Roald Dahl is a master of effective point-of-view (POV). POV isn’t just an artistic choice, it’s a selection of a particular tool set that will best serve the story you want to tell.

A sloppy story will tax your reader’s suspension of disbelief. Understanding and following the rules of POV will actually give you more freedom to tell the story you want to tell.

Download “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl here: https://kmhs.typepad.com/files/commonlit_lamb-to-the-slaughter_student-1.pdf

“Lamb to the Slaughter” uses a third-person semi-omniscient POV. That wasn’t a random choice or just Dahl’s mood of the day. He chose that POV on purpose because it allowed him to provide and withhold the proper amount of information to achieve the irony and emotional effect he designed.

Want to go deep and learn a lot about POV? Check out chapter 17 of Brad Pauquette’s bestselling book: https://amzn.to/4kSxuy7 (affiliate link)

Brad Pauquette is the author of The Novel Matrix and the director of The Company, a full-time writing and publishing apprenticeship for Christian novelists. If you’d like to jump straight to Brad’s teaching, it begins at approximately 35:00.

Prose Club invites writers into a craft discussion of a classic short story. In the group discussion which begins this session, the participants address:

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