Some Thoughts on Point of View

One of the first decisions every author has to make as she sits down at her keyboard to start a new book is Whose head will I be in? What will be the point of view from which I tell my story? One told in the first person (I) will sound very different than the more common third person (he or she. Or maybe even it). Each conveys a different type of intimacy and inflects the story a bit.

Me, Myself and I

First person reads like a conversation with the reader. The implication is that the protagonist had certain adventures in the past and perhaps wrote them down or perhaps is recounting them to an audience. Sometimes first-person narratives are even framed to make that recounting explicit. I met an old sailor in the port, and he told me the terrible story of what happened when his crew killed an albatross—there follows, in the old man’s words, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Or someone found a journal of the explorers who disappeared in the jungle, never to be seen again. Framing seems to add veracity, and the first-person viewpoint is often adopted to create intimacy. But be careful: there are some things a person couldn’t or wouldn’t know about himself or wouldn’t say. A first-person account is always a performance.

Y’all Are Busy

Second person is used rarely, because it’s hard to handle. It’s intended to establish complicity between the reader and the storyteller. Rumer Godden’s short story, “You Needed to Go Downstairs”, is one of the few successful examples I can think of, and the “you” here is more a meditative address to self by the protagonist than a true second person. Use sparingly — preferably in something brief — but if you can tame it, it sticks in the memory. I read Godden in middle school!

There They Go Again

Third person is and has always been the most common point of view in literature, ever since the village bard sat at the campfire and told stories about the heroes of a past generation. Typically, the storyteller uses the omniscient third, in which he has a godlike view of every character’s thoughts and actions. This conceals nothing from the reader, who learns what everyone’s secrets are. Be careful using omniscience in a mystery!

In increasing favor these days is the limited third, with a more or less close-up perspective from within one character’s head at a time. As long as you’re in that POV, you know all about the person’s thoughts, but not that they have an egg stain on their cheek. You know what someone else says aloud, but not what they think. It’s just like riding around in POV Man’s skull. It’s like being you, in fact, when you can only know of others what they do or say, not what’s happening behind their forehead. This also implies that observations, opinions, and editorial comments are that character’s, not a disembodied narrator’s.  This is limiting, but it also gives readers (personal opinion here) the most genuine intimacy, since POV Man is just going about his life, thinking his unguarded thoughts. It is not a performance.

Just be careful not to violate the walls of your character’s perspective—and this is only too easy to do. But the good news is that close limited third allows for another layer of personality-building. Ideally, a reader should recognize even from her distinctive view of the world which character’s head he’s in at any given moment.

As so often in writing, there’s no one right choice. Pick the voice that feels comfortable and that allows you to do what you want to do with your story.