In writing The Seven Coins, I’ve had the hardest time getting the Point of View (PoV) right. I started with an omniscient narrator, but he started getting a little snarky and my characters weren’t coning across well. Then I moved to what I thought was third person, but I was head-hopping.

Head-hopping, I learned, is when you jump from one character’s perspective to another and don’t clearly signal the shift to your readers.

I tried fixing this several times, but I struggled. My Novel Writers’ Group peers shook their own heads and pointed fingers at my shallow characters and distracted narrator. 😉

Then I heard on Writing Excuses how Dan Wells and Brandon Sanderson had done a deep dive on Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. I reached out to my favorite Book Pusher (the Moneta, VA Public Library), and got my hands on a well-loved copy of the book.

Viola! There, on the pages in front of me were dozens of well-crafted examples of Third Person Limited (or Close Third Person, if you will). The heavens opened up. The light shone through. A choir of Creative Writing professors sang.

I’m now back on track revising The Seven Coins and feeling much better about the PoV!

Thanks Dan Brown! Thanks Writing Excuses! Thanks Betsy Ashton, Bonnie Harris, Chandlee Offerman, and Judy DeGeorge! Thank you, Interlibrary Loan! I’m much more confident that 2020 is the year I’ll finish a draft worth sending out!

Happy weekend, and happy writing!

Joe