Choosing what point of view your story is written in is an essential part to the start of any story. Many people will jump to the first person point of view, as it tends to be far easier to self-insert yourself into a character as opposed to sit above them, describing a scene in third.

Originally, I wanted to write this chapter to specifically talk about the subtlety in writing between omniscient third person Point of View and limited third person. Many people "attempt" to write in third person omniscient... but write like a limited that randomly switches the PoV characters without warning. It's confusing, and I'll get more into that in a bit.

Right now, I figured since we are talking about points of view, we might as well mention them all. Now, there are other factors to take into effect. You can technically have a 1st person PoV that is omniscient, for example, if your protagonist is god or god-like... or perhaps compiling a story in retrospect after talking to all the people in the story. There are many ways to play with many variations of PoV. Here are the most common ones.

1st Person:

As I've already mentioned, 1st person tends to be the first choice of most beginning authors. Many will find it easier to write in first person, because it's easy to just imagine yourself as the point of view character and all the actions being carried out through your eyes. This often coincides with self-insertion stories, such as romances where you're the leading lady (or guy) in a sordid love affair.

This PoV is great if you're looking to create a strong emotional tie to a single character. While in first person, you are seeing everything out of their eyes. This can lead to some great writing and unique ideas as you play with their emotions, actions, and interpretations of the events around them. You're narration will take on the tone of voice of your point of view character, and will often display their thoughts as they deal with the circumstances of the story.

Unfortunately, a lot of people who write in first person don't realize what that entitles. When you are in first person, that means you only see and know what your main character sees and knows. When you focus on the world around your character, you're only seeing and caring about what that character sees and cares about. To do anything else, whether it's awkward foreshadowing scenes, describing characters your PoV character by all accounts shouldn't be noticing, or making observations your character by all accounts shouldn't be able to make, can pull the reader out of your writing and introduce continuity errors.

If your character is a rich, snobby priss... she's not going to notice the nerd who sits next to her in English, she's not going to see or describe the hobos she passes on the street, or if she does, it will be with distain. You see, everyone sees the world through rose-tinted glasses. You do it, and I do it too. And if you want to write a good PoV character in first person, you need to become pretty good at writing someone who identifies the world through their own unique spin. If they like a boy they see, they might describe him in depth as they eye him up and down, if they don't care about the girl in their checkout line, they aren't going to describe a thing about her.

They also can only notice things you could generally notice in passing. I like to call this the "monk effect" based off of the TV show monk (or psych if you preferred that show better). In either one, the main character had the ability to notice details that no person in their right mind could possibly notice. For example, I'm not going to notice a dimples on the face of my rockstar love interest when I'm sitting in the crowd and they're on stage. I've never been able to tell someone's eye color from the other side of the room, and I doubt you could either... so when someone walks into the room, describing them as an person would be impossible.

On that note, even when talking to someone point to point, I never acknowledge eye color. You read about eye color constantly with romances, and if I was dating a girl at some point I would notice her eye color... but I'm not thinking about her eyes and that they are cerulean or whatever weird color you want to give them the second I meet her and it's rarely something I note in a person unless I'm really into them. The only reason I haven't written an elongated chapter on the overuse of eye descriptions in my book is because I've talked to a few girls on here who absolutely insist that they totally note the eye colors of every person they talk to. I find it hard to believe, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt that teenage girls in real life spend more time noting people's eyes than I ever have.

Anyway, this all fits in with the tendency to over describe things in first person. In reality, our brains ignore a lot of our surroundings as we go. We don't create eidetic flashes of everything we see and it doesn't make sense to over describe. A few authors go so far as to describe the thoughts of those that aren't the PoV character or to divulge information the PoV character doesn't know, which you can imagine is taking things too far.

If you are determined to divulge information your character doesn't know, it needs to be reflected in the narration. Here is one way to do this is by combining past or future tense into your PoV. If it's something your character eventually learns, you can refer to it like...

"At this point, I didn't know Joe was a magical Unicorn, but I'd learn very soon."

This goes into kind of a grey area in writing. Are you writing your story like the narrator is telling it, or are you writing the story like the narrator is living it? That can lead to many small differences between how you write a story or chapter, and you need to make these decisions before you start writing, or things will just sound bad.

The next thing you might find yourself worrying about are PoV changes. Perhaps you have seven main characters and you want every one of them to have a point in their PoV. Making that many PoV characters clearly is incredibly hard. I personally don't recommend doing it, if you want that many PoV characters, just settle for third. However, if you insist on it, the only real way to do it is chapters. In other words, limit yourself to one PoV per chapter. If you want multiple PoVs and you want first person, do not do more than 1 PoV per chapter, and do not do the *Jenny's PoV* labeling. I find the *Jenny's PoV* labeling to be very unprofessional and I can't recall a single published book I've read that has done it. That doesn't mean that one (or many) doesn't exist, just that I think it's a sign of shotty writing. Although, if you have >3 PoV characters, I would strongly recommend that the chapter titles be the name of the PoV character, which is a sneakier way to do the same thing but look professional doing it.

I also urge you to have some kind of order to your PoV characters. Don't just go 20 chapters as one person's PoV, change to another person's for 1 chapter, and then do another 20 with the first person again. I know you really wanted that one sweet scene from your other character's PoV or you really wanted the author to know something and you couldn't figure out how to let you know without the PoV character knowing without making them look like a retard. I get that that happens. However, when you choose to have 20 chapters in someone's PoV followed by a random PoV change for a chapter it feels like shotty planning and weak writing. It's hard to read and 9/10 of your readers will be completely confused by the sudden shift in PoV. Plan better than that and be creative so that that never happens.

2nd Person:

Not a lot of people do second person. For those of your unfamiliar with the idea, in second person, the writer is basically telling you (the reader) what you are doing. The most common books that show this kind of thing are the choose your own adventure books. You are basically inserting yourself as the protagonist in the story and acting out the adventure the writer prepares for you.

As a writer, your job becomes to make that flow and allow me (the reader) to become absorbed in the story. The writing is a lot like 1st person, you can't really tell me more than what I would be able to see or know. Therefore, the events the writer writes and describes should be within my (the protagonist's) capacity to identify.

One of the biggest issues I find with 2nd persons I've read is the level of suspension of disbelief. The writer's job is to limit the level of my suspension of disbelief. As a 2nd person protagonist in your story, I've already assumed the part of your protagonist. In this respect, I've accepted that I cannot choose my own actions. I'm like an actor in a play, and you are the director telling me the role I have to play. In that respect, I'm willing to suspend quite a lot of disbelief, especially if I find myself performing actions I wouldn't in real life.

This is why good 2nd person writing needs to be written like a horoscope. The actions in the writing needs to be open. The actions of the main character need to be common and make sense. These characters need to be everymen who most people can see themselves acting like. You can't write a character to act like how you want them to act, you need to write a character to act like you'd expect the majority of your readers to act if placed in the situation of your story.

Each time you assign a limiter of description to the protagonist, and I (the reader) don't meet the criteria, you're pulling me more out of your story. If you decide your protagonist is a male, then every female reader is immediately going to feel a detachment from the character they supposedly are. If you decide they have a specific job, and I don't do that job, that detaches me a little more. Add too many of these limiters, and the majority of your audience is going to be pulled out of the story, and just aren't going to enjoy it as much when you're telling them they are a 60 year old architect with six children and an alcohol problem, and they have to constantly suspend disbelief to fit your story.

This isn't to say you can't dictate the protagonist's actions, but let the actions speak for themselves. You can send me out drinking every night, until I pass out drunk and wake up the next day in a pile of my own vomit. Then it's up to me, the reader, to decide if I'm an alcoholic or not.

Which leads me to my last point on 2nd person, don't tell a person what they are or what they are thinking. If you're writing a 2nd person, then you're telling me what I am doing, but you can't tell me what I am thinking or what I am feeling. If you want me to feel tense, then you need to set up a good tense scene, so as I read I feel tense. You can't just write "You feel tense." That undermines the entire point that it is me in your story. As a good writer, you shouldn't have to tell me how I'm feeling, you should make me feel that way through the atmosphere in the book. If you want me to like a character, don't tell me "I like him." Instead, make me like him through his own actions and my response to him. I know it's trickier... but no one ever said the 2nd person was an easy form of writing.

In order to master it, you need to know who your target audience is, predict how they think, and write a story that is ambiguous enough for me to fill the role but immersive enough that I'm going to want to follow the story while manipulating my emotions without telling me what to think. Good Luck!

Third Person:

Third person is a good form of writing for descriptions. So you can imagine a lot of world building stories use third person for this reason. Third is also great for multiple PoV's. If you have a large range of characters in your story, and your want your reader to feel a personal connection to several of them, third person is the way to go. If you also want to build a broader world, with lore and history, this is a great PoV to use.

There are essentially two types of third person PoV. The first is the omniscient PoV. In omniscient, you, the narrator, is all knowing. This is actually a PoV that is rarely used in fiction, because it's difficult to create a connection to characters or events from a purely objective outside observational PoV. What turns out to be more common is a mixture called "third person limited omniscient" PoV. It's often described like a camera that swings around, randomly jumping into people's PoVs. This is the PoV I have the most problem with, because very few people are capable of doing it correctly.

The safer bet is the second PoV called limited third person. Pure limited third person picks one character at a time and describes events from their PoV. Multiple PoV's and a fairly large range of PoV characters can be managed from limited point of views. Each chapter might have a different character's PoV, and page breaks can occur in any time and at any frequency to include various PoVs over short periods of time. There are limits, of course, you can only have so many breaks before your writing starts to feel disjointed, but if the story is interesting, you can get away with quite a bit.

When in limited PoV, you are once again limited purely to what you PoV character knows. Your narration can take on the voice of your characters, and it's fairly easy to establish who your PoV character is simply by using their name (In first person, calling the subject 'I' makes it a little harder to distinguish who it is than calling the subject 'Marvin') This has some of the same issues as first person. You don't want to say things your character doesn't know. You don't want the narration describing things it is unlikely your character is even capable of seeing. However, since things are in third, you can get away with more description than first, so if you're going to describe the boy from across the room, it's more believable in third than first, at least in theory.

That leads to limited omniscient, which is a mixture of limited and true omniscient that I see a lot of new writers writing in. Now, first off, there is nothing wrong with writing in limited omniscient. I think, when done correctly, it can be a great way to write a story. I personally favor the limitations of limited PoVs. Omniscient can offer too much freedom and lead to lazy writing.

Which is honestly the biggest problem with omniscient limited PoV. Some people end up writing limited omniscient like a limited PoV that constantly changes PoV's at random without an appropriate chapter break. The difference between limited PoV with random PoV changes and limited omniscient PoV done correctly is very small and difficult to describe. When done correctly, it sounds great. When done poorly, it sounds awful.

I'm going to attempt to describe to you the difference, but even I don't really have it all together, so don't expect miracles. It's a subtle difference and mastering it requires reading a lot of writing that does it and understanding when your being "too" into someone's PoV versus grazing the surface in limited omniscient. So let's try with a sample.

~~~~

'"Did you really say that?" Abigail laughed, stroking her hair with the comb.

Abigail couldn't believe her friends story, it sounded too preposterous. Her comb struck a knot, and she forced it through causing a tinge of pain. Her friend, Missy, was also in pain, pulling off the tight heels she had been wearing since who knows how long.

"This is so stupid, why do we have to do this?" Abigail thought scornfully.

"Yes, yes I did!" Missy responded, breaking Abigail from her thought.

Missy was lying to her friend, and she suspected that Abigail knew it. However, the story was funnier when it was true, and she knew that Abigail would be willing to play along in order to enjoy a good joke. Although it turned out Abigail wasn't really paying attention at all. Instead, she was focused on the mirror, noticing a zit she hadn't seen before."

~~~~

Okay, I'll be honest with you, I tried to write a bad omniscient PoV with that... and honestly it came out not as bad as I was hoping for. That's how subtle the differences are, I can't even do it when I try. However, the things to note here is how the narration kind of leads you, the reader. Good omniscient PoV is dependent on a good narrator, and your capacity to ensure your narrator is guiding the story and the actions between the characters well is the difference between the bad and the good omniscient PoV.

The act of "headhopping" where you're just jumping from one person's head to another's is an action you should probably avoid in omniscient. This is where the writing feels choppy. Omniscient is never truly omniscient. Even in an "all knowing" PoV, the narrator is going to focus on certain situations and certain characters. Don't take omniscient at its word and try to be all encompassing.

So, think about what you want to do, and then do it. Realize what a PoV entitles and make your decisions carefully. Good Luck and I hope this helps!

Do you have any chapters you want to see that I haven't covered? Let me know in the comments.