Point of View: Deciding who’s telling the story to whom

Writing is, among many things, a series of choices. I think this why we get “blocked” sometimes — it’s not that we don’t have anything to write, it’s that there are too many choices in front of us, and it can be paralyzing.

One of the first choices you’ll make in your draft is Point of View — or POV. Is your story in first, second, or third person? And even once you’ve decided on one, there are still choices to be made to refine that perspective.

First, Second, Third

Let’s break down what this means. There are three people in the room: Me, you, her. We move outward from there: Me/I am the first. You are the second. She is the third.

First person: I went to the beach.

Second person: You went to the beach.

Third person: She went to the beach.

First Person: I only know what I know

Any POV you choose will come with its limitations. For first person narration, you’re limited to what the narrator sees. The narrator can’t tell you what happened if they weren’t there to witness it.

So if something happened before your narrator was born, or at a party your narrator wasn’t invited to, they can’t just tell you these things, unless they find them out themselves.

While this can be limiting, it also provides its own possibilities: your narrator can take us with them as they discover secrets, hear gossip, snoop on someone’s letters.

A famous example: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. We go along with Nick as he learns about Gatsby’s secrets. We only know what Nick knows, but we get to follow Nick’s curiosity.

*A workaround for some First Person Limitations: Multiple first-person perspectives. Some novelists will alternate which character narrates from chapter to chapter, so we have several points of view, all with their own limitations of what that character does and doesn’t see.

A famous example of multiple first-person narrations in one: Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. In each chapter, we are immersed in one character’s secret inner world. At the next chapter, we switch to another character. What we get is an intimate view of everyone. We know this family more intimately than they’re able to know each other.

Second Person: What are you doing?

In second person narration, you are being told the story as if it happened or is happening to you.

This may seem like an odd choice. When might you use it? The second person narration creates an intimacy with the reader: while any good narration should make the reader feel immersed in the story, second person narration gives the narrator and the reader the literary version of sustained direct eye contact. Reader and narrator are locked into this story, together.

A famous example: Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House. Machado’s memoir of domestic violence puts us in Carmen’s shoes, we see her relationship unfold as she did, with- all of its complexity. What she shows us: This could happen to any of us.

*A note: Second person narration is not the same as breaking the fourth wall. In breaking the fourth wall, you typically use a first- or third-person narration, and occasionally address the reader. (Famously, in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, our first person narrator tells us of Mr. Rochester: “Reader, I married him.”)

If you break the fourth wall, make sure you do it on purpose.

Third Person: You get to be God, if you want to

In third person narration, the choices you have to make are between “third person limited” and “third person omniscient.”

In third person limited POV, you’re telling the reader what happened to your character, but your narration is still bound by her perspective. You can tell us what she does and sees and hears and says, but your narration still limits us to what she can see. The same rules apply as in the single first person narration we talked about above: We only know what she knows, but we can make discoveries with her.

A famous third-person limited novel: Xochitl Gonzalez’s Olga Dies Dreaming. We go along with Olga on her journey, and we only know and see what she does.

*A note: Similar to the multiple first person narrators approach, you can do third person limited from multiple characters’ perspectives, from chapter to chapter.

In third person omniscient POV, all bets are off. The narrator knows everything about everybody, even what the characters don’t know about each other. The POV is zoomed out, and the narrator can do what they want with all the information at their fingertips.

While third person omniscient has fewer limitations in terms of managing information, what we may lose out on is intimacy and closeness with the characters. When we get locked into one person’s intricate point of view, we may be more able to empathize with their experiences, and this can make the story more compelling.

Third person omniscient narration isn’t as common in contemporary fiction. In the early days of novels, it was used more often. Dickens and Tolstoy were quite the omniscients.