Writing 101: Point of View
(Vivian sneaking in here before the post! This is written by my friend who is guest writing today, enjoy!)
Welcome to my first guest lecture! While most of this blog is devoted to the world itself, this series is dedicated to the individual stories and your writing techniques. As you write, however, you’ll need to balance the world you’re creating with your characters, plot, themes, and story. World building is a vital part of creating a compelling story, but there are other elements to consider as well.
The Most Important Choice You’ll Ever Make
The first and most important choice any writer makes in a story is, of course, what kind of footwear your main character wears! I’m thinking high heels today. Oh, wait, no, that’s just a fun character detail! My bad! No, the main question is which point of view (POV) to use. Some authors just begin writing, and the point of view comes naturally. Sometimes an author will start writing in one point of view, but it’ll feel unnatural. Often when that’s the case, writers struggle to figure out what exactly is wrong before realizing it’s the POV. While writing by feel is often a good thing, point of view is something that you want to really think about, because it impacts every single aspect of your story and dramatically impacts how your reader experiences it.
Point of view is loosely divided into three types: first person (using I/we), second person (using you), and third person (using he/she/it/they). Not only does that impact the actual words that you use, it also dramatically impacts how your reader engages with the story. Each point of view has its strengths and weaknesses, as I’ll walk through in a minute, but there are other factors besides which category of pronouns you use when considering which to choose.
Closeness of POV
Some stories demand close, personal access to the narrator(s). At other times, you want to be distant and report on action, reaction, and dialogue only. These choices lay along a spectrum, and where exactly you fall is determined by which choice of person (first, second, third) is the best one for your story. This is again something some writers do instinctively. Sometimes, we just know what our story needs. But what does this range look like, exactly?
Closeness is the difference between, say, slapping a person with an open hand versus slapping them with an inflated hand on a long stick. Either way, you’ll end up with a fight, but the way it feels to you is very, very different. Slapping someone is immediate, driven by emotion, and causes you pain even while it’s damn satisfying. On the other hand, slapping someone at a distance lets you better observe the person’s reaction, and potentially get away from any retaliation. Run away! It gives you the space you need to navigate the situation without emotions getting in the way.
Close
You can have a close POV in all three types, though first and third lend themselves the best. First person is the closest POV as your entire experience is through the character, and it’s always close. Third person can be almost as close depending on your needs. Second person tends to be a little more distant even when it’s at its closest, because it’s commanding you, the reader, to think and feel certain ways instead of showing the emotions through inner monologue and filtered narrative. As I discuss later, though, it’s possible to create a second person character and get fairly close to them.
One note on close POV: it is possible to be close to multiple characters close together. If done poorly, this is known as head-hopping. If done well, it’s an omniscient narrator able to see all of the character’s thoughts at once. This style of omniscient narrator used to be extremely common but is now rarely done. I recommend avoiding it, as it’s difficult to pull off, and most readers don’t like it anymore. In general, it’s perfectly fine to get into the heads of multiple characters, but ONLY if you have some sort of break between the narrators, whether a section break or a chapter break. Chapter breaks are traditional: different chapters have a different narrator. If you have a large cast and want to get close to all of them, which is common in genres such as fantasy and space opera, you should go this route. Head-hopping is to be avoided at all costs!
When close to a narrator, everything you write will be filtered through their experience. One activity I like to do to get close to various characters is to take a photograph of something simple, like a cat, then have each character describe it.
(Vivian again, it’s a cat.)
Some characters might be fairly literal and describe the physical characteristics, for example:
My gray and white cat perched on a light brown cat tower, her ribcage rising with her breathing as I watched.
But notice that word “perched”? That’s their personal interpretation! Another more literal character might say “laying down” or “sleeping,” both of which indicate different things. What you should take from this is that every single word needs to match your POV character. Now, you might also have a character who’s grieving some loss. They might describe the same picture a different way:
My cat was white with gray splashed across her, a grayscale contrast to the warm brown of her cat tower. Her eyes were shut as if in the embrace of death, and my heart caught. I watched her carefully, looking for an inhalation. There! A slight rise to her ribcage. I stifled a sob of relief.
When you have character emotions, you want to show, not tell, and showing reactions to fairly neutral stimuli like this can be extremely powerful. You might have a character in a reminiscent mood who reflects on their relationship with the cat, and all the times they’ve seen the cat curled up here before. And so on. You get the point. Same stimulus, very different interpretations and very different writing. That’s close POV.
Distant
Now, this is a spectrum, but to give you an idea of the range, I’m going to skip to the other end, which is distant. I like to compare writing distant point of view to writing a screenplay: you can only have action, reaction, and dialogue. You can only access a character’s inner state and thoughts through those things. In a distant POV, your narrator is not the character. That’s important. Your narrator is not a character in the story. That means that what your narrator experiences is limited in the same way a camera would be in film. Now, of course, in movies and plays where you write using screenplays, you can also get a voiceover of the inner monologue, but that’s cheating because it is indeed something that the camera can access since it’s spoken, not something silent in the character’s head.
A distant narrator might be closer to the literal narrator above and describe the picture as follows:
The gray and white cat perched on a light brown cat tower, her ribcage rising with her breath. Bob watched, sweat forming on his brow.
Notice how all of the interiority and thoughts are gone. In distant point of view, you only get those three things: action, or a character’s movements, gestures, or other types of action like perching and breathing; reaction, or how other characters react to the first character, whether through their own actions or some other external signal like sweat forming on their brow; and dialogue, or the words spoken by your characters (not present in this section). We can infer emotion, like that Bob is worried, but we see it, not read his thoughts and feelings. Think of your senses, and think of yourself as a camera. You get touch, sight, hearing, and sometimes smell if you’re a talented camera. That’s all you get. You don’t get taste because licking people’s tongues is weird! Actually, it’s because you’d have to be in a character’s head to experience taste, which you’re not allowed to do. The narrator is not the character! Incorporating senses is important in any writing, but keep in mind that you’re limited in distant point of view. Note: if you want to include taste, you might say “the cake looked like it tasted of rich, chocolaty goodness.” That’s sight, but lets you indicate taste.
Overall
First person is always close, second person is usually somewhat distant, and in third person, you’ll be somewhere between extremely close and extremely distant. A close POV might be filtered through the character’s eyes, but you might have more emphasis on action, reaction, and dialogue than strictly character thoughts as you would get in first person. Or you might get a distant POV where you only see action, reaction, and dialogue, but the narration is still filtered so you get a sense of the POV character. That’s a pretty common way to do a distant narrator. My alien friend Vivian writes at the extreme range of the distant end of the spectrum, which is quite unusual. Zhir narrative is neutral in descriptions, not preferencing any specific character but instead keeping it with a camera-esque narrator, and only shows action, reaction, and dialogue. Nary a character thought to be found! This works well for zhim, who has meta reasons for this decision that I’m not at liberty to discuss, but I would caution against it for most writers, as it’s difficult to achieve without slipping into a character’s mind. And POV slips can be deadly. My biggest pet peeve in the world is POV shifts, so don’t do them.
The decision whether to do close or distant is intrinsically bound in first, second, or third person, and it will determine how much of the world is filtered through your character. If you want to write a story focused on characters and character relationships, you want to be on the closer side of the spectrum. If you’re all about action, go more distant. Just be careful that if you’re focused on a POV character, you don’t slip into someone else’s head.
Choice of Person
First Person Point of View
First person can and has been used to great effect, but one thing to know right off the bat is that third person is the most common. If you don’t have a reason for using first person, you shouldn’t do it. While in some genres it’s used frequently, like memoir and young adult novels, in most genres it’s the exception. As a result, not all readers are going to like it, and it may be enough to prevent some people from reading altogether! Vivian, in zhir eloquent way, reacted to the thought of reading a first person book by saying:
Listen, if I was going to listen to someone monologuing about their life in excruciating details for hours on end, I’d need payment upfront before the hook up!
With that being said, first person can be exceptionally good at some things.
The strengths of first person are basically the same as its weaknesses, and you really just need to decide what you want for your story. First person gives you an immediate, front seat look at your character’s thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. It’s always close, so every single word should be written through the lens of your character. However, this also means that the only things you can write come through that lens. If you have a character standing in a room with a closed door and there’s a murderer outside, you as the writer can’t say there’s a murderer there. You have to hint at it through your character’s perception. Do they hear footsteps? Breathing? Is the hair on the back of their neck on end? Or are they completely oblivious? If it’s something your character can’t sense, you can’t include it. Period.
Mismatched Knowledge
But Anne, I’ve read stories where the reader knew things the audience didn’t! Yes, because of what’s called dramatic irony. This is when the reader can put together bits of information into a whole and get the big picture while the character, for whatever reason, can’t. This can occur anytime you have close narration, but it’s very common in first person. Maybe it’s because the big picture uses information that’s reliant on our world for some reason–we connect things because they’re common here, but our character doesn’t because it’s unheard of on the planet of Zotinga–or it might be because the character is young, naive, or just not that bright. No judgment. There are plenty of reasons for the disconnect, but it can be a great way to add suspense to a story.
In complete contrast, you can also get unreliable narrators, or point of view characters who are hiding information from you, the reader! There are all sorts of reasons for this. Sometimes it isn’t on purpose, for example if the character is insane or hallucinating. What you see through their senses in that case may be a complete misinterpretation of reality. Sometimes, though, it’s very deliberate, maybe because the character can’t bring themselves to come to terms with a past action, or because they’re hiding some action. This also adds suspense, because the further you read, the more you suspect something isn’t quite right. The story needs to provide clues to the reader that the narrator is lying in some way (accidentally or deliberately) or else there’s no point to having an unreliable narrator, but it’s usually easy to see a mismatch between the character’s thoughts, which dominate first person, and the actions, reactions, and dialogue around them. Even if the character is insane or hallucinating, there needs to be enough hints that something’s off to signal the reader.
Strengths
In both of these, it heightens suspense, and suspense is a key benefit of first person. Because you’re so limited and can’t show anything the character can’t sense, vast swaths of the world are unknowable, and dangers lurk in the unknown… Think of a horror video game. Do you want to have a third person view where you can see everything around you? No! You want to only see what’s immediately in front of you so that you have no idea what’s happening off screen, and if there are a group of ghosts or zombies immediately behind you about to swallow you whole. Your story might not be quite that dangerous or filled with horror, but the same principles apply: first person heightens tension, conflict, and suspense.
The closeness you get is also a major strength. You’re completely limited to your one character, but you have unprecedented access to them. No other point of view allows for you to fully enter your character’s mind. The reader becomes the character in every way. This is one reason why it’s popular in young adult. Teens like imagining the potential ahead of them and putting themselves in the shoes of other people expands their knowledge and understanding of themselves and of the world. It can also be used by writers from minority groups to show majority groups what their lives are like and highlight their common humanity while also showing the difference in experience. And in any genre and type of book, sometimes you have a character who is just so fun and domineering that they just take charge, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. Their world becomes the world you want to tell: their world is the story.
Weaknesses
All of this can work against you, of course. If you have multiple characters and you want to get equally close to all of them, I don’t recommend multiple first person narrators. Use third person. Having multiple first person narrators has been done, but rarely well. If you insist on it, make sure to separate character POVs by chapter break (possibly by section break, though I strongly recommend chapter break). You need to establish which character it is in the first sentence. Yes, that quick. If you switch between characters, especially if it’s first person, we the reader need to know instantly who we are right now. If your characters are in different locations, establish where they are in the first sentence. If you’re starting with dialogue, consider using the character’s name. In the rare occasion that your character voices are radically different from each other due to accent or something else–and it has to be big–just make sure to incorporate that immediately.
In addition, if you want to have an all around view of things and not be tied down to your character’s perceptions, first person is a terrible choice. Maybe you want your suspense to come from the fact that you can see that murderer behind the door, and the reader is silently screaming to the character to run while wondering when the murderer is going to inevitably get in. And maybe you don’t want to get bogged down by a character’s perspective because you want a more distant view of things.
First Person Plural
One rarely used POV is first person plural, where you use “we” for your narrator. This is good if you have a unified group that can speak with one voice. A hive mind alien might do this, or any group that shares a worldview and interprets the world the same way. It operates just like first person, except that the narrative perspective can encompass multiple people because it’s plural. However, this is extremely rarely used, so unless you have a compelling reason to use it, don’t.
Overall
If you want an intimate, suspenseful, but ultimately incredibly limited view, first person will work. If their perspective is the story, this is the point of view for you. Otherwise, default to third person. And whenever in doubt, use third. You can always change it later if it isn’t working for you.
Second Person Point of View
Second person is definitely the most difficult POV, and it has limited usefulness. However, in some situations, it’s the only choice. Looking outside of stories that require complex world building, common genres where you need second person are cookbooks, instructional materials like this blog, sometimes self-help books, and anything where the writer is telling the reader what to do. That’s how second person works: the writer is telling the reader what to do, think, and feel by referring to the reader (you) as opposed to a character in the story.
With that said, it is possible to build a character in second person. You might expand on the grieving cat owner like this:
Study your cat like you always do since the death of your sister. Your cat reminds you of her in a way. Playful, curious, always looking for excitement. Push down your grief, because it will get you nowhere. Still, you can’t help but watch for the breath that indicates her life. Hold your breath. Count to five. There. There it is. Exhale, and let the rising ribcage give you relief.
Later, we might get specific character descriptions despite being second person.
Run a hand across your face to wipe away your tears, knowing that your scarlet nose and eyes signal your grief as clearly as a neon sign. It doesn’t help that your pale skin shows the redness, and your pale blue eyes get watery so easily. Wipe your eyes, blow your nose. Tell yourself you’ll be fine.
If you want to write a work of fiction in second person without sounding like you’re bossing around your reader, this is the way to do it. Establish a character, and guide the reader through situations as if they were that character.
To a lot of readers, however, that command structure is extremely jarring because it’s someone else telling you what to do, think, and feel. One form of writing where this works to the writer’s advantage is in kink writing, or writing that has the intention of sexual gratification through a specific kink with little to no plot, because that’s exactly what you want to be doing to your reader. How kinky! Another place you’ll see it is in text-based video games, since the game is directing your actions and asking you the player what to do next. Again, every point of view has its purpose, and second person allows you to direct your reader into thinking and feeling certain things directly, through commands.
Third Person Point of View
Third Person Point of View
As I said earlier, third person is the standard point of view in almost all genres. If you want to start writing and don’t know where to start, start in third person. It’s actually not that uncommon to start writing in one POV and end up switching. Maybe you did as I recommended and started in third person, but you find yourself wanting to be closer to the character, and you realize that the entire story revolves around how they interpret the world, so you change it to first person. Or maybe you start in first person, thinking you have a strong enough character, but you realize you want to explore the world in more depth than you can get from a single character’s limited perception, so you switch to third person. Find/Replace will become your best friend. I’ve switched stories back and forth before. It’s a huge hassle, but always worth it. Once, I had to switch a manuscript I was already 60,000 words into! Talk about a nightmare!
Third Person Limited
I talked before about close versus distant. This is closely related to, but not the same as, limited versus omniscient. A third person limited POV means that the POV is limited to a single character. Normally, this is relatively close, but it can be distant to some extent. It can’t get to the point where the narrator is no longer the character, however.
This is the most common type of POV, and most people automatically default to this. It’s in almost everything we read, and that’s because it’s a good balance of strengths and weaknesses and accomplishes what most of us want in a story. Most writers want to explore character, so being on the closer side of things is good, but we want to focus on one character (or at least one at a time). This lets us also explore the world through the character’s eyes, but still be able to include a broader sense of the world that the character might not necessarily know. If you ever want to give backstory (please limit it!), you probably want third person over first because it would be extremely unusual for someone to suddenly start thinking of backstory, whereas in third person, you can take a step out of the character’s mind for a moment to provide other information. It’s easier to have more detailed and nuanced descriptions of things because the language that you as the narrator want to use might be outside the vocabulary of the character. Basically, it’s a perfect balance between being “in character” and taking advantage of a close POV, and detailing the world in a way that character wouldn’t normally do, whether through descriptions, information, or just the occasional mention of what’s going on offscreen.
Shifting limited POV is a subset of this where each scene or chapter has a different limited POV, all in third person. This is great for large casts, or even if you just have two characters and you want to show both of them equally. Romance novels, for example, frequently have a shifting limited POV between the two love interests, as it’s a great source of conflict to see both sides of the relationship and any misunderstandings, and allows you to scream at them to just get together already when you know they’re both in love, but they haven’t admitted it to themselves or to each other. If you do this, you need to clearly indicate where the POV shifts through chapter breaks or scene breaks.
For example, taking our cat description, you might include two points of view separated into clearly marked sections:
Bob’s cat was white with gray splashed across her, a grayscale contrast to the warm brown of her cat tower. Her eyes were shut as if in the embrace of death, and his heart caught. He watched her carefully, looking for an inhalation. There! A slight rise to her ribcage. He stifled a sob of relief.
—————————————————
The cat opened one eye to observe her owner. His eyes were red, and she exhaled deeply. It was probably time for another cuddle. He needed them so often since his sister passed. The cat missed her as well, but that was life. Still, her owner needed her right now, so she got to her feet, stretched, and hopped down to rub against his legs.
Here, we get two POVs, Bob’s and the cat’s. Both offer different perspectives of the world, but the same basic scene.
Third Person Omniscient
This is where you start getting into the danger zone of head-hopping. Third person omniscient used to be quite common, but it’s quite difficult to do, and not always worth the effort. This can be close or distant, depending on what you want from your story.
If you want to have interiority and character thoughts while also having the ability to freely sample from any character’s mind, you want a close omniscience. This can create head-hopping if it isn’t done smoothly, and that’s a major problem. It’s jarring to the reader and will yank them out of the story. There will be constant whiplash as they try to figure out whose story this is, and who they should care about. Generally, readers will walk away with only a shallow understanding of your story because they couldn’t fully connect. Now, it can be subtle. In my Masters of Fine Arts creative writing program, we learned to scour our writing for any little slips. As a result, I’m an expert at identifying them thanks to three years of doing little else! Here’s one that many people would miss:
Bob sighed in relief when he saw her ribcage rise, unable to stop his eyes from tearing up. It was such a happy sight in this time of darkness. She opened an eye in annoyance. He didn’t care, and waited for her to jump down like she always did.
You may be wondering what the slip here is. It’s pretty simple. How do we know the cat is annoyed? We don’t. That would require knowledge of her interiority, and we’re in Bob’s mind. You would want to fix it, perhaps to say:
She opened an eye as if in annoyance.
A small change, but important! Enough slips like that, and your reader will lose confidence in your writing. However, if close omniscient is done well (again, really difficult!), it provides seamless integration of many characters under the unifying umbrella of your story. Here’s an example of integrating multiple characters in the same narration:
Bob’s cat was white splashed with gray, a grayscale contrast to the warm brown of her cat tree. She loved the color, but right now, all Bob could think about was how cold she looked. His thoughts had been chaotic since his sister’s death. The world seemed darker, and both of them sensed it, though they reacted in very different ways. The cat meowed, and he looked at her to see a trace of annoyance. She wanted to move on from grief.
As you can see, in this close omniscient POV, individuals are important, but not vital. The whole is greater than either of the individual characters, and it’s the world that’s really being developed. That’s key. If you want to showcase the world over characters, you probably want third person omniscient, and if you want to still show interiority, you want close.
At the distant end of the spectrum, an omniscient narrator will see all characters, but only their actions, reactions, and dialogue. This is the point at which the narrator is no longer a character in the story. This, as I said, is Vivian’s style. Zhi calls zhir narration style “third person omnituent,” or “all-seeing,” but who cares what zhi does?
(Vivian again! Clearly the one true and only narration style for everyone! 🙂)
Like a close omniscience, a distant POV allows you to focus on the world. In this “omnituent” POV (geez, happy now Vivian?), however, the characters become much less important. The focus is entirely on the world, and the characters are now actors on the stage. Like when we watch actors, readers have no clue what’s going on inside anyone’s mind. They could be lying and manipulating their reactions, and we would have no way of knowing unless the narration makes it clear by showing contrasting scenes and interactions. It’s easy to mislead readers using this distance, then have a big reveal at the end. Sometimes, this works, and all of the pieces fit together, and the reader is satisfied. More often, it becomes a deus ex machina (DEM), where the hand of the author interferes with the story to artificially end the conflict and reach your desired conclusion. If you're keeping secrets, either show it in the story, or really work hard so that the reader can see the reveal coming. I’ll talk more about how to prevent a deus ex machina in a future post, assuming I get invited back.
Overall
Third person POV is the best choice for almost any occasion. It balances closeness with distance, character with world. This should be your go-to when starting a story!
Narration Tense
“Why are you so tense?” you might ask me at this point, and this is why! Verb tense! We haven’t even touched on it yet! People often have strong opinions on this, but as usual, it should be determined by your story and what you want to accomplish. Past tense is the default, so unless you have an excellent reason for using present tense, don’t. Lately, present tense has become increasingly popular, fueled by novels such as Hunger Games (first person present tense). Don’t choose it just because it’s popular. And it doesn’t matter if your story happened in the past or if it’s happening now. That isn’t how you determine the tense.
Future Tense
We’ll look at future tense first, because it’s rarely done and is only useful in very limited circumstances. This is where you tell about things that will happen. It’s extremely difficult to do successfully and can be jarring to readers, so you really, really need a good reason for this one. However, it can work in individual scenes well if you want to have a flash forward, a vision, or have a character think about what they want for the future. In first and third person, it involves looking ahead, and in second person, where it works best of the three, it gives commands that the reader will follow in the future.
Some examples of the same lines in all three POVs:
I will eventually get over this grief. The time will come when I’ll sit with my friends, and we’ll celebrate my sister’s life.
You will eventually get over your grief. The time will come when you’ll sit with your friends, and you’ll celebrate your sister’s life.
Bob will eventually get over his grief. The time will come when he’ll sit with his friends, and they’ll celebrate his sister’s life.
As you can see, they all work, especially if this is just a few lines within a greater whole. An entire book like this would be a little much.
Present Tense
Present tense is next, and it has its benefits, the main one being suspense. If you want the reader on the edge of their seat, not knowing what happens next, you want present. It gives an immediacy not always felt in past tense. You never know what’s going to happen next because it’s happening right now, as opposed to past tense which, while good writing can still make it feel extremely immediate, still feels like there’s a future to be had. A present tense narrator could die at any time!
Present tense can be combined with each POV with different effects. First person present tense is the most common use of present tense. Vivian says that writers who write in first person present tense should be burned at the stake. I don’t agree with zhim in the slightest, as it’s sometimes exactly what you want. However, I do love a good bonfire for some s’mores. It can work because the immediacy of present tense pairs well with the immediacy of first person, and both amplify suspense and the feeling of not knowing what’s going on. You’ll often see this tense chosen in horror stories, or anything where you really want a nervous reader. Our cat example isn’t quite as tense as a horror story, but it does still work.
Grief floods through me as I watch my cat. Nothing. No breath. I wait, holding a breath of my own. I can’t take the stress.
Second person tends to work best in present tense, because we tend to give commands in present tense. Go here. Do that. Think this. It works better than the past tense versions: You went here. You did that. You thought this. Now, you may have noticed that this entire post is in second person present tense. Precisely! Here’s how our lines from our cat example would look:
Grief floods through you as you watch your cat. Nothing. No breath. You wait, holding a breath of your own. You can’t take the stress.
However, second person past tense can be used if you want a more reflective piece. It isn’t forbidden or anything, it just tends to be less effective.
Third person present tense shares some of the same characteristics as first person present tense if the third person narrator is close enough. If you have a more distant narrator, the effect changes. Your narrator, once fairly omniscient, now becomes much less so. You’re still focused on action, reaction, and dialogue, and, depending on type, you might be able to see into multiple character’s heads, but the narrator now seems to have no idea what comes next. It can be useful in adding a perceived limitation to your narrator, but there are much better ways to do that while staying in past tense. The more common use is a close narrator, as we see with our cat example:
Grief floods through Bob as he watches his cat. Nothing. No breath. He waits, holding a breath of his own. He can’t take the stress.
Past Tense
Past tense, as I said, is the default. In general, you always want to use past tense. If you’re ever in doubt, use past tense. It works for all genres, all POVs, everything. While you might think that it only works for stories that are told in the past, in fact, we as readers view it as essentially the present. Because it’s so common, we’ve become accustomed to it. Everything else is jarring, but this is safe. It also feels safe because despite being read as essentially present, it reassures the reader that there’s a future point when the story will be over.
Now, that’s not to say you can’t have suspense! Past tense can be spine-tingling and horror-inducing! It just depends on how you write it. Basically, if you want to remain neutral and let your POV and writing take charge, past tense is the way to go. It’s only if you want to risk jarring your reader and taking them out of the story that you use anything else. Here’s the same example as above but in third person past tense.
Grief flooded through Bob as he watched his cat. Nothing. No breath. He waited, holding a breath of his own. He couldn’t take the stress.
You can see that a lot of the tension is still here. It loses almost nothing and gives a sense of familiarity to readers. All of the examples from the earlier parts of this post are in past tense, and you can see how well they work.
Combinations of Point of View
While you normally don’t want to mix POV within a single story, it’s definitely been successfully done in multi-character stories. Sometimes you want the intimacy of first person for one character, but a more distant third person for another character. Sticking with a combination of first and third person, if you have a variety of characters but want to focus on a single one as your primary character, you might put them in first person, and the ancillary characters in third. It’s even possible to incorporate second person into a first or third person story. Just make sure that the POV you choose reflects what you want for that part of the story, and you absolutely need a good reason for doing this because even if you do this flawlessly, it’s going to throw your reader off at first.
Final Comments
Deciding what you want your story to be is the first step in writing, but it sometimes takes time to really sort it out, especially if you’re a pantser like me, or someone who likes to write by the seat of their pants (if I bother to wear any–hey, I work from home most days!). You may not know whether you’re writing about the world or the characters, and whether it’s one character or multiple characters. In fact, you may be halfway through the book before you figure it out, or more! Sometimes you might not fully understand the story you’re telling until your second or third draft. That’s fine. Don’t push yourself, and don’t rush. Just write.
Several times when starting a project, I’ll think to myself, “I want to explore this one character,” so I’ll start in first person. A page or two later I realize I’ve somehow switched to third. This has happened in reverse, too. Some part of me knows what I want, and I just do the right thing as soon as I’m in the flow of writing. Hopefully you can learn to develop this instinct, but again, it takes time, and you’ll mess up along the way.
Overall, anytime you’re uncertain of what you want from your story, start in third person limited past tense. You can’t go wrong with that as a starting place. If your story just isn’t working, consider whether that’s really reflecting what you want from the story, and adjust accordingly. Again, find/replace is a godsend.
As you start writing or rewriting your stories, just remember to have fun! Writing shouldn’t make you miserable even if it is a lot of work. Good luck to all of you!
(Vivian: I tried to restrain her, I promise. That’s all folks!)
Do you have any topics you struggle with or would like to suggest for a future blogpost? We’re open to suggestions!
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