Yesterday I was talking about that POV issue, that both Melange and another publisher had mentioned. In KOK I took care of it during edits, and in The Vase, I'm taking care of it right now. Fortunately, after I handled it in KOK, I went back and addressed many of the POV inconsistencies in The Vase. And it's a good thing I did, because if I didn't, that other publisher would have seen a lot more of them, and possibly just dropped the manuscript.
So I would guess I fixed about half of them. It was only one read-through, after all, and now that I'm reading through it again, it's like I've had a head start on this. The best thing about it is that I know how to fix them. It was the editors at Melange who brought this to my attention first, and offered suggestions on how to make them right. And I did.
So I'm doing it again in The Vase. It's not hard really. It just takes doing. The thing you have to remember is that for each scene, you should keep the POV with only one character. It's the head-hopping that editors frown upon, and if you have it happening even once in a scene, it's one time too many. Fixing it is just changing the wording so that whatever is happening or being felt by another character is perceived through the character whose POV is being represented at the time.
Just remember to maintain one POV per scene, that's all. When you have a scene break, which is indicated by the asterisks, (* * * *) then you can have another character's POV portrayed. It's better to make it that way when you first write the story. But since I wrote my four novels before I was accepted by publishers, I have to fix them now. And that's what I'm doing.
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