Point of view

One of the most important questions you can ask yourself while writing a story is what point of view it's going to be in. Do you want to speak through the main character in the first person? Have a limited third person to speak about the main character? What about an omnipotent third person who knows the thoughts and feelings and motivations of every single character in the story? You'd probably know long beforehand if you were going to do this, but you could even use the second person to create a choose your own adventure style book, or perhaps a very artsy and trippy experience.

I don't remember where exactly I heard it, but someone once told me that the easiest way to decide is to decide whether or not you want someone to feel something while they are reading your story. If you want them to experience the story, to feel the emotions and fears of the main character and the things happening around them, then you use the first person. If you want the reader to simply experience the story, to see events unfolding and experience the world, then you use the third person.

That's certainly a good way to think about it. If you're not sure which you want to use, that's a really good rule of thumb, and I don't think there's anyone in the world who would fault you for following it. But it is of course not the only way of going about it. Quite simply, if you are predisposed to one or the other, following it is perfectly alright. Me personally, I love first person. Seeing things through the eyes of a single person is really natural writing for me, which is admittedly probably due to my love of shorter character lists, but the point remains.

I would say that the more difficult decision to make is a limited versus an omnipotent third person. A limited perspective keeps things a surprise or suspenseful, because the reader doesn't know everything that is going on at all times or what ever single character is thinking at every moment. However, writing a limited third person perspective is surprisingly difficult. Being the omnipotent narrator means that you always know what's happening. You can describe the thoughts and motivations behind every action as it happens. There's never a moment where you have to wonder what is happening. Which, depending on what you're writing, is perfectly viable. But for a murder mystery, for instance, you couldn't possibly choose a worse perspective.

And of course, like I said, second person narratives are used almost exclusively for choose your own adventure novels. I suppose it would be possible to intentionally use it in a more standard novel, perhaps a dystopian future story, that is intentionally written to confuse the reader, to make them feel strange and uncomfortable and leave them with a very drugged out feeling by the end of the story. I'm not sure I would ever write anything like that, or read it for that matter, but it would certainly be an interesting idea, if it hasn't been done already.

I don't write a whole lot of first person stories on this blog, partially because I write so frequently posts like these, that are legitimately me talking about things. But I also don't like to do it because of how short the things I write are. If I'm going to write in first person, I want the reader to have the time they need to get to know the person talking. To really understand the ways they think, their biases, their world views. That's difficult to do in five hundred words. Not impossible, of course, but difficult. And so I frequently choose to write in the third person.

Either way you do it, just remember to be consistent. Especially with those two different third persons. Any change in point of view is incredibly disorienting, which can be used to your advantage, but it must be intentional. Any accidental change can ruin the flow of the entire story. But just rereading the story once through should be able to fix that kind of problem.

In theory.