apply-point-of-view-strategy

Apply Point of View Strategy

Select and execute the appropriate narrative point of view — first person, third person limited, third person omniscient, or second person — based on the story's intimacy requirements, narrative distance goals, and structural needs, and apply the chosen POV consistently throughout the manuscript.

Why This Is Best Practice

Adopted by: John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" — the canonical academic text on narrative technique — devotes significant attention to POV as the fundamental technical decision in fiction. Henry James's prefaces (collected as "The Art of the Novel") established the theory of the "central consciousness" that underlies third limited. The majority of MFA fiction workshops treat POV selection as the first major craft decision; POV mistakes (inconsistency, inappropriate choice, violation of chosen POV rules) are among the most common manuscript problems noted by editors. Impact: POV is the contract between writer and reader about whose consciousness we inhabit and how much access we have to inner life. Violating the contract (head-hopping — moving between characters' POVs without clear breaks; omniscient narrator introducing unknowable information in a first-person narrative) breaks immersion. Choosing the wrong POV (a story about emotional isolation narrated in distant third omniscient; a thriller told in first person when the protagonist's knowledge must be withheld) creates structural problems that rewriting in a different POV solves.

Steps

1. Understand the four POV options and their properties

First person (I):

• Properties: maximum intimacy; direct access to the narrator's thoughts, voice, and interpretation; narrative unreliability possible; limited to what the narrator knows, observes, or can reasonably infer
• Best for: strong, distinctive voice; unreliable narrator stories; coming-of-age; memoir-adjacent fiction; stories where the narrator's perception is the subject
• Limitations: cannot show scenes the narrator doesn't witness without introducing contrived information; less narrative flexibility; cannot show what the narrator doesn't know without signaling ignorance
• Examples: "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Scout's limited but powerful perspective), "The Catcher in the Rye" (Holden's voice is the book)

Third person limited (he/she/they):

• Properties: follows one character's consciousness; access to that character's inner thoughts and emotional experience; can describe the character from the outside while still accessing inner life
• Best for: the most versatile POV; broad compatibility with genre and literary fiction; allows more narrative flexibility than first person while maintaining intimacy
• Limitations: same knowledge limitations as first person — the narrative cannot know what the focal character doesn't know
• Examples: most commercial and literary fiction; Harry Potter (Harry's limited POV); "The Road" (the father's perspective)

Third person omniscient:

• Properties: the narrator knows everything; can access any character's consciousness; can stand outside time and comment on history and outcome; maximum narrative flexibility
• Best for: multi-character epic narratives; historical fiction; satirical fiction where the narrator's commentary is part of the voice; stories where the cultural or social context is as important as individual characters
• Limitations: distance from individual characters; must be managed carefully to avoid "head-hopping" (confusing movement between characters); the omniscient narrator voice must be consistent and distinctive
• Examples: Tolstoy's novels; "Middlemarch"; many 19th-century novels; "Beloved" (Toni Morrison uses omniscient with deep psychological access)

Second person (you):

• Properties: the reader is addressed directly; creates unusual immediacy or dissociation; the protagonist is "you"
• Best for: interactive fiction; specific literary effects (a character dissociating from themselves; choose-your-own-adventure); rarely used in full-length fiction
• Limitations: can feel gimmicky; maintains reader engagement only when the choice is integral to the effect; difficult to sustain
• Examples: Italo Calvino's "If on a winter's night a traveler"; Bright Lights, Big City (Jay McInerney)

2. Select based on the story's intimacy and knowledge requirements

Decision framework:

• Does the story require maximum intimacy with one character's voice and perception? → First person
• Does the story require intimacy but flexibility for external description? → Third limited
• Does the story follow multiple POV characters whose inner lives are all important? → Third limited with multiple POVs (separate chapters or clearly marked breaks) OR omniscient
• Does the story's social or historical context matter as much as individual characters? → Third omniscient
• Does the story require withholding information from the reader that the POV character possesses? → Third limited or omniscient with a narrator who can editorialize

The knowledge constraint test: write a key scene in the story. Does the POV character need to not know something that makes the plot work? If the POV character's ignorance is necessary for the plot, the POV choice must accommodate that ignorance without feeling contrived.

3. Maintain POV consistency — avoid head-hopping

Head-hopping: moving between characters' inner thoughts within the same scene or without clear scene breaks; the most common POV error in manuscript submissions

What head-hopping looks like:

Sarah felt a cold rush of fear. Tom's smile widened as he thought 
about how easy this would be. She wondered if he knew she was afraid.

(The reader is in Sarah's consciousness, then in Tom's consciousness "he thought about", then back in Sarah's — this is head-hopping)

How to avoid it:

• In any given scene, pick one character's consciousness
• To switch POV characters, use a section break, chapter break, or explicit transition
• In third limited: physical observation ("his smile widened") is acceptable; accessing another character's inner thoughts ("Tom thought about how easy this would be") is not

4. Match the narrative distance to the scene's emotional requirements

Within the chosen POV, narrative distance can be adjusted:

• Close third (deep POV): the narration adopts the character's diction, thought patterns, and emotional register; feels like first person without "I"
• Medium third: some distance; neutral diction; character's thoughts reported clearly but narrator voice distinct
• Distant third: authorial voice more prominent; character observed from outside; less interior access

Adjust distance deliberately for effect:

• Pull close for emotional scenes: maximum identification between reader and character
• Pull back for summary or transition: accelerating through less important moments
• Distant narrator for ironic effect: the narrative knows more than the character; this creates dramatic irony

Common Mistakes

• Starting in first person then switching to third: a decision to change POV mid-manuscript means rewriting from the beginning; commit to the choice before starting and test it with 10 pages before committing to the full manuscript
• Using omniscient to avoid research: omniscient doesn't mean arbitrary; an omniscient narrator who visits one character's consciousness for a page then another's, then stops to editorially explain the historical context, then visits a third character — without the patterns being consistent — produces confusion, not freedom
• Third limited with omniscient intrusions: knowing the story too well as the author and accidentally including information the POV character couldn't know; this is an editing and consistency problem that requires scene-by-scene POV auditing

When NOT to Use

• Non-fiction narrative (memoir, personal essay, literary journalism): these forms have their own voice and perspective conventions derived from their truth-telling obligations rather than fictional POV craft; while the techniques overlap, the governing considerations are different.