Star Signs - Writing Help

TIP TEN - Points of View

Points of View

I feel like this is one of the chapters where the fact that I'm writing these as I get the ideas instead of in any logical order really shows. Because it's a rather basic topic, my brain just sort of...forgot about it. Whoops.

Anyway, since points of view are pretty basic, let's just get into it. 

Quick note, I will probably be using POV through the rest of it, just because it's significantly shorter and feels less clunky to be repeated multiple times. You know, the usual reason for acronyms. Just keep in mind that this stands for "point of view." 

Types of Points of View

This is the kind of thing that you go over in basic middle-high school English classes (at least here in America.) What perspective is your story told from: first, second, and third person.  

First Person

The story is told from the perspective of a character in the story. They talk about themselves in the first person (I, me) and tell the story entirely how they see it. Reads as if the narrator is telling  the reader about themself. 

Pros: 

⸻Easy to characterize the narrator because everything is from their perspective

⸻ Tends towards a more personal story. Easier for the readers to connect with the POV characters

⸻ Gives a naturally reason for looser narration (narrating how a character talks) 

⸻ Allows for unreliable narrators due to limited and greatly biased perspectives 

Cons: 

⸻ Limits you to one perspective. You can write first person stories with multiple POVs, but it can be incredibly hard to differentiate even when you label the sections. There's also less give for all of your perspectives sounding similar, because it's so tied to the character themselves 

⸻ The story is limited by what the POV character sees. Because of this, there's often issues with things happening off screen (or the POV character being put awkwardly into scenes just because they need to be scene) 

⸻ The above problem appears strongly when it comes to the thoughts and feelings of non-POV characters. Because you're only from one character's perspective, you need to lean hard into "show, not tell" (unless your POV character can read minds, but I've seen people write their characters having full conversations through looks, which unless they're blinking in morse code is impossible) 

Second Person

The narrator is telling a story about the reader in a story. Using "you, yours", it's basically written as if the narrator is telling the reader about something that happened to them. Or, in the case of instructions and recipes (the most common place this is used) it's telling you (the reader) to do something.