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You know you should try writing your story in first v. third point of view, but for some reason, you put it off. Why? Because you’ve gotten a first draft of a scene or chapter and you just want to keep going.

It’s exactly the feeling that elementary school children have: “Why do I have to revise?”


Your answer is straightforward: because you are a professional writer. Revising will help you write a book.

You must find the right way to tell this story. I often say that the purpose of a first draft is to find the story, but the purpose of all other drafts is to figure out the best way to TELL that story. Pros experiment, play, explore.

Here are some explorations of character that you can complete in an hour. Just set a time for 5-10 minutes and write something on each of these. If the prompt reveals nothing, drop it. But if it strikes a chord—keep going!

1. 1st v. 3rd. Write a scene using first person point of view and then rewrite it using third. If you want to play with present tense, feel free. Play!
2. Attitude. Choose a scene and look to see what attitude your main character has. Maybe, s/he comes in arrogant, sad, discouraged, or excited. At the top of your page/file, write the opposite attitude and write the scene again, working to make the character’s opposite attitude work.
3. Setting. Choose a scene and change the setting. If it’s in the kitchen, send your characters on a picnic. If it’s set on a spaceship, move the story to a cruise ship on the Mediterranean.
4. Write a Letter. Give your main character a reason to write a letter to someone. It could be written to a family member or to a Congressman. Let your character vent, rant and cry on paper.
5. Put something in your character’s hand. Put a physical object in your character’s hand. Perhaps a mother goes into a grown son’s room and picks up his old baseball glove and sits in a rocking chair and oils the glove and remembers something important about her son. Or, a grandmother is in the kitchen and getting ready to cook and pulls out an iron skillet. Write a couple paragraphs or a scene putting the object in the forefront.
6. Cubing is a way of exploring a topic by looking at it from different angles. I’ve chosen just four ways, but you can think of others.
   • Describe. Using the character’s voice (your choice of POV, tense, etc) describe something important in your story. Repeat with a different POV, tense, etc. if you have time.
   • Compare. Using the character’s voice, compare something in your story. Maybe you want to compare what the character thinks about his/her current situation with where s/he was ten days ago. Or compare two characters. Or compare today’s supper with yesterday’s supper. Any type of comparison that makes sense for your story is grist for this mill.
   • Associate. When your character thinks of roses, what does s/he think? This prompt asks you to enter your character’s point of view and make some associations. While most of your writing in a scene should be pointed, there are places where you can slow down and give the reader a glimpse of how the character’s mind works. When faced with X, s/he thinks of Y or Z.
   • Analyze. What will your character do next? Stop and let him/her analyze what has just happened, thinking about the ramifications of the actions or conversations. If s/he goes this direction, what will it mean for the rest of the story? What is an alternate direction and why should s/he choose that alternate? Analyze, then let the character decide on a plan of attack for the next section of the story.

Take the time to explore your story and your storytelling choices early in your drafting process. It will probably mean fewer drafts—and a stronger story. Great trade-offs for a mere hour of work.

Back we go to finding our story, which is, you'll remember, something that happens to somebody and its significance. Ideas frequently come in segments, scenes, or situations rather than a fully realized story, so a writer may not know right away what is happening to whom and its significance. In that case, you can search out information to use in building a story by first developing basic story elements. We've talked about doing this with character and setting. This week we're hitting point of view.

There are a number of points of view, but for simplicity's sake we're only going to talk about  two, first person and third person limited omniscient.

First Person: The "I" person. A character is actually telling the story. This is often the main character, but not  always. (Think Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories or Brandon in the Hannah and Brandon stories.) First person narrators are in every single scene. Everything that happens is filtered through their minds. It's very easy to develop a voice with a first person narrator.

Third person limited omniscient: A "he/she" narrator. We think of third person narrators as being all knowing (omniscient) and being able to move from character to character, but the moving-from-character-to-character thing isn't used a great deal nowadays and is difficult to do without appearing confusing and as if the writer is jumping all over the place. Writers will sometimes try to switch to different characters in different chapters, but that can stop the forward movement of a story.

What is easier to do is a third person limited omniscient narrator, something that is also known as a "point of view character." You have one main character who appears  in every scene and through whom everything is filtered, just as with the first person, but there is a storytelling type voice telling the story and referring to this character as he or she. Michael in Saving the Planet & Stuff  is a point of view character or third person limited omniscient narrator. With third person limited  narrators, the storyteller voice can actually know more about the point of view characters than first person narrators often know about themselves.

One thing writers can do while trying to determine what their stories are is write a scene twice, once in the first person, as if the chosen character is talking him- or herself and once in the third person, as if a storyteller is at work. You should find yourself  coming up with different material from each voice, giving you some ideas about what could happen to these people.

Another thing you can do is try different characters as both the first person narrator and point of view character. Even if you end up sticking with your original choice, writing about other characters in different ways may give you ideas you can use.

Yes, point of view can be a lot of work.

I am always a little taken aback when I see newly published writers offering workshops on writing. To me, a person who has published only one book is inexperienced and probably doesn't have a lot of knowledge to impart to others. This attitude on my part is why I have been such a satisfied martial arts student for the past decade. The "maintain the mind of a beginner" business, in which you assume you don't know much so that you're always open to new knowledge, is popular in martial arts training. I embraced it eagerly.

After I wrote and published my first book, I certainly didn't know much. It's a very good thing that I accepted that because when my editor, Kathy, pointed out that my use of a third-person narrator in my second book left something to be desired, my mind was open to the possibility that she was right. I have obsessed on the third person for the last fifteen years or so, and wrote only one book with that kind of narrator. And Saving the Planet & Stuff used a point-of-view character, which is like a first-person narrator but different.

Recently I happened to read several books written in the third person, books that did not use a point-of-view character but shifted points of view among several characters. Here are a couple of problems I saw with the situation:

1. First and foremost, it's difficult to maintain narrative drive if the author keeps stopping the action to allow still another character to dwell on what's happening or even tell a story that doesn't appear to have much to do with anything. Some writers can switch point of view and have the new character drive the action of the story along. Some can't. Or maybe they don't know they're supposed to.

2. It's hard to commit to a protagonist if other characters are given too much face time. Or maybe it just seems that they're getting too much face time if those other characters aren't carrying the story along in terms of plot or interacting with the protagonist enough.

3. Martin Millar can create a whole universe of characters who are entertaining enough that readers will want to stay up late to read portions of a story from their various points of view. It seems that not every writer can do that. I can't believe that I'm the only reader who goes, "Oh, shoot. Him again" when confronted once more with the thoughts of a particularly dull secondary character.

None of the books I'm talking about were dreadful. They were just strikingly off because the third-person narrator was so awkward. Would I have recognized that fifteen years ago when I was still an inexperienced writer? Would I have recognized it now if I hadn't continued to study point of view ever since?

It’s a basic question: what is point of view and when do you use which point of view (or POV) in a novel?

Point of view refers to the basic outlook of your story, who narrates it.

First-person POV is firmly in a character’s head and told as if the character was narrating the action. It uses “I, me, my, myself” to indicate the narrator. Another description is to consider the placement of the story’s camera. Here, the camera sits firmly behind the character’s eyes. What the narrator thinks, the reader knows.

I am scared to try back handsprings at the football game tonight because I haven’t practiced enough.

Second-person POV uses “you” as it talks directly to the reader. It’s considered an awkward POV for most fiction, although there are, of course, exceptions. Camera placement here would be above the narrator’s head, pointed at the reader.

You will notice that the cheers will come out with a series of aerials, including back handsprings.

Third-person POV uses “he, she, it, they” pronouns as it refers to people and events. For this POV, we often speak of how “close” it is to the narrator. Close 3rd person POV puts the camera directly above the main character’s head and the camera placement tells the reader about what the character is paying attention to, what s/he is thinking. It is different from the 1st person POV, in that, we don’t know the narrator’s thoughts directly, but only indirectly. Sometimes, the Close 3rd gives information and the reader assumes the character thought that, said that or did that.

She hesitated, then with a burst of energy, she sprinted then threw herself forward into a back handspring.

The 3rd person POV can also draw back and be more detached, a recitation of a narrative from a more objective POV. The nicest thing is that this POV can change focal length at will, drawing back to describe a football field, then zooming in to the cheerleader as she does a back handspring and feels a muscle tear.

Her hands pushed off the grass and she catapulted over, a perfect back handspring, until—oh, no! Just as she landed, her ankle, it gave way. Pain shot through her foot and she collapsed.

Omniscient POV puts the camera on the ceiling looking down at everyone. It dips in and out of character’s thoughts and gives a comprehensive look at anything and everything the author wants. It’s difficult to pull off, too, because the reader is uncertain where to focus. If done badly, the reader may try to identify with too many characters and fail to really care about any of them.

Bored, her Mom glanced up from her text message in time to see Betty sprint for the handspring. Would this game never end?
Oh, no! Pain shot through Betty’s foot. Mom, she thought, Mom. Where are you?

Notice that this is a discussion of point of view, not verb tense. You can write in 1st person, present tense or 1st person, past tense:

1st person, present tense: I walk across the football field.
1st person, past tense: I walked across the football field.

The difference in verb tense definitely affects the overall tone and voice of your novel, so you should consider it, too, when you write.

Use this photo and try writing from the POV of the climber, from each of the observers, and from an omniscient POV. Each POV will include and

I see everything from my own “special” (Mom calls it “twisted”) point of view. Three things I see very clearly are: 

1. Furniture is really FURniture. It’s supposed to be covered with my fur.

2. Old toys do not deserve my attention. New toys are the best.

3. Food found on the ground is delicious, even if it’s not really food. I should be allowed to eat all the goose poop, birdseed, orange peels, Doritos, and candy wrappers I find.

My point of view is crystal clear to me. 

Point of view is important in stories, too.  Mom brought her Dragon Sandwich story to her writing group named DavidLaurieandOtherDavid. Everyone liked it, but they were confused about the point of view. They said, “Is it the princess’s story, the  chef’s story, or the dragon’s story?” Mom said, “How should I know?” and “I’m just the author…” and “Who wants to see a picture of Cupcake in her sailor dress?” (Nice try, Mom….)

Now she is working on the dragon story again. She still isn’t sure whose story it is. She said, “I’m leaning toward Chef Edward.” (That sounds safer than leaning toward a scary dragon!) and “I need to think and mind-write for a while.” and then my favorite words of all, “Who wants to go to the park?” 

Park! Yay! I hope somebody spilled some Doritos!

10 Comments on Point of View, last added: 5/6/2012