Maintaining 3rd person POV in stories

I always get feedback on my stories criticizing my switching between 1st and 3rd person POV. Does anyone have suggestions on how to prevent this? I use Grammarly (paid) to catch grammar and spelling errors, but it doesn't know anything about checking for POV.

I'd appreciate any tricks/suggestions to use when manually editing my stories.

Grammarly and any grammar checker won't pick up tense or POV switches unless they're in the same sentence. As far as it knows, you might be telling one part of the story in present and then flashing back, or telling the same event from two people's perspectives.

A really good way to detect these is to read the story out loud (or have the computer read it to you - there's free software out there to do it, and some operating systems have it baked in). Listening to the story not only highlights mistakes, it also helps to show where pauses should be or missing/incorrect punctuation.

I have more problems with tense getting messed up than POV. I think there's been the odd time I have slipped for a paragraph or so but I usually catch it on editing. Tense, on the other hand, tends to slip a lot when I am writing dialogue because I will write some dialogue that uses present tense, then keep using present in the subsequent narrative. And then there's the story I am writing now where I changed tense two paragraphs in for no apparent reason.😒

But WannabeWordsmith is right. Reading it through or having a computer reader read it while you listen can often help catch these things. My practice of letting the story "stew" for a day or two before that read though, so I am coming to it fresh, helps too.

Character viewpoint is one of the most important features. Sometimes I find a story I’m writing just doesn’t work or gets stuck. So the first thing I try is re-telling it from the viewpoint of one of the other characters, such as from the female characters viewpoint, or even a third person observer. What never works is having two character viewpoints. A reader can only see through one person’s eyes at a time.

Quote by XAuthorX

Character viewpoint is one of the most important features. Sometimes I find a story I’m writing just doesn’t work or gets stuck. So the first thing I try is re-telling it from the viewpoint of one of the other characters, such as from the female characters viewpoint, or even a third person observer. What never works is having two character viewpoints. A reader can only see through one person’s eyes at a time.

I agree that sometimes it doesn't work from one POV, but I personally disagree about switching.

I've got 2 long series that flip between character viewpoints and I've found them to be pretty effective. The big benefit is you can get inside the characters' heads and create a far deeper emotional attachment than with 3rd person. "I felt...", I find is always far stronger than 'Jane felt...' I think so long as you are very clear in your demarcation then shifting the POV is fine.

I've even read stories (occasionally) that move between 1st and 3rd person deliberately, but again it needs a very clear demarcation. It's not something I would try, but some that I've read have worked well.