Point of View: whose story is it anyway? Cover of Sharon's short story collection Beyond the Tripping Point. Book Launch Nov. 4, 2012 at The Rivoli, Toronto, Ontario,Canada What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure - Samuel Johnson We writers often get into a kerfuffle about the point(s) of view in our story -- short or novel. Maybe it's because we get so caught up in the plot and characters we do a version of not seeing the forest for the trees. So in one paragraph Suzie and Bert may be talking but Suzie's thoughts are incorporated with her dialogue and in the next Bert's thoughts are included with his dialogue. Oops. That's two points of view in one scene. I call it "jumping heads" (but it's not nasty like lice). The reader can definitely get confused with this setup (Picture the reader jumping back and forth from Suzie to Bert; hence the term "jumping heads"). Often this problem has its roots in the author not being clear just whose story it is? Let's look at a brief excerpt from my short story "Gone Missing" from my mystery collection Beyond the Tripping Point . This story features the fraternal twin private investigators, Dana Bowman and Bast Overture. In the beginning, they are in their office talking to a new client. "The police can't find her, Ms Bowman," Robin Morgrave says to me. Rosemary Morgrave's gone missing and I'm putting on the brave smile for her twin