What Point of View (POV) Should You Use for Your Novel?

Lesson 6 of "How to Finally Get Started on that Novel"

Art by Mariam Chagelishvili

Lesson 6 of 8 from “How to Finally Get Started on that Novel”

Point-of-view [POV] is like the air quality of a novel – it affects everything that happens and how you access it, and yet if it’s working properly, you likely don’t notice it at all.  I also find that it’s something newer writers struggle to control. In trying to find clear and useful breakdowns of the different POVS to point my students to, I’ve never quite found the thing I was looking for. So here it is!

Therefore, this is probably the most nuts-and-bolts of all of these lessons. I’m going to break down the various POVS, include some examples, and share ideas about when you might most want to use each. I do this because it’s a deceptively tricky part of crafting a narrative – often in an early draft, POV will leap all over the place without the author being fully in control of it.

What point of view (POV) should you use for your novel?

Let’s break them down real quick. 

First Person:

“I.” Usually with 1st, the main character is also the narrator. 

• Pros: You can share with the reader everything the narrator knows, including their innermost thoughts and feelings. As a writer, you can play with voice a lot in 1st person. (AND! You can play with having your narrator NOT share their innermost thoughts and feelings, or misdirect the reader – ye old unreliable narrator.) 

• Cons: You can only share with the reader what the narrator knows. It can be hard to write a story with a large scope.

1st person is a natural fit for: autofiction; mysteries; YA; coming-of-age stories; humor

A couple examples:

 If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.” - The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

As you can see, here the POV is key for establishing the voice of the novel, which is Holden’s wry, often unintentionally funny (I mean, Salinger knows it’s funny, but I think Holden does not) way of telling the story. 

Another example, from the YA novel The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins:

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

Katniss Everdeen weaves into her narration the background info we need to understand the world she lives in, a world she knows intimately. Sometimes this kind of narrator can be a useful tool for an author trying to invite the reader into a complicated story. 

I think of this as the “Dr Watson” kind of narrator. Remember how the Sherlock Holmes stories are actually narrated by Watson? He always needs things explained, so that we the readers can hear Holmes’ explanations… a brilliant narrative trick.

Second Person:

“You”

Don’t do this one, probably.

Third Person: 

“He/she/they.” 

With 3rd person, you also need to decide on the perspective, or narrative distance.

The most common iterations are: Third person limited (also called close third person), 3rd person omniscient, Multiple (or shifting) third person, and Free indirect.

Third Person limited closely follows one character’s POV, and has access into their head only. This is probably the most common POV in contemporary literature. It allows for intimacy with the POV character, but leaves room for the author’s voice and prose style.

For ex: 

Dudley's birthday - how could he have forgotten? Harry got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks. He found a pair under his bed and, after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on. Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.” -JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone 

We have access to Harry’s thoughts and only Harry’s thoughts, but there’s still a bit of narrative distance built in because it’s not first person.

Third Person omniscient is not much used in contemporary literature, but hey, it’s always an option. There is often a narrative voice that is a little bit outside of the story (i.e. not one of the characters) that access to the thoughts of everyone in the story. The voice of god (or maybe a town gossip), basically. It creates a sense of distance, but also can give a story a kind of epic feel.

For ex: 

Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 

Who is calling Darcy fine, tall, and handsome? Well, kind of everyone. And here, we know what the gentleman are saying, what the ladies are saying, as well as some background information we’re getting from who knows where, about his estate and whatnot.

Multiple 3rd person is different from omniscient because more choices have been made; usually in a multiple or shifting POV we have alternating sections chapters in close 3rd. Compared with first, this widens the scope, but still allows for intimacy with those POV characters.

For ex:  

Let’s look at Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin. At the end of Chapter One (which is in Sam’s POV): “Marx put on his coat–camel-colored, like Sadie’s. ‘Your friend is sick as hell. And maybe, a genius. How do you know him again?’” Sam, whose POV this chapter is in, is the one who knows Marx’s coat is like Sadie’s. He’s the one who sees everything through Sadie-colored glasses

The next line, the start of Chapter Two (which is in Sadie’s POV): “On the day Sadie first met Sam, she had been banished from her older sister Alice’s hospital room.” 

Free Indirect Multiple POV

This is kind of a combination of Omniscient and Limited, and therefore can harness the strengths of each. The writer has to have a lot of narrative control, however, in order to make this work and not feel sloppy, confusing, or like “head-hopping.” 

Brit Bennett uses this beautifully in The Vanishing Half. (I’ve highlighted yellow where this is omniscient, pink where it shifts to close third/Lou’s summarized speech):

Narrative Distance

Something else to think about is how close in the chosen POV you are, and from when the story is being told. 

For ex:

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since." 

-The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald 

This passage establishes that this is being told in retrospect, so that from the beginning of the book we know all the events of the story happened long ago and the narrator is recalling them afterwards.

“At the head of the entrance ramp I waited without hope of a ride…my thoughts zoomed pitifully.” - “Car Crash While Hitchhiking,” Denis Johnson

Even though this is also in past tense 3rd person limited, like Gatsby, here we are much closer to the events being described, which the narrator has not processed or figured out yet. 

So much of writing is about making choices and sticking with them. The reader wants to feel they are in the hands of a storyteller who will use their time well. A firmly established POV exudes narrative confidence. 

You can use any POV you want, but you should be in control of it, aware of what you’re doing, and conscious of why you’ve made this choice. What does the reader need to know? How do you want the reader to feel? Make sure your POV choices are laddering up to these narrative goals. 

Think about your intentions:

• Whose story do you want to tell? And how close to that story do you want to be? And/or, what will the reader need to be able to see the whole story?

• Are there parts of the story that you want to tell that the main character(s) wouldn’t have access to? Are there parts of the story you need to keep within the main character’s POV for the story to make sense (mystery, magic, misdirection, etc)? 

• How do you want the reader to feel?

Exercise:

Write the beginning of your novel in at least three different POVs. See what happens with each.

Share your observations below!

Up Next (Monday Nov 25) → Who is your ideal reader? And related to this, probably: What is your end goal and how can that inform what you end up writing? We’re going to get strategic. 

Amy Shearn is the author of five novels, including the forthcoming Animal Instinct, a queer exploration of divorce, sex, and surviving the pandemic. She works 1:1 with writers, teaches for the educational cooperative Writing Co-Lab and elsewhere, and writes a monthly newsletter called How to Get Unstuck.