Writing Prompt Friday: Changing POVs

By this, I don't mean changing POV within your story. I mean, looking at a situation from your character's perspective. This exercise will help you learn to see from other people's POVs. If you can do this exercise well, using real people, you can do it for your various characters.

Prompt: Write about a disagreement you had with somebody from their POV, in first person, in their voice. Don't make them an unreliable narrator. [They should be 100% believable.] Take an external look at yourself, in this case in the third person. How would the other person see you? How would they describe you and your actions?

Objective: To learn how to see from other people's POVs. This is good not just for writing, but for getting along in friendships, marriages, societies.

Check: Has your antagonist become the protagonist of the story? Have you found weaknesses in your position and shown them? If not, go back and reveal them.

If you post your story on your blog, feel free to leave a link in the comments section.


(Fiction Writer's Workshop. Josip Navakovich. Story Press, 1995. p 124)