POV

From Guidevines

[edit] POV

Point of view, referring to the narrative source for a story or part of story. POV may be first, second, or third person; normal, deep, or external; but 95% of fiction is written in third-person and first-person POVs.

First-person POV is the "I" narrator. It results in a slight distancing of the reader from the story, since they feel they are being told it by a person to whom it happened, or who saw it. The narrator is not always the protagonist, but may be only an observer or secondary character. First-person POV is especially popular in mysteries as it restricts reader knowledge to that of the narrator.

Third-person POV is the "he/she" narrative.

Third-person omniscient, where the author observes from outside and comments on what he/she omnisciently knows about the characters is not popular nowadays, because of the many abuses. It tends to be full of Tells (see Show, Don't Tell) and lectures.

Third-person external is the "cold camera" POV, where you are Shown what characters do and say, but never step inside their head. Hemingway could manage this for a short story, but for longer forms readers find this distant and uninvolving.

Most common and best-liked by readers is the third-person limited POV. This is where they get to move into one character's head and become that person, as an alter-ego, for the whole story or a goodly chunk of it. Some people qualify this as normal versus deep POV, deep third-person being where you access supposedly deeper levels of the character's thoughts or feelings, but this is so normal that it cannot be considered a real catagory, rather a piece of advice for increasing the emotional stakes for the reader. This is the POV readers feel is most immediate because it best lets them become the character in the action.

Third-person limited POV restricts knowledge and information to what that character knows and thinks. It can produce every bit as much suspense as the first-person POV.

Third-person also allows switching of POV. This should not be too frequent, or it becomes the flaw of "head-hopping" which is actually an inadvertent omniscient POV.

Beginners should practice staying perfectly in one POV and not slipping into others, which they often do quite unconsciously: it's one of the marks of freshman writers. Once POV is under control, one can use scene and chapter breaks, if desired, to move to a different character's POV to change the information being fed the reader, or even to restrict information. Control of POV, and artistic selection of it, is a necessary skill to acquire for writing fiction.