There are two things to consider when choosing the point of view of your novel.

1. Who is telling the story?
2. From what distance is the story being told?

There are four primary points of view you might choose for your novel:

• First person
• Limited third person
• Omniscient
• Second person

Whatever point of view you choose, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is suddenly shift point of view, thereby interrupting the fictional dream. This is particularly true with first person narration. If your novel is told from the point of view of a particular character, you must be careful not to break character by suddenly revealing something that your point of view character wouldn’t logically know. The moment you slip into someone else’s mind, the gig is up. The reader is left wondering, “What just happened?”

 

First Person

An “I” speaks to the reader. The character’s voice becomes extremely important. The language of your story must be consistent with the language and tone of a particular character.

 

Advantage of First Person:

It’s very intimate, resulting in less distance between the speaker and the reader.

It allows the author to delve deeply into the mind of a single character

 

Disadvantages of First Person:

The narrator (and therefore the reader) does not have access to what is going on inside the minds of the other characters. The narrator can know only what this particular character knows.

In Nabokov’s Lolita, the story is narrated in the first person by Humbert Humbert; as the story unfolds through his perspective, we begin to understand that Humbert is an unreliable narrator—that is, we cannot trust his version of the story. Either by intent or by some flaw of his nature, he fails to tell us the truth. In the case of Lolita, it makes for an interesting and complex story.

Mersault engages the reader’s empathy in The Stranger, despite his seeming coldness, because the first-person narration brings the reader straight into Mersault’s mind. We understand his motivations from his own point of view, and, as a result, actions that might otherwise seem reprehensible begin to make sense to us.

 

First person peripheral refers to a first-person narrator who is not at the center of the story, but who is commenting instead on what s/he observes about other characters.

 

Third Person Limited

This perspective is quite close to first person, so close, in fact, that if it is done well the reader may forget that no “I” is present. Although the narrator speaks in third person (he/she/it), the narrator stays close to the mind of a single character.

 

Advantages & Disadvantages

This perspective has pretty much the same advantages and disadvantages of the first person narrator. It does, however, establish a bit more distance between reader and narrator than does the first person.

 

Omniscient

An omniscient narrator sees all, hears all, and knows all. There’s really nothing an omniscient narrator doesn’t have access to. This type of narrator can delve into the minds of all of the characters. An omniscient narrator also knows background, and can even comment on what will happen in the future.

An omniscient narrator sees all, hears all, and knows all. There’s really nothing an omniscient narrator doesn’t have access to. This type of narrator can delve into the minds of all of the characters. An omniscient narrator also knows background, and can even comment on what will happen in the future.

Examples of omniscient narration include the novels of Charles Dickens, the stories of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 

Advantages

It allows the writer to paint with a broad brush stroke.

 

Disadvantages

It establishes greater distance between the reader and the characters, so some of the emotional resonance may be either lost or more difficult to achieve.

You must be adept at moving back and forth among the different characters, while making it clear to whom a particular section, paragraph, thought, or event is occurring.

 

When to Use Omniscient Narration

If your novel has a large cast of characters and you want to be able to show their actions, thoughts, and conversations, the omniscient point of view is your best bet. It’s also good for intergenerational novels.

 

Second Person

While the second person isn’t terribly common, it bears mentioning.

The “you” to whom the narrator is speaking may be the reader as listener, the narrator’s alter ego (in which “you” refers to the narrator himself, as in Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City), or a particular third party (as in Jamaica Kincaid’s story “Girl,” where the “you” is the narrator’s daughter).

Disadvantages:

The second person lends itself more to short fiction than to novels. In long form fiction, second person can sound tiresome or even off-putting, and can feel very claustrophobic. It’s also difficult to maintain over a span of hundreds of pages. I recommend using second person only if you feel that it is the only way in which your particular story can be told.

 

 

What Point of View Are You Most Comfortable With?

Look back at the fragments you have written. Is there one point of view that runs through all or most of them?

What point of view came most naturally to you as you were writing? Why? This is often the point of view from which the story wants to be told. Think of the novels you enjoy. Are most of them limited third person, first person, omniscient? The kind of novel you are drawn to will offer clues for the kind of novel you want to write.