How to choose a POV for your novel

If you aren't sure which is best for your story, the camera analogy might help.

There are some strong opinions out there about POV. I’ve heard people call first person POV “childish,” claiming “a truly skilled writer uses third person.” I’ve heard people call third person old-fashioned and too detached. “First person is the only way to really get inside a character’s mind.” And I’ve heard people call second person flat-out annoying. “It’s okay for a short story, but not for a whole book.” 

You might have a strong preference for one particular POV as a reader or as a writer, and that’s fine! Personally, I think it all depends on the story—because there’s a lot more to writing in different POVs than just switching up the pronouns.

Think about the effect the position of the camera can have on a scene in a movie. What are we framing? What do we want the audience to focus on? What’s in the frame, and what’s lurking just outside of the frame?

Let’s use the camera analogy to better understand the pros and cons of first, second, and third person, followed by a quick writing exercise you can do to help find the right POV for your novel.

FIRST PERSON

In the first person perspective, the protagonist is behind the camera, and she knows it. She’s guiding the reader through her world, and they see what she sees. This point of view is limited to the character’s experience, and that includes her opinions, her worldview, and her biases.

A good first person narrator draws the reader into the main character’s headspace. Even if we, as readers, have little to nothing in common with the protagonist and wouldn’t make the choices they make, we get where they’re coming from, so we believe their perspective and understand their actions. 

Example 1

Someone’s following me. I hide in the library stacks, trying to listen for footsteps over the sound of blood rushing in my ears. After a few seconds, I realize I’m being paranoid and try to relax. Then I notice a misshelved book and almost have a freaking heart attack. What was this librarian thinking? I pull out the book, intent on fixing her mistake—and that’s when I find the note.

In this example, the main character’s assumptions of what is true change twice in just a few lines. She starts out declaring that she’s being followed as a matter of fact. Then she realizes she’s being paranoid, implying that she was wrong. Then she finds what is clearly an ominous note meant to indicate that she is in fact being followed. The voice of this character really comes out in the line about noticing a misshelved book and almost having a freaking heart attack.

As readers, we automatically assume the character is speaking in hyperbole (she’s not actually about to have a heart attack), and certain aspects of her personality are revealed: she loves books, she spends a lot of time in libraries and knows the shelving system, and she’s anal retentive enough that a misshelved book horrifies her even more than the idea of a potential stalker lurking in the stacks. And the line “what was this librarian thinking?” is addressed to the reader, because in first person, the main character is aware of the camera.

Some books take this further, addressing the reader directly, even referring to the reader as “you,” but most first person narrators are indirect. It’s part of the conversational tone, the understanding that first person POV isn’t purely a character’s thought process. It’s a narration, telling a story with the understanding that there is an audience there to hear it. You and the protagonist are in this story together.

Let’s look at the same scene in third person.

THIRD PERSON (limited)

Someone is following her. She hides in the library stacks, the blood rushing in her ears covering the sound of muffled footsteps. After a few seconds, she decides she’s being paranoid and turns her attention to the shelf. Spotting a misshelved book, she lets out a gasp of horror worthy of a B movie star. She reaches for the book—and that’s when she finds the note.

This example shows a different perspective. For one thing, in this scene the main character can’t hear the footsteps—but unlike in the first person example, the reader knows the footsteps are there. The main character’s exaggerated reaction to the misshelved book isn’t an indirect comment and a wink to the reader. Instead, the narrator observes she lets out a gasp of horror worthy of a B movie star. That’s probably not the way the protagonist herself would describe her own reaction, but it does give us a sense of her personality from a slightly detached perspective. 

Do the two examples have to be so different?

Truth? I absolutely could have swapped out the pronouns and not made most of these other changes. But I want to highlight some of the things you can and can’t do in these perspectives. And one really interesting difference between first and third person is that with first person, we understand the main character’s thoughts are colored by opinion and bias—they may even be outright lying, as with unreliable narrators. It adds a layer to the reading experience, because you’re constantly looking for the objective reality through the lens of the protagonist’s subjective view.

But in third person, when we get a glimpse of the main character’s internal thoughts—those are her actual, unfiltered thoughts in her head. It’s what she’s thinking, not what she’s telling you she’s thinking. Because unlike our first person protagonist, our third person limited protagonist is unaware of the camera. 

THIRD PERSON (omniscient)

If we’re sticking with the camera analogy, then the omniscient narrator is like a security guard monitoring footage of the entire cast of characters without their knowledge.

She suspects someone is following her. She hides in the library stacks, blood rushing in her ears as the footsteps grow closer, then fall silent. After a few seconds, she decides she’s being paranoid. Turning her attention to the shelf, she spots a misshelved book and gasps in despair. Meanwhile, the stalker lurking in the shadows watches in amusement, waiting for her to find the note. 

The omniscient narrator knows everything, every thought, every action, of every character. The narrator is also more distant. In third person limited, the story started “Someone is following her.” As with our first person example, this is stated as a matter of fact, because the main character believes it to be true.

But in this example, the narrator tells us “She suspects someone is following her.” Because in reality, our main character doesn’t know for a fact whether someone is following her or not. And of course, with an omniscient narrator we can hear the thoughts of other characters and see the entire scene. The camera is as far back as it can go and everything is in the frame.

Now, let’s look at second person. The camera’s all yours.

SECOND PERSON

Someone is following you. You hide in the library stacks, blood rushing in your ears as you strain to listen for the sound of footsteps. After a few seconds, you decide you’re being paranoid. You spot a misshelved book and despair for humanity. You reach for the book—and that’s when you find the note. YOU’RE NEXT!

Second person is intimate—maybe too intimate. It can almost feel claustrophobic. And that can be great for, say, a horror novel, or any story where you want to ramp up suspense and make the reading experience uncomfortably visceral. Think of those found footage horror movies like The Blair Witch project—it’s that same shaky, unsettling feeling.

Second person is also maybe the most limited of all the POVs. You can only see what you see, you can only think your thoughts, and that layer of work readers have to do with first person narrators in trying to discern factual truth from what the protagonist believes or claims to be true is stripped away.

Many genres have an informal “standard” POV and tense. Epic fantasies are often multiple third person limited or omniscient, past tense, because that works best for ensemble casts in big, sweeping worlds and it has a classic storytelling feel with a sense of destiny or inevitability. Dystopians and post-apocalyptic stories are often first person, present tense because that evokes a sense of immediacy and urgency and this sense that events are unfolding as the reader turns the pages and the ending isn’t set in stone.

But of course, there are exceptions. The best way to pick a POV for your story is to direct it as a movie in your mind. What choices are you making? What do you want the viewer to see, and what do you want to keep hidden? That, more than genre, is an indication of which POV is right for you.

Writing exercise

Choose a short scene from the book you’re currently working on. If you haven’t started writing your book yet, pick a scene you love from another book. Imagine you’re a director and you’re about to shoot this scene. Think about what you’d do with the camera to capture what’s happening to the protagonist on the page. 

Now, rewrite the scene twice—each time, in a different perspective. So if your scene is in first person, rewrite it in third and in second. The point of this exercise isn’t just swapping pronouns. Remember, you’re the director. You’re going to do something different with the camera in every shot. Zoom in, pull back, close in on another character, try a new angle. Your scene should still hit the same beats, but let yourself play with all the other elements. You’ll end up uncovering layers to the scene that you might not have realized were there.

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The posts I publish here will remain free. But I have a series called Ask the Editor, which will publish every Friday. The short pitch: Dear Abby for writers.

The longer pitch: paid subscribers ($5/month or $50/year, cancel anytime) will receive a link to a form where they can submit pretty much anything within a two page limit. Things like…

• Queries

• Synopses

• Pages from their novel

• Questions about writing or traditional publishing

• A current problem or situation in their writing journey (ie: trying to decide if an agent is a schmagent, disagreeing with beta feedback, etc)

• A rant about this whole “trying to get published” endeavor to a sympathetic ear

Every Friday, I’ll respond to/critique as many submissions as I can and publish them together in one post. Because they’ll be behind a paywall, there’s some privacy—your query, pages, or rant about that one really horrible rejection won’t be online for editors to discover when they Google you.

That’s it! I hope to see you over there. :)

Michelle