Ever been stuck for a way to move forward in a story? I find that changing the point of view character is my go-to tool of choice for folding in complexity, foreshadowing, reveals, character reactions, etc.
Here’s a recent photograph from the Mars orbiter of the Mars lander on the surface. (And wouldn’t our childhood SciFi authors have envied us the sight?) What sort of useful (fruitful) POVs can you come up with to extend or complicate the story from here? (Hint: Film solutions (e.g., pull-backs, cuts) can be good, too.)
I’ll get us started. Add yours in the comments.
— — — — — —
God’s POV: Look what those hairless apes have done. What next?
Solar system aliens POV: There goes the neighborhood.
Stealthed high-tech alien ship from a further distance out than the orbiter POV: You absolutely sure they can’t detect us?
Orbiter POV: Wait a minute.. you sure that one’s ours? It doesn’t look like ours…
Lander POV: RIGHT! I told you to turn RIGHT.
Martian child POV: Should we tell them about the cliff, mama?
Martian sect leader POV: Desecration!
Martian bug in front of slowly approaching wheel POV: What’s that sound?
Mad Genius Club 
8 responses to “Point of View”
Mission Supervisor PoV: What do you mean the rover suddenly took flight? And it’s not a dust storm?
I wrote one chapter that switches around between 5 different viewpoints. It’s a space battle, with a lot going on over an area more than a million miles across. No single character can see it all.
I wrote another space battle entirely from one character’s viewpoint. Because at the end, we find out he’s reliving the battle in a nightmare. [shiver]
I like this picture and your entertaining captions for it. I want to say that the picture is such a switch from the colorful art that usually decorates your Thursday posts that I thought at first I had clicked on some random website.
Terran Artist POV: I was distinctly promised a Red Planet!
Marvin the Martian’s POV: “I was promised an Earth-shattering kaBOOM! Not them coming over to say hi!”
LOL
“I was thinking about the light of other suns. Given they’re different spectrums, would the colour palette the artists use even make sense when we view them?”
“That’s why the museum has different light in in the galleries. The stuff painted for local consumption, out in the colonies, is en pleine air, sure, but we replicate it here.”
“But the Starling…”
“Oh, stuff for export is painted to the homeworld spectrum, just like speaking Trade and using Ship Time instead of local. So that’s fine to hang in the main gallery.”
“Huh!”
“Except in Old Sol. All the Martian stuff for export is tinted red. I dunno, it’s tradition, they say.”
Working on a story that thought it was a light tale told in a snarky first-person voice, but never formed until another half-idea collided with it, formed a full plot, and ensured that the heroine couldn’t talk about what she did in the manner that I had thought.
3rd person it is.