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	Point of View (POV)
	by Susan Molthop

Revised August 3, 2007

Okay, so you know your characters, your setting, your theme, and your plot, now who's gonna tell your story? You? Your protagonist? God? Dr. Watson?

Let's look at your options.

Omniscient--3rd person. The all-knowing, all-seeing narrator tells the story from inside and outside the minds of any or all characters.

Limited Omniscient--3rd person. The narrator stays with one character only, and has no more knowledge of outside events than the character he/she's attached to.

Objective--3rd person. The narrator cannot get inside the characters' minds, but simply reports the facts, objectively.

Modified Objective--3rd person. The narrator speculates and draws conclusions about the character, while still reporting the facts, but can't know for sure what's going on in the character's head.

1st Person--Subjective. The narrator is the character.

Now let's look at the pros and cons.

OMNISCIENT AND MODIFIED OMNISCIENT

Omniscient gives you the most power and freedom, but it can also get you into the most trouble. One problem is the old "show, don't tell" weakness. It's too easy, in omniscient POV, to say something like "He felt nothing but pity for the old man" and move on without showing us any compassion whatsoever.

Another major concern is "shifting POVs." Editors are real sticklers for this in beginning writers (but the rich and famous get away with it all the time).

["Shifting POV" means moving in and out of multiple characters' minds within a single scene. It's okay to switch POV characters between sections or chapters, however.]

One way around this is to combine Omniscient with Modified Omniscient--you'll enter only one character's mind, but still know all the facts about everything and everyone else.

This brings up another potential problem--the unreliable narrator. If you choose to stay out of all the other heads, and one of them goes berserk and strangles the protagonist, readers may scream FOUL, blame YOU for it, and never read another word you write.

[An "unreliable narrator" is one the reader can't trust because she/he misleads or outright lies to the reader.]

OBJECTIVE AND MODIFIED OBJECTIVE

Objective is good for mysteries and bad guys, because the reader has to guess at what's going on in the character's mind, which adds to the suspense. The problem is a lack of intimacy, if you try this with the main character, which is not good for most modern fiction. Today's readers want to crawl inside the protagonist and experience every thought, feeling, and burp.

Modified Objective carries the same risk as the variation on omniscient--the unreliable narrator. In a short story, the unreliable narrator may be accepted, because the reader doesn't have that much invested in the story, but very few readers will tolerate it in a full-length work of fiction.

Again, you can solve this problem by making it clear just whose heads you can crawl into and whose you can't. In a woman's book, you might not be able to get inside the men. In a simple action yarn, it might be the bad guys you can't see into. In any novel, you could have a mystery character that nobody understands--including the narrator.

1ST PERSON

1st Person is the easiest, because we have so much real-life experience with it. It's also intimate and immediate. There are several drawbacks, however. The most obvious is in finagling a way for the protagonist to get all the necessary information to move the story along. He/she must also be at all the right places, at all the right times, to be part of the action.

Another problem is the constant use of "I this" and "I that." You don't want your protagonist to be as boring as the real people in your life who can't get enough of themselves.

Dialogue is also more difficult in 1st person, because you're really "telling" what was already said. In 3rd person, you're eavesdropping, so the dialogue is spontaneous.

If you're still in doubt about which POV to use, pick a short scene and write it several different ways. Be sure to choose one that contains dialogue, action, and emotion. With any luck at all, the story will tell YOU how to choose the POV.

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