WEBINAR | Point of View: Finding the Right Lens for Your Story
February 18 @ 3:00 pm – 4:15 pm EST
When you understand the purpose of your story, you can choose the best perspective to bring it to life.
For All Writers
Whether writing fiction, memoir, or poetry, understanding point of view/POV is essential to clear, compelling writing. One of the most complex craft tools available to writers, point of view is frequently a source of frustration and confusion. Point of view in story is so much more than your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-person pronoun choice. Point of view depends on a story’s purpose, the perspective that a character (or narrator/author) inhabits, and the emotional distance that the point of view has from both character and story. To top it off, ‘point of view’ and ‘perspective’ also mean ‘opinion,’ which is not at all what they mean in creative writing.
Even if you’re confident in your current point of view choice for your work-in-progress, when you inevitably find yourself stuck in a scene, an exercise in changing the point of view can reveal new aspects of the scene and subject, creating deeper and more compelling stories and poems.
This webinar balances craft instruction on the three primary points of view (and their subsets) with opportunities to practice playing with less familiar choices and distances to see how they impact your scene.
Bring a short scene you’re working on or stuck in if you’d like to use that for practice, but that’s not required to participate in the exercises.
Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.
In this webinar, you will:
- LEARN the three major point-of-view options and their subsets
- EXPLORE how psychic/emotional distance impacts point of view
- VIEW examples of a variety of point-of-view strategies
- DISCUSS the pros and cons of different point-of-view choices
- PRACTICE applying various point-of-view choices to a sample scene
This webinar is ideal for writers…
- Are overwhelmed by the enormity of point of view
- Are curious about how point of view can deepen their writing
- Want to experiment with unfamiliar points of view
- Consistently use only one point of view in their work and want to broaden their tools
- Frequently receive feedback that they’ve “changed point of view” or are “head-hopping” and don’t know how to fix that
Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔
ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER
Laraine Herring’s memoir, A Constellation of Ghosts: A Speculative Memoir with Ravens, was released in 2021 from Regal House. She’s the editor of the anthology Becoming Real: Women Reclaim the Power of the Imagined through Speculative Nonfiction (Pact Press, 2024), and a trilogy of writing books from Shambhala, including Writing Begins with the Breath: Embodying Your Authentic Voice. She’s a retired professor of creative writing and psychology, and has worked with writers for thirty years. She’s also an illustrator and a grief counselor, and creator of The Grief Forest: a book about what we don’t talk about. She founded the online ‘zine Hags on Fire, a place for women to share stories about menopause, and co-designed The Imaginal Memoir Cave immersion program with Gayle Brandeis. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Tiferet, The Rumpus, The Manifest-Station, and many more places. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in Counseling Psychology, and lives in the mountains of northern Arizona with many cats.
Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com
FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.
