She Said, I Said : A Definitive Guide to Point of View

I recently had cause to sit down and ponder the nature of points of view, and their pros and cons in different genres. A lot of us hit the default on point of view, but it’s actually a fundamental stylistic choice that can really help – or hurt – the story you’re writing.

Before we dive too much into the whys and why nots, a little explanation of the terminology: POV is essentially the voice of the narrator. There are three options for POV: First person (I, me), second person (you), and third person (he, she, they.) Each of those can be “limited” or “omniscient,” and each one can be present tense, past tense, or future tense. That gives you a lot of options to work with! The reality is that we almost never seen stories in second person or stories in future tense, however, because they’re a bit trick to work with.

The bulk of “traditional” fiction has been in third person omniscient past tense. That means that the narrator is outside of the characters, aware of the thoughts and motivations of all of the characters, maybe even of the past or future. Sometimes the narrator is “limited” – only in the head of one character, or only in the head of one character at a time.

More recently, first person present tense has been making huge strides, especially in the realm of young adult fiction. Almost every YA book you pick up is told from the present tense, and first person is rarely told in past tense, because the convention is that we’re hearing the story immediately as it’s being told.

So, what do we get from each of these POV styles – and what do we lose?

I recently published a novel called Command the Tides; I wrote the first draft many years ago, when I was in high school. It’s gone through not one but two complete edits since then, but something that stuck around was the point of view: it’s told in third person limited, past tense. During the second round of editing, I briefly played with turning it into first person. A lot of the fiction I was reading at the time was told in that voice, and I thought it might add a little punch.

Instead, I found that I was slicing through a lot of really valuable information about the world, because they weren’t details that I felt the main character would notice – it was too artificial to bring to the reader’s attention through the voice of the protagonist. Have you ever noticed how awkward it is when people try to describe themselves in first person narratives? Yuck. And don’t even get me started on the beauty of the landscape! I realized that a lot of fantasy is told in the third person for exactly that reason. There is a huge, dense, rich world out there, and sometimes that world is richer than the voice of a protagonist might allow. I’ve read some YA where the protagonist has waxed poetic about the shades of blue in the moonrise, and I’ve thought… gimme a break! She’s sixteen and being chased by bandits, you think she’s going to stop to admire the scenery? But with third person, you have the freedom to rejoice in the poetry of language even if your protagonist isn’t a classically trained intellectual.

First person does have a lot of strengths, though. I mentioned it’s very common in YA, and the reason for that is the brilliance of its immediacy. First person is happening NOW. It is in your face, in your breath, in a voice you can imagine in your own head. It is someone having a conversation with you, and that conversation is ongoing and mutual. The immediacy it gives you, though, is a pay-off for the narrow lens you’re forced to work with. You can, of course, have multiple first-person narratives interspersed throughout a single work, and you’ll often notice trilogies that start out with a single character, and branch out to multiple first person POVs as the series goes on (Divergent, for instance) as the story begins to demand more range.

So which POV is right for you? The answer is, of course, there is no answer. Every story is going to have a different aim and a different soul, and the POV will be a huge part of that. But I’m excited about a new POV that I’m experiencing a lot of joy working with – third person present tense. I mentioned earlier that third person is usually past tense, and first person is usually present tense. This is absolutely the case, but there’s no reason for it – it’s just the default of our conventions. Third person present tense gives you the freedom of a wide lense coupled with the immediacy of the knowledge that this is all happening RIGHT NOW. I used it for the first time in a novel called Wire Wings that I wrote in 2014, and I was blown away by what it allowed me to do. I don’t think I’ve ever created anything so… beautiful. And I think I’ll be using it a lot more in work to come.