Point of View and Narration

As you work on brainstorming story ideas for this week – NaNo Prep 101 has some exercises that might help if you’re stuck – I’d like you to consciously think about how you plan to narrate the story, and from whose perspective.

I bring this up because while ghostwriting romance, I’ve been reading more romance to get in the zone, so to speak. It seems to be a popular convention of the romance genre to alternate point of view from hero to heroine to give both sides of the story. It’s a bit jarring to go from epic fantasy to a story being told from two sides where “I” means different people in different chapters. Admittedly, I’ve seen it done in both first person (I went, I did, etc.) and third person (she went, he did, etc.), usually third person limited.

If that last sentence didn’t make much sense, this is the blog post for you.

Point of View

First, second, and third person are grammatical terms often unknown to English-speakers, describing how many people there are considered to be in the conversation. First person is “I” in the singular or “we” in the plural, and in a narrative told in first person, the story is being witnessed directly by the reader through the narrator’s eyes. The narrator is the first person in the story, and the most immediately relevant. I would say that the hero is the narrator, but I’ve read stories where the narrator is the hero’s sidekick, so even though it’s told in first person (“I went to talk to the hero”), the narrator can be relating the story of their part in someone else’s adventure. The narrator is definitely a main character.

Second person is when someone else is the key relevant person. (Second-person pronouns are “you” and “you [all]”.) This is often a very hard perspective to write, because “you” are the subject, and “you” are the reader. The point of view is that of whomever the narrator is addressing. “You’re in a bit of a bind, stuck researching this stuff at this late hour. It’s a good thing you don’t have to work tomorrow, so you can sleep then. By the time you’re done, if you never have to look at English grammar again, it’ll be too soon.” This inserts the reader into the story directly, but is not common in fiction. It’s entirely possible to have the pronoun “you” in narration of first-person or third-person styles, and many authors do address the reader directly, so don’t mistake that for second-person narration. (Tip: skip second person until you’ve spent some time researching how to do it well; it takes practice and effort.)

Third person is yet another person being discussed by the narrator as they address the reader. The subject is the main character, referred to by name or pronoun (“he”, “she”, “it”, or “they”) . Grammarly has a good way to think about it: “If you look at a sentence [about Mike] and think “Mike isn’t me,” you can eliminate the first person. You can also think “I’m not talking to Mike,” so that eliminates the second person. You’re left with the third person.“

Third person is the most common form of narration, and it comes in slightly different styles. Third-person omniscient narration is when the narrator knows everything there is about the characters, setting, plot, and antagonist, and provides all characters’ thoughts and feelings throughout, giving access to all sides of the story. This can be very helpful if much of the plot is internal monologue or information that isn’t shared between the characters, but it can also give a lot of things away.

Third-person limited (or subjective) is the next, and my personal favorite. This has the narrator essentially looking through the eyes of the character whose perspective is focused on, and during the time the narrator may share that one character’s thoughts and feelings, the narration is limited to that one character. This prevents the villain in disguise from being given away to the reader the moment the hero meets them, and focuses in on how that one character sees things. Note that this doesn’t require you to use only one character’s point of view, only that you pick and choose which character is the focus at any given time. It can also be used to great effect to hide things from the reader and the hero at the same time. If only the hero’s perspective is viewed, the plotting of the bad guy has to be discovered over the course of the story.

There is also third person objective, where the narrator knows nothing but what is visible to the eye, as if they were looking over the shoulder of the main character (outside the main character’s head). This is classically where you might see a lot of “he seemed” or “she looked” sentences, where the appearance of the characters is the only determination of their feelings, and none of their thoughts are known. This isn’t as popular for the obvious reason that there’s only so much you can tell about what’s going on from how things appear. Most people aren’t so easy to read that you can immediately tell what they’re thinking from their facial expression, and so this form of narration leaves out a lot of the pieces that might be integral to the plot.

Which Point of View is for me?

I’m going to preface this answer by saying that I’m biased. First-person narration is a much more modern style, and I’m still not used to it. If you look at classics, you’re going to find third person narration. The only book I’d consider a classic that isn’t third person – off the top of my head, at least – is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the first-person narration is specifically because it is epistolary fiction, a story told in letter format. Each letter is written much as anyone might write a letter, from their own perspective, with “I” as the subject. I grew up on fantasy and science fiction novels by authors like Anne McCaffrey, Katherine Kerr, Isaac Asimov, Tamora Pierce, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. All of these authors write in third person. So my personal bias is definitely going to lean toward third person no matter what story you are telling. Third person is also a “safe” choice for all genres. If you’re planning to try and pitch the story to an agent or publisher, you definitely want to make sure you aren’t picking a style of narration to which they’re going to object. There are times a publisher will ask an author to rewrite a first-person book in third-person style, but I don’t think any have ever required a book written in third changed.

Now, perhaps the better question given my bias is ‘when should I not use third person?’ instead. I would say that you need to ask yourself whose story is being told, and follow a few questions to their natural conclusion. Are you only focused on one character? If so, first person will work for you. If not, you risk confusing the reader when you start telling a new chapter from the first-person perspective of a new character and there’s little to no indication that “I” now means someone different. This is one of the fastest ways to break the flow of the story for me, or any reader; I reach the point where I realize “I” in the narration means someone new and I’m confused, popping me out of the narrative entirely until I can wrap my head around the change. I have read wonderfully written stories in first person that killed me when they suddenly switched POV to someone new. If it was just to set up a sequel, especially, that ends my interest in that series. (Doing anything that puts marketing over the story itself is going to be a hard pass.)

If you do have only one primary character’s perspective, and you told the story in first-person narration, would you miss any important plot points or details? Sometimes the main character is at the center of the action throughout the story. Consider J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit compared to The Lord of the Rings. In the former, Bilbo is the only perspective we read. When he reconnects with his friends after being separated, he needs to ask them what happened to them, and likewise tell them what he encountered. We don’t read the dwarves’ perspective in parallel while they’re separated, but because they are reunited, the reader is able to learn what happened and not miss any plot points. In the latter series, there are nine main characters, and the story bounces around between them based on who is where. In The Two Towers, they get split up and now we read alternating chapters between each grouping of characters (Frodo/Sam, Merry/Pippin, etc). With a story like that, things would get confusing very fast if Tolkien had tried to write in first person. If you have a cast of main characters such as this, or if you are using more than one character to convey the differences between opposing factions (as in G.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones), you should probably avoid first person.

First person narration is most necessary when you require the protagonist’s thoughts on the events and other characters, and the immediacy of having the reader in the action, but you can accomplish this with third person limited narration as well. It can be hard to choose whether to write in first-person or third-person. Some genres do actually require a first-person point of view, like Frankenstein. No one writes a letter about themself in third person. Maybe for comedic effect in a single sentence, but that’s about it. There are also books written as fictional autobiographies, but as is the case with any autobiography, it is being told from the point of view of the person, thus needs to be in first-person perspective. If in doubt, try picking up a few popular books in your chosen genre. See what publishers liked for those. The conventions are changing, and so you have a lot more control over this than you might have even twenty years ago.

I generally recommend third-person over first-person narration, both because I’m biased but also because I think that bias is not unheard of in the wider community. Are you trying to appeal to all ages? You might want to make sure everyone in that wider audience is okay with something other than third. There are conventions about how a thriller is written compared to a sci-fi novel, and those conventions are where you want to start, because in turn those conventions become reader expectations. There are very good reasons to break with reader expectations, but for the most part, you want to satisfy your readers, not push them out of their comfort zone.

Next Up: Conceptualization!