How to Choose a Point of View in Literature
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There are four types of point of view in literature, and choosing the right one for your novel is one of the most important decisions you’ll make.
First, good news: You’re actually only picking from three, because no one writes in Second Person, unless you’re looking to be very adventurous (in which case, go for it!). Second Person is “you.” So you’d be writing an entire novel from the perspective of the reader—“you.”
“You wake up in the morning and brush your teeth,” etc. Sound hard? YOU BET. That’s why virtually no fiction is written in Second Person—again, unless it’s very bold. Moving on.
Most likely, you’ll be choosing between First Person and Third Person, and then, if you choose Third Person, you’ll be further choosing between Omniscient Third and Close Third...but not really. More on that in a moment.
First, let’s get First Person out of the way.
First Person: The Narrator is a character.
In First Person fiction, a character inside the story is narrating. So the story is told from the perspective of that character.
“I woke up this morning and brushed my teeth.”
Many novels are written in First Person—I’m sure you can easily think of several. Right now I’m reading Raven Leilani’s fantastic novel Luster which is written in First Person.
The obvious pro of First Person is that you can really get deep into a character’s head and, by doing so, create an intimate experience for the reader.
The downside is that you are restricted to events that are observable by the narrator. The narrator doesn’t necessarily have to be there, but she has to know about it somehow.
If you want to write about a carnival and your first person narrator isn’t at the carnival, someone needs to tell her about it so that she can tell your reader about it.
If you want the reader to know what’s happening in another character’s mind, they need to tell your narrator about it—or she must suspect it. What you can’t do is jump around between first person narrators, unless you make it very clear to the reader that you’re doing so by assigning parts of the book to separate points of view.
Third Person Omniscient: The narrator is God
Also referred to as “Distant” Third Person (which is not exactly interchangeable with Omniscient but is close enough), it uses he/she/they: “He woke up this morning and brushed his teeth.”
What makes it “Omniscient’ is that this is a point of view in which your narrator knows all, can see it, and can report all.
In other words, the narrator is like God.
This point of view used to be more common in literature but has gone out of vogue in recent years.
Some authors still choose it, however.
In Craft Talk Book Club last month, we discussed how Brit Bennett uses Omniscient Third Person effectively in her incredible novel The Vanishing Half. Brit’s choice of omniscient allows her to explore a greater breadth of the reactions around race and identity than first person or a more restrictive close third person would have allowed. Since identity—how do we escape the identity we’re assigned at birth, and what is gained and lost when we attempt to define identity for ourselves—is the major theme of the book, this choice in point of view allows her to explore collective reactions (like on p. 64 of the hardcopy edition), a full section on the town’s reaction to a situation.
A risk of Omniscient Third Person is “head hopping”—jumping from one character’s internal life to another, which can leave the reader disoriented, or just not feeling connected to any particular character.
For this reason, if you choose to use omniscient third person, I’d only enter into 2-3 characters’ minds “at a time,” as in, in a given section of 4-5 pages. One of these might be your protagonist, one might be a secondary character, and one might be the town at large (like Brit did on the page I mention above).
If you try to squeeze more perspectives than these into a handful of pages, you may find that your narrative is too scattered.
Close (also called Limited) Third Person: The narrator is an outside observer but restricted to one person’s mind
This point of view in literature is a blend of First Person and Omniscient Third Person. If they had a baby, this would be it.
Close Third also uses he/she/they: “He woke up this morning and brushed his teeth.”
But unlike with Omniscient Third, with Close Third you want to stay inside your character’s perspective—almost like it’s First Person, just without using “I.”
Here is an example of the difference between Close Third and Omniscient Third:
Close Third: “He woke up and brushed his teeth. Ugh, he felt nauseous. He had hardly slept, and today was going to be a tiring one—that jerk Stephens had made him promise to show up to the sales meeting even though he wasn’t in sales anymore.”
Omniscient Third: “Tony woke up and brushed his teeth on his 418th day of work at P.T. Home Appliances, which itself was in its 40th year after being founded by Puck Timmons in 1922. Of the 3,000 employees who’d passed through its doors, Tony was, if not the brightest, the most irritable.”
Do you see the difference?
The Good News: With third person, you don’t actually have to choose
Now for the good news—you don’t actually have to choose whether you’re going to stick with omniscient or close if you’re writing in third person. You can do both.
What, Mary?!
Yes! You can. If fact, if you pick up a novel you love that’s written in third person, you’ll notice that the author does just this—she may write in close third but occasionally venture into omniscient, or write in omniscient but frequently move in to close.
It’s done all the time.
Here’s an example of a paragraph I just wrote that moves from close to omniscient:
She couldn't believe her luck—here he was, walking into the room and headed her direction. Around her, people minded their own business, seemingly unaware of his presence. One by one, they began to spot him, looking up and nudging each other. Everyone knew who Martin Peas was, and everyone's pulse quickened as they realized they were in the same room as him.
Let’s break that down:
CLOSE: She couldn't believe her luck—here he was, walking into the room and headed her direction.
CLOSE-ISH: Around her, people minded their own business, seemingly unaware of his presence. One by one, they began to spot him, looking up and nudging each other.
OMNISCIENT: Everyone knew who Martin Peas was, and everyone's pulse quickened as they realized they were in the same room as him.
The key is to make sure to segue rather than jump too abruptly.
Let’s take that paragraph we just looked at and imagine what it would be like if it didn’t have that middle transition part:
She couldn't believe her luck—here he was, walking into the room and headed her direction. Everyone knew who Martin Peas was, and everyone's pulse quickened as they realized they were in the same room as him.
Yikes. Too abrupt of a shift from one character’s internal experience to everyone’s internal experience (if you ask me—all of this is subjective).
In short, if you’re writing in third, you can move into and out of omniscience, but do so using a blur so that it doesn’t jarr your reader.
So what point of view in literature should you choose?
It depends on your goal.
Is your story really about the experience of one particular character? Then First Person might be best.
Is it about the experience of a group of people? Then you probably want to go with third.
I will say this—in general, third is the least restrictive and therefore the best default if you aren’t sure. Most novels these days are written in close third, too, so you’d be in good company.