Which point of view is best for your story? That can be a
very difficult question, and one which may not have a clear cut answer, but,
there are some points of view which will undoubtedly suit your story more so
than others. Many beginning writers make the same mistake when it comes to POV.
What is that mistake?
They default to first person. Let me be clear: first person
is usually the wrong answer. In fact,
the only time when you should use first person is when you can hear the
character speaking to you. No, I’m not crazy, ask any author. The characters
speak, and unless your main character offers up an undeniably unique or interesting
voice, do not write in first person. Writing in first person only lends something extra to your story
if their voice is SPECIAL. (Read my other post about Harry Potter to see why
Rowling did not use first person.) So which POV should you use?
You’re left with two POV’s (really three, but we’ll get to
that). You can choose third person limited, where you follow one particular
character and know only what that character knows, or third person omniscient,
where the narrator knows all, and therefore, so does the reader. You may, of
course, tweak the POV’s. Sometimes you can write in such a way that the
narrator does not know what anyone is thinking, but be cautious, this method
can easily go wrong. So which is better?
For a beginning writer, and frankly, for most people in
general, third person limited is the way to go. It is versatile, does not give
you more information than you need to know, and is simply easy to use. You can
experiment and do some different things with this particular POV, but the main
thing is, for beginners, it is easy to work with, and much more difficult to
screw up than the others.
And the last POV, which is almost never used, is second
person, where the narrator says: You
walked over to the bench and set down your bag. It’s like they’re speaking
directly to the reader, and in some cases they are. Most writers, even the
best, will never use this POV, but I figured I’d mention it for fun.
