POV: Something I guess I'm still learning

[Caged Maiden]

I thought I knew what I meant when discussing POV but I guess there's a whole lot I haven't explored. Now I know how MOST books are written. I also know there's plenty of "rule-breaking" that is very successful. I just wasn't familiar with the wording to properly express what I was talking about. For example, I try to write a deep third POV with multiple characters. I always termed that Deep Third Limited, acknowledging an alternating perspective, but now I learned that is a version of omniscient--that POV has an "X axis" and Y axis". Interesting. Omniscient/ limited is one direction and subjective/ objective the other. I'd never thought about it before. Rather, my talk about POV took on more of a noble title-type length of descriptors. I'm writing in Deep third limited, subjective and alternating. HAHA Okay, I never SAID that, but I knew what I meant.

here's the Wikipedia break-down and I hope you find it as interesting as I did. At least it allows me to communicate clearer about POV, rather than relying on descriptors or worse, grunts and hand signals, like I felt like I was doing sometimes. Ah language, don't fail me now...

Narrative mode - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Interesting. I write mostly third person subjective which is a headache in some ways because I'm constantly having to work out what my character knows at any one point, even though the reader from having read other points of view characters knows much more. I'm sort of wondering though if because I use multiple POV's it should be called a form of omniscient! Now I have another thing to worry about!

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Penpilot]

I've read this article before, and for me, the section on Narrative Voice is more useful than the section on the Narrative Point of View. Although I think everything in the article is useful to know, IMHO the talk about axis in the Narrative Point of View section overcomplicates the issue.

When it talks about the subjective/objective axis, if you think about it there are only two points to that axis, objective and subjective. A narrative can't be a partially objective or partially subjective as a whole. As soon as the narration has any form of subjectivity in it, then it's a subjective narrative. It's like saying something is a half-lie. No matter how many elements of truth you put into a lie, if the end result is a deception/a lie, then it's a lie, not a half-lie.

Same goes for the omniscient/limited axis. You can't be partially omniscient. Either you know everything or you don't. As soon as the narrator doesn't know something, then they are limited, and the narrator is further limited by the standard mentioned that when the narrator is limited, they are limited to what the focal character knows.

At least that's how I interpreted the article.

 

[Caged Maiden]

yeah, I get it. It is sort of a quadrant then, rather than having a sliding scale of some sort. I guess my point I learned was that while I always thought I was writing in third limited, using multiple POV, I wouldn't call it omniscient because in any given chapter, the voice of the narrator isn't omniscient, it's a single POV and the voice and observations belong to a single character at a time. I'm totally confused about POV at this point. So...I'm writing a version of omniscient? Who knew?

I'm going to post a small section of my manuscript here to work this out PLEASE comment. Help me figure this thing out, if you can lend any clarity to my conundrum. Okay, this is a rare occasion in this manuscript, where I actually show the same event from two different PsOV. Usually, one POV ends say at noon, then another picks up later that day or evening. Or a chapter is devoted to a single event with only one POV. Here, the man is returning home and unbeknownst to him, his wife prepared a meal to impress him, hoping it would break the ice that's stood between them since their wedding:

Rafe trudged home, the evening air picking at his coat like a dueling opponent, scoring nick after nick. It cut through in a most annoying way, finding every opening available to inflict maximum discomfort.

When he opened the front door, he found his pretty, little wife waiting for him. She wore a tatty apron over her housedress and held in her hands what might have passed for some sort of baked goods. If not for her shy smile, he would have dismissed the offering, saying he wasn’t hungry, but her expression was one of seeking approval.

Despite his decidedly foul mood, Rafe had to smile.

“Welcome home, signor,” she said. “May I take your coat while you get comfortable?”

“Where’s Gabriele?”

“I told him he could have the night to himself; that I would see to supper and your comfort this evening. Your mother told me how you liked muffins with your tea, so I made you some. Oh, and some tea.” She set down the pan in her hands and whipped around to hold out a cup and saucer.

He’d have preferred a chance to take off his boots but the thought of her hands hovering with the dangerous tea, created some urgency. He hung his coat on the hook and took the offered cup.

Her cheeks reddened and she led him to the dining room, where the table had been set for a single diner. “I hope you’re hungry, signor,” she said, wringing her hands by the doorway. “I made you one of Marietta’s specialties, duck in bramble sauce.”

He sat at the table, since she’d gone through the trouble of cooking for him, and immediately wished he hadn’t. As dish after dish was served, he quickly realized the girl was as inept in a kitchen as he was in a smithy. Most of what lay on the table was unrecognizable, covered in thick sauces, or cooked to dull colorlessness. “Aren’t you going to join me?”

“I had to try everything as I was cooking it,” she said, meek in her presence. “I’m not hungry.”

“Would you just sit? It is unnerving, eating with someone hovering about.”

She slid wordlessly into a chair.

Momentarily brave, Rafe spooned something chunky onto his plate and then something he hoped was mashed potatoes. Gabriele was a good cook, he thought as he took a bite.

*

Daniela watched him eat, tallying her victory. Perhaps she should make his breakfasts in the mornings too. Marietta had been right after all–the way to a man's heart was through his stomach. She’d find a way to thank the old woman for her sage advice.

When supper was finished, Daniela poured her husband a glass of wine and began clearing the dishes, wondering where to begin with washing the stack of messy pans.

She returned to the dining room to fetch the wine glass and found Rafe gone. A thump by the front door alerted her and when she tracked into the front room, she found him heading for the staircase. His boots off and a lamp in his hand, she asked, “Are you going to bed already?”



Okay, so is that omniscient? because to me, omniscient would read more like:



He sat at the table, since she’d gone through the trouble of cooking for him, and immediately wished he hadn’t. As dish after dish was served, he quickly realized the girl was as inept in a kitchen as he was in a smithy. Most of what lay on the table was unrecognizable, covered in thick sauces, or cooked to dull colorlessness. “Aren’t you going to join me?”

“I had to try everything as I was cooking it,” she said, still nervous to see whether he enjoyed her offering or rejected it. “I’m not hungry.”

“Would you just sit? It is unnerving, eating with someone hovering about.”

She slid into a chair, trying not to stare at him while he spooned boiled turnips with lemon sauce onto his plate. The dish's odor, so sweet in the cooking, wrinkled her nose and turned her stomach.

Daniela watched him eat, tallying her victory with every bite he took. Perhaps she should make his breakfasts in the mornings too. Marietta had been right after all–the way to a man's heart was through his stomach. She’d find a way to thank the old woman for her sage advice.

When supper was finished, Daniela poured her husband a glass of wine and began clearing the dishes, wondering where to begin with washing the stack of messy pans.

Rafe sipped the glass. Sweet nectar of the gods--just the thing to wash down the lingering aftertaste of the hideous lemon-infused rubbish he'd managed to stomach. Another victory for his iron-clad stomach.

Okay, thanks for reading. I'm really interested in what you guys think of POV. While this is a sample for the purposes of POV, not a general critique, I'm interested in anything you guys have to say about how POV is used effectively here or ineffectively. DO you find it easier to connect to the omniscient or the limited PsOV?

I tend to lean toward limited, but use multiple characters. I feel it's almost like letting the reader in on secrets, say when we see Daniela acting throguh Rafe's eyes. Since she is also a POV character at different times, does it build a sort of kinship with the reader? An intimate connection we can use as writers to create amusement in our readers when they watch Daniela make mistakes and see how Rafe works so hard to hide it from her?

I'm really curious to explore POV further and this is really just the beginning for my new way of looking at things. Perhaps I've not outright dismissed omniscient, because I enjoy reading narrated stories with omniscient PsOV, but I don't write where the reader is in multiple heads within a single scene. Maybe I'm missing out on something that could make a scene more fun? I feel it's just confusing most of the time, to have omniscient PsOV all at once, like it steals away some of the fun for the reader to interpret. I mean, as someone reads this book (this section is from chapter 14), I'd hope they know my characters well enoguh to "get the joke" in this section, which is that she's trying so hard to impress him and he's choking down her offering to not hurt her feelings. Would it be more powerful in omniscient?

i guess since this book is largely a mystery, it was one of the reasons I carefully picked every POV for each scene, just so secrets don't come out before I want them to. I mean, if someone's sleeping with the enemy, THEY certainly know it and it's hard to keep it a mystery if you use them as a POV head. On the other hand, if you skirt their head for a while, you can reveal that information in a convincing way, down the road at the appropriate time. I can't imagine writing this particular novel from omniscient in its truest sense, but maybe others I could.

Thanks for any comments to help clarify this for me.

 

[Penpilot]

From the way I understand thing, the first two excerpts are third limited/third subjective. The last one is third omniscient, and it's not perfect, but it's no bad at all. But my biases lean toward third limited. I think those sections worked best for me. Omniscient can be written very well. Dune is written in Omniscient and some of the tension in that book is derived through the revelation of everything to the reader but not to the character. There's a scene where a character shows up and immediately we know he's a traitor, but the other characters don't.

The article labels things in a way that I haven't seen any place else. It defines these two things, narrative point of view and narrative voice. And to me those distinctions aren't useful in a practical sense. In literary analysis they may be very important but otherwise for me, it cuts things into too fine a grain. It defines Game of Thrones as being written in a Omniscient Point of view, which is correct by the way they define things because we do get to view the story from many different view points, but defining things this way can be confusing as hell in the practical sense because the prose is written in a limited way. I mean, I'm pretty sure I understand what they're talking about, but even then there are moments where I have to pause and straighten my head out.

Honestly, I would look at this article on the whole, as informative, a nice peek into a different way of look at things when examining literature, but potentially confusing, and best to be ignored in the practical sense if it really confuses you.

To me the simplest way to look at Point of View is as follows.

First person POV - reliably/unreliable narrator

Third limited/subjective POV- as in each section being told from the limited view point of one character in which we get into a character's head. This view point can be unreliable.

Third objective - as in each section being told from the limited view point of one character in which we don't get into a character's head.

Third omniscient POV- as in the narrator knows all and can zoom into every character's head as desired and can reveal whatever they choose. This narrator can be plain and fade into the background or the narrator can have personality/style which is displayed on the page. They can be unreliable.


Regardless of whether each chapter switches to a different character or if it's a mixture of first person and third limited, I personally would just define it along the terms I listed above. I'm pretty sure it covers what the article is saying, but to me at least, is a little more straight forward.

But you can define things how ever you want, but just realize it's just a different way of cutting the pie. The whole pie is still there.

 

[Lovi]

I didn't know what I'm writing is actually under omniscient, but that doesn't affect the writing itself at all. It's vital to know the correct terms in order to discuss with others, so in that sense the article was very useful.

Your first two excerpts use what most people falsely call third-person limited, when it's actually a form of omniscient. The last one is a more typical omniscient that I think no one in fantasy writing uses anymore.

I thought I wrote third-person limited with multiple POVs, but no such thing actually exists. I could write the exact same way but only by having a singular POV I could call it third-person limited. As soon as there are more than one POVs, even when divided by chapters, it becomes a form of omniscient. Definitely good to know.

 

[Penpilot]

I thought I wrote third-person limited with multiple POVs, but no such thing actually exists. I could write the exact same way but only by having a singular POV I could call it third-person limited. As soon as there are more than one POVs, even when divided by chapters, it becomes a form of omniscient. Definitely good to know.

I would strongly suggest that you do more research on POV definitions and not just take this article as the be all. Like I mentioned above. Different people and different fields of study cut the pie differently.

Take a look at this video done by Brandon Sanderson and how he defines third limited. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssEIn9dKVpg&index=4&list=PL361E813DFF48B333

Not only is he a pro author, he teaches writing, and he has a literature degree.

Here's an article by Robet J. Sawyer another pro author and it shows how he defines the different points of view.
Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: On Writing — Point of View

 

[Lovi]

All my previous knowledge of the omniscient and limited I got by researching and primarily from just that video by Brandon Sanderson. I based my definition on that video, as I've watched the both years' lecture series twice, but the Wikipedia article offered a very concise definition of what they actually are, so I updated my knowledge. I'm pretty sure that most people think they know the difference between limited and omniscient, but it only holds true if they took into account that the viewpoint still changes. Even chapters or parts of the book aren't anything absolute, so if a viewpoint can omnisciently change mid-sentence, it can be thought of as the same thing if it changed every 10k word chaper.

It's obvious that everyone can think of a term and connect it to different things, even if the term is clearly defined, but I think that the literary world has a strict definition to these things, so calling them something else would simply be false because the other thing already has another definition to it. So calling a story with three viewpoint characters written from inside one character's head at a time third-person limited is simply false, because third-person limited means another thing.

Practicality has nothing to do with this, though, as it would be alot simplier to continue calling it third-person limited instead of omniscient. Brandon pointed out in the video that omniscient is practically dead nowadays and third-person limited is the way to go if not first-person, so telling someone that your novel is written in third-person omniscient could turn them and several others off, when it's still written in the way that is popular nowadays being inside one character's mind at a time. As I've read several of Brandon's books and he's my favourite author by far, I've noticed that he uses the popular POV of one character at a time, but has several viewpoint characters in his stories. He called that mode third-person limited, but I think that is simply false and the correct one would be omniscient. None of this changes what's written, and I definitely think that how he writes and how I write work alot better than the traditional omniscient where it hops around mid-sentence. The definitions are still strict, though, so we can't call them something else before they're changed to what we want.

 

[Malik]

The last one is a more typical omniscient that I think no one in fantasy writing uses anymore.

One of my beta-readers turned me on to my POV issues, and the evidence is empirical and irrefutable. You could have gotten away with an omniscient narrative thirty years ago if you were good enough, but no one does it anymore. Part of it is that nobody's doing it anymore so it fell out of style, and part of it, frankly, is that I'm just not that good yet. It's really ****ing hard to do well.

20 years ago, a writing professor told us that POV is organic, as long as you introduced the character whose eyes you were seeing through, or whose thoughts you were reading, so that no one got confused. You didn't even have to outright introduce them; you could do it through voice if you were really good. I latched on to this way back then and remember understanding that POV was a way to describe a style, not a hard-and-fast rule. Back in the day -- God, I sound old -- it really didn't matter. The story was the thing, or at least so we were told. Most of the great literature throughout history was written with a flexible POV; the authors were just highly skilled at handling it.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series -- which for my money is still the greatest stylistic SF/F achievement in history -- is in third omniscient vatic; Adams head-hops ruthlessly between paragraphs and uses it as a comedic device. He even head-hops from his own head as an all-knowing narrator into the characters and back again. It can be done.

However, it is possible that, in a society where an increasing majority of people never pick up a book again once they graduate college, and those who do may buy half a dozen books in a lifetime, the man in the street is losing the ability to think flexibly and adapt to POV shifts. People don't read books anymore; they watch movies. Movies are objective, almost purely, and on the rare occasions that they do have a narrator, it's only one character.

Now, imagine a movie with multiple narrators. Actually, I'd love to write one. Hmm. . . .

I really think that the idea of adhering to rigid POV definitions as rules instead of descriptions is a fairly recent convention, and the writing community is getting really wrapped around the axle about it because Joe Reader gets confused easily these days. I think that the publishing industry has therefore been publishing simpler and simpler books. (Am I the only one left who likes to pick up Gravity's Rainbow and turn to any given page and just mind-surf for a while?)

I'm currently reworking my entire first novel into third-person limited -- with a blank line for each POV shift -- even though I hate the way it reads the more I do it. I feel like I'm erasing myself from the writing. The trick, now, is to make the characters themselves likable and fun to hang out with and do away with the narrative voice; to explain the things that the narrator knows by having the characters know it and express it through their own thoughts and observations. With a 100,000-word manuscript this is a leviathan task. The good part is, the story is already written. The hardest part is done. The rest is just typing.

I don't believe it's going to get past the slush pile otherwise; the way I want to tell the story, with a narrator who occasionally puts you inside the minds of the characters, is not viable. I'm not good enough yet and there's a good chance nobody would buy it if I was. The more I thumb through recent fiction, the more I understand the need for strict POV, and the more I realize that I have to do this if I want to sell books. I spent yesterday afternoon at the bookstore just spot-checking hundreds of recent novels for POV. Third Limited, 99% of the time. Video killed the radio star. Kenny G outsells Coltrane. The world isn't fair.

I want to sell books. Period. Writing something that nobody reads is a waste of years.

But if I want to sell books, I need to be able to tell the story in a way that people can grasp. I don't doubt that we'll look back on strict third-limited POV in fifty years and say, "Oh, that's an early-21st Century writing style." But it's what we're doing now.

I'm going to take the rest of this year and do a total rewrite of everything I have for the series -- about 150,000 words at this point -- and streamline it with the help of my beta-readers. Then I'll resubmit.

 

[Lovi]

Malik made some good points about this. I consider the stories I read and learn to write to be entertainment, and for me they aren't some divine entities that manifested in my head and have to be escorted to the outside world in the exact form they were. All the different POV choices have something going for them, though I can't really see the point in first-person over third-person, since you can dive deep into the thoughts and emotions in both. I just find reading first-person to be very annoying and rather like the third-person.

So I find using third-person "limited (though it's omniscient according to definition)" to deliver the majestic story to be the most suitable for readers. It could be changed if it enhanced the story and made it more immersing for the reader, just like certain events need to be added and removed, as well as the feel and such. Some people seem think that the story shouldn't be touched, ignore all the plot holes and amazingly boring parts because they were there when the idea manifested in the first place. I don't know if the POV is also something they simply can't change, but I'm glad that you, Malik, are aware of your goals and work towards them and therefore chose to discard the traditional omniscient that clearly hindered your progress.

 

[Penpilot]

The definitions are still strict, though, so we can't call them something else before they're changed to what we want.

If you look at the first paragraph of that article. It says Narrative Mode is a Literary Element. If you follow the link defining what a literary element is, you find an article that contains the following.

There is no official definition or fixed list of terms of literary elements; however, they are a common feature of literary education at the primary and secondary level, and a set of terms similar to the one below often appears in institutional student evaluation.

Take note of the part where it says there are no official definitions.

If this article about Narrative Mode and the definitions within helps you in your writing and thinking about writing, more power to you, but for me, it's nice to know, but it's impact on my writing has been minimal.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Yeah, I write third limited with multiple PsOV and I'm pretty comfortable doing it now. I have a crit partner who writes omniscient and uses a narrator and I have to say, I enjoy his novel very much. Will it present problems when publishing? I'm not sure. I think omniscient is out of fashion now, but for the right project, an agent would bend the rules. Of course, my friend's work is a work of comedic fantasy and I think omniscient works better for that because we're meant to laugh at the narrator's observations. For the drama I tend to write, internal thoughts are very important, so I aim for Deep Third Limited, which also rubs some of my beta readers the wrong way. It's a style they aren't comfortable with and I don't blame them.

We each have our own favorite ways to write and read. I was just floored to learn what i'm writing is a form of omniscient, rather than being a limited viewpoint as I previously thought. Loose definitions are one thing, but do we need some sort of way to define out writing style? I know as a painter, I don't fit into a style either and I'm okay with that. With writing, I think being able to aptly describe your POV so you can describe it to a beta reader is beneficial. For example, when I read a manuscript, if I see what I believe are POV inconsistencies, I believe it my JOB to point them out. After all, I want the manuscript to be as strong as it can be. If my writer can't describe whether they're trying to aim for limited or omniscient, we have problems... haha. Not that I've really run into them in a catastrophic way before, but I have critted for more than a couple people who rewrite their manuscripts when they realize their POV is inconsistent in a bunch of ways and therefore partially or completely ineffective for the reader.

I had a really hard time when I sent my first book (okay the seventh) through beta readers. It was the first time anything I wrote ever got critted and I was unable to explain why I was switching PsOV. I didn't realize I was. When readers pointed out how I deviated from my selected character, I became familiar with how to better accomplish a third limited. Fortunately, the information came early enough that my last two novels I've written benefited from the knowledge. The more research I do, the more I understand about what agents are looking for (or SAY they're looking for) and publications often have strict guidelines too (like not accepting present tense manuscripts). I think with the sheer number of people in line to get their books published, we are only shooting ourselves in the collective feet if we don't at least honor the agents' wishes. I mean, who do we think we are? But I would encourage anyone who loved their manuscript and believed in it to ignore agent advice, send it to them anyways, and if it fails to meet with approval, take the manuscript and self-publish it. I think I might go that route myself soon if I can't figure out how to get my book past the gatekeepers.

Thanks for letting me know by reading my passages that I'm not mentally deficient. As I said, I know they weren't perfect examples of clean work, but they were thrown together for the purpose of exploring POV for this particular question.

 

[Jabrosky]

I usually work with third-person limited, in the sense that I center the story around one character. I'm not as strict about it as some other writers, as I'm willing to briefly turn the camera onto the character in order to describe her. Nonetheless I don't jump to another character's point of view within a scene.

The main advantage of third-person limited for me is that it provides a sense of focus for my writing. It's easier to single out what in a scene needs mentioning or describing when I concentrate on one character's viewpoint than if I zoom out too far.

 

[Lovi]

Take note of the part where it says there are no official definitions.

If this article about Narrative Mode and the definitions within helps you in your writing and thinking about writing, more power to you, but for me, it's nice to know, but it's impact on my writing has been minimal.

If there aren't any strict definitions, then we can certainly keep calling them what we want, I just assumed that the literary world had pretty strict definitions to things like this.

I think it's important to understand the mechanics behind the writing craft, in this case the narrative mode, because they're well established models that people are familiar with. Therefore, understanding them makes it easy to work within them and be efficient. It seems that readers are put off by a shifting narrative mode, so it is beneficial to stick to just one. Understanding the mode means you know what you can and can't do within its limits and therefore won't slip to occasional traditional omniscient from third-limited and shaking the reader off the story.

If you've never read about that narrative modes, you can't know what you can do within them. They're theories of the most effective storytelling methods, not something that is coded into our brain that we could know instinctively. They have to be studied enough to understand them because you can't know them otherwise. Perhaps you paid attention to the books you've read and copied the method, that counts as studying just as much. It just leaves more room for error, because the reason something was done the way it was may not be what you thought it was. Studying the theory itself, the formula, reduces that error to near-zero.

If you want to make up your own narrative mode, then that's another theory that you'd create, perhaps every fifth word has to be an adjective and you think that causes great immersion. Problem with new theories is that they're almost always proven inefficient compared to the old ones.

 

[Penpilot]

I think it's important to understand the mechanics behind the writing craft, in this case the narrative mode, because they're well established models that people are familiar with.

See, I think this is were the bone of contention between us is. I don't think a lot of people are familiar with the way things are described in this article. And I've said above the way things are described and defined IMHO is overly complicated. I think most people are familiar with how Sanderson describes things.

In terms of view point, I like Sanderson's way of defining things, for example, Third limited with multiple POVs. In third limited with mulitiple POVs each scene/section is told from the point of view of one character, and we can only know and feel what that character knows and feels in that section. This view point can be unreliable.

If we were to use the definitions in this article what Sanderson calls Third limited would be described as follows. Omniscient point of view with a third person subjective narrator is told through the point of view of multiple characters. Each section may switch to another story character, but each section's narration is limited to only what that section's character knows and feels. The narrator presents a subjective voice. Not to be confused with third person omniscient voice.

To me the former is a clear and simple definition that IMHO means exactly the same thing as the latter.

I agree that it's important for writers to know the mechanics of things, but there's certain point where extra knowledge, from a practical stand point, isn't useful. For example when someone is learning to drive, and they ask what the pedal on the far right of the driver's seat does. The simple and simple and practical answer is "It's the accelerator. It makes the car go faster."

An overly complicated answer would be something like, "That's the accelerator. When pushed it sends a signal to the on-computer, which tells the fuel injector to shoot more gas into the combustion chamber in the form of a mist. Inside the combustion chamber the piston pushes up compressing the gas and once compressed to a certain point, the spark plug ignites the gas and in a controlled explosion that pushes the piston down, which turns the drive shaft. The drive shaft then transfers the energy of that controlled explosion to the wheels making the car go. The further down you press the pedal, the more gas gets injected into the combustion chamber and will spin the drive shaft faster and thus spin the wheels faster."

Ok I'll stop now. But do you get my point?

 

[Lovi]

See, I think this is were the bone of contention between us is. I don't think a lot of people are familiar with the way things are described in this article. And I've said above the way things are described and defined IMHO is overly complicated. I think most people are familiar with how Sanderson describes things.

In terms of view point, I like Sanderson's way of defining things, for example, Third limited with multiple POVs. In third limited with mulitiple POVs each scene/section is told from the point of view of one character, and we can only know and feel what that character knows and feels in that section. This view point can be unreliable.

I agree that the way Brandon defines the modes is more clear and practical, I also learned the definitions first from him. What I meant with understanding the mechanics was not tied to the definition, but rather what the mechanic wanted to say, and thought that you didn't find it useful at all to know what say third-person limited with multiple POVs allowed you to do. The definition in this case has no effect on the actual content so I will keep using Brandon's better definition.

And it's true that the more information given will quickly become irrelevant, but I'd say that offering a bit more explanation than the barest "this is what it does when done properly" is better. To add on your metaphor, saying "It's the accelerator. It makes the car go faster, but it requires fuel before the complicated process of acceleration is achieved." This allows the student to understand what's necessary before the effect can be achieved. Obviously each of the steps you mentioned in the example are necessary, but they're more welded in place and not that necessary to mess around with and understand, unlike getting more fuel. The rest of the process is the part that is already in place, and figured out by others, within the theory of say third-person limited, and only needs the writer to understand that the fuel is necessary before the chain reaction and end result can be achieved.

Yeah, I get your point, we were just talking about different things earlier.