Point of View

Hanging upside down seems to help me solve plot challenges by shifting my entire perspective.

– Dan Brown

There are a couple questions you need to ask yourself. Hopefully you've asked them before you started writing, but if not, ask them now and revise accordingly.

Question 1: Out of all the characters in this story, whose perspective is best to tell it?

Now, this might seem simple for some stories, but it also might be tricky. Look at all your characters good and hard and make sure that your protagonist is really your protagonist. If he or she is passive or an observing narrator, you've got a problem because your character lacks yearning (Butler).

Don't be ashamed to rewrite from someone else's point of view. I have five point-of-view characters in Riff. In my second draft, I wrote from the perspective of a girl called Sara-Jayne. She gets kidnapped by the novel's antagonist, Promisus. After the suggested of a couple of my critics, I realized that Promisus' perspective was the one I should have been investigating, not Sara-Jayne's. The story is about how there is no true good or bad but how it's all in a gray area. Putting the reader inside Promisus' head helps obscure the idea that he's completely bad.

Question 2: What type of narration is best for this novel?

First Person

A first person narrative is told from the protagonist's point of view. "I did this," "I did that." This is probably the safest route if you want to avoid point of view slips. You stay in their head. The reader can't see anything that the protagonist can't. You can create dramatic irony to tell the reader something that the character doesn't know, but that is all.

There are some books that do have multiple narrators in first person. This is difficult to do (I know, I tried it) because every person has their own style (diction, syntax, etc.) of telling a story. One example that does it well is The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Second Person

This is where the protagonist is the reader. "You do this," "You do that. " Note: although choice of tense is not directly connected to point of view, second person narrations tend to be in present tense.

Novels are not usually written in the second person unless they are choose your own adventure books. Many short stories take this form, though. It is useful in the "how to" fiction genre.

Third Person Limited

This is when the narrator is not a character in the book and describes what goes on with "he did this" and "he did that," but the narrator still abides by the rules of first person narration. For this reason, I believe that third person limited is a closer relative to first person than to third person omniscient. The narration still cannot show anything that happens beyond the scope of the point-of-view character's perception.

Dangers of third person limited

Head hopping: Sometimes in third person, the point of view slips. The narration might say something that sounds like it's more of an observation from a different character in the scene. Even if you bounce around between characters from scene to scene, with limited narration, you must stick to the same character within one scene.

Authorial: This is the opposite of head hopping. This is when you stay out of all the characters' heads including the point-of-view character. This is one of my bad habits as a writer. It's when you say something that no one in the scene could perceive or something that does not align with the point-of-view character's emotions or thoughts. Descriptions of the protagonist often are authorial if it isn't integrated into the action of the scene.

Third Person Omniscient

This is when the author tells the story without any focus on which character will be the center of attention. This point of view allows for head hopping and authorial language. There are different styles of omniscient depending on psychic distance.

Although many people are tempted to take on this point of view for their novels, especially if there is a large cast, I do not recommend it. Most books these days are not omniscient. If there is a large cast with different characters in different scenes, I suggest using third person limited and switch between a few key characters. Let the point-of-view character be the reader's window into the world. Readers can only cope with sticking their heads through one window per scene. The omniscient narrator is not a window into the world because the reader cannot experience the world as the non-existent narrator does (because he's not in the story!). Get out of the way and let your characters tell the story.