someone else's viewpoint. You can use the old reflection-in-a-window trick, or show your character looking in a mirror, but both tend to be overused. Be a little more creative - for example, have the character think about how different it feels to have short hair and the way people have reacted to her new look.

Or have another character comment about how much like Aunty May she looks - upon which the character can reflect ruefully that while she's happy to have inherited Aunty May's great legs and wide smile, she's not so wild about the family genes that bestowed the flyaway hair and straight eyebrows. See how that immediately gives us a 'snapshot' of what the character looks like?

Your rule of thumb: If you're deep inside a character's point of view, then you're looking OUT. You speak of feelings and thoughts rather than describe your own features. However, you are looking AT other characters, so you can only guess at what they are feeling or thinking - but you CAN describe what you see and hear: their features, their body language, their speech.