What Is Point of View in a Novel?

What is point of view?

The point of view is usually the first thing a reader encounters in a story.

A novel is generally written in one of these three POVs:

First-person point of view
Third-person limited point of view
Third-person omniscient point of view

A lesser-used POV choice is:

Second-person point of view

Let’s look a little more deeply at these perspectives:

First-person point of view:

A few books you might recognize that were written in first-person POV include The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins—brilliantly written in Katniss Everdeen’s point of view, Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt—a captivating National Book Award Winner, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan.

First person makes use of the “I” narrator, which is a popular choice for authors these days as it works well to draw in a reader and leads naturally toward deep POV, which is something readers appreciate, getting deeply into a character’s head.

One difficulty of writing in first-person POV is that you generally need to stay there, meaning that you can’t create scenes or look at perspectives of other characters, otherwise you would be stepping out of first-person perspective to do so.

Third-person limited point of view:

The third-person point of view is “he” or “she” and it can be either limited or omniscient.

When you as a writer compose your book or story in third-person limited, you stick to the perspective of one character at a time.

You don’t necessarily have to stay in the character’s POV through the whole book, though. You can shift to the limited perspective of another character in various ways, such as writing one chapter in one character’s POV and the next chapter in another character’s perspective.

Popular books written in third-person limited include the Wrinkle in Time quintet by Madeleine L’Engle and the Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson.

Third-person omniscient point of view:

The third-person omniscient perspective used to be much more popular, but contemporary novels today usually stick to third-person limited or first-person. One reason for this is that third-person omniscient can be a little disorienting, involve “head-hopping” if a writer isn’t careful, and keep the reader from engaging deeply in the story.

A few cases of third-person omniscient that was done very well include The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien and the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. Both of these are series that have stood the test of time, having been written decades ago but still being discovered and loved by readers today.

Second-person point of view:

Writing in this perspective isn’t a common choice, as it can be tiring for the reader to constantly be reading “you” throughout a full-length novel.

The one exception is choose-your-own-adventure books, which can be fun for young readers, and an interesting type of story to write if it’s up your alley (or if you can’t decide how your story should end).

Nonfiction essays can also be effectively written in second person, but we’re talking about fiction in this post.

Why is point of view important?

A reader will notice the point of view (POV) within the first page, sometimes the first paragraph or sentence. Your readers will note whether the story is told in a first-person or third-person point of view.

It sometimes takes a little longer in a third-person point of view for a reader to determine whether the story is written in third-person omniscient or limited perspective, but they’ll figure it out pretty soon.

And what you don’t want to do at this point is confuse them!

In my editing, I’ve noticed one of the most common errors of a new writer is in point of view.

POV slips (also called “head hopping”) are clunky; they can confuse your reader or make a reader question what’s going on.

A good POV is basically invisible. It’s intuitive and doesn’t have the reader confused or questioning.

I recently read a middle-grade novel by a first-time author, and his character POVs were all over the place. It was like he committed every point-of-view crime in the book, literally!

Sometimes the story veered into the perspective of one of the characters but usually he wrote as if the three main characters were all one entity, so as a reader, I didn’t get a real feel for (or connection with) any of the characters.

Then some chapters were suddenly written in the point of view of someone who might have been the villain but it wasn’t really clear.

The main takeaway I had from the book was that it felt like it was written by someone who assumed a good place to start was by writing books for children … but had never read a children’s book before, or any books or articles on how to write in a good POV.

This leads to the question …

Which point of view should you write in?

The main thing to keep in mind when it comes to choosing the right point of view for your novel is this:

Choose your point of view (POV) with intention.

Different points of view highlight different aspects of story or allow the author to focus on different aspects of the story. As such, it really is the author’s choice.

But if you’ve chosen one style just because it’s easy or it’s the only thing you know how to do, there’s a good chance you’re doing it wrong …

Or at least that you should spend a bit more time familiarizing yourself with the other POV options and good books written in those perspectives.

This is the first post in a series I’m writing on the primary elements of writing novels and other works of fiction, including short stories.

As a freelance editor, I offer manuscript critiques, and point of view is one of the more problematic issues I often see in debut novels and works by first-time authors.

This series is aimed at helping aspiring authors improve in the important elements of writing fiction, enabling your editors to focus on other aspects of your novel. 😊