The more the narrator (writer, if you like) is in control, the better the whole story is integrated, however many heads we're admitted to. PoVs just become one more tool in telling the story, not a pre-condition of how the story is told.

Good point. I can see the truth in this. I think the key to control is that the writer understands the tools, so can choose which is best for the task. Of course, the reader doesn't have to feel the writer's control, just enjoy the benefit.

I'll continue to think about this, though, because I'm not entirely convinced there are no 'rules' about it. I still feel that if, say, the writer tells a story entirely from one POV but switches just the once, and for the author's convenience, into another head (which I've seen), a kind of agreement made with the reader has been broken. If, on the other hand, the author is switching POVs all the way through the story, that can be another type of agreement.

It's good to get confused by all this! Currently, I'm preparing a class on Snow Not Tell. Again, there are no hard and fast rules, but there are general guidelines, at least for new writers. I was looking at one piece that I may use as an example, in which the author does a lot of telling but the telling intimates other, more subtle, truths about the characters, so is a kind of tell-into-show. Hmmmm . . .

Terry

I think in the case of Elizabeth Taylor it works because her voice is also in the text. She is the omniscient narrator and so switching POV's doesn't come as so much of a shock because she kind of eases you into the switch. If it was a close third person POV it might not work so successfully, I agree.

She is the omniscient narrator and so switching POV's doesn't come as so much of a shock because she kind of eases you into the switch. If it was a close third person POV it might not work so successfully, I agree.

Jem, you've put it much better than I did - with the narrator in control, they can take you where they like.

Having said that, she does move in close at points - but then I refuse to make a binar distinction between "close" and "omniscient" - because they're not alternatives, just two points on a spectrum which a narrator can move up and down at will, according to the psychic distance which is right for that point in the story.

It's so beautifully written that she doesn't need tons of close-up Showing and elaborate deep-inside-heads stuff, for the story to work. It just does.

Yes, she does move in close - she's just very good at those little phrases that take you quickly out of one person's head and even out of the novel itself, before dropping you back in a different head location.