Point of View: It's WAY more than 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

Is it first or third person? Past or present tense?

As you'll see in this week's podcast episode, Point of View is about way more than this.

See more here:

A story’s global Point of View includes the technical choices writers make to deliver the story to the reader. The POP premise and Narrative Device suggest Point of View combinations that create the effect of the story told by the Author to the single Audience member.

Person refers to the vantage point from which the written story is presented the reader.

- First Person: I (or we) wrote a story.
- Second Person: You wrote a story.
- Third Person: Alex (or she or he or they) wrote a story.

Tense distinguishes the timeframe of the story.

- Past: I wrote a scene.
- Present: You write (or are writing) a scene.
- Future: Alex will write a scene.

Mode: The final technical choice focuses on how the information is presented. This is the storytelling Mode.

Showing is an objective and immediate mode that creates the effect of being present and observing the events of the story. Here are some examples.

- First Person: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Second Person: Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
- Third Person: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín, or “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway

Telling is a subjective mode that readers experience as if someone or something is collecting, collating, and sharing the events and circumstances of the story.

- First Person: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, or Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
- Second Person: “How to Be an Other Woman” by Lorrie Moore.
- Third Person: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, Animal Farm by George Orwell, or Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

[captainnolan]

I recently read the Maltese Falcon and it was interesting that you get almost no (and perhaps it is none at all) information about what any of the characters are thinking. The story is told through observations of what the characters are doing and saying; and the reader has to figure out the characters motivations based on behavior and dialogue.

[captainnolan]

It seems like it would be better to talk of the "author" as the person writing the story, and the "Narrator" as the persona (or lens) that the author 'hires' to tell the story through. That is, the author 'hires' a "narrator" to tell the story (and not, the author hires and "author" to tell the story).

[captainnolan]

The title of the story contains a double meaning that sheds light on the POV. The "Eye Witness" (is Struthers) and the "I" Witness (is Cappelli).

[KPDavis-author]

Sure is a lot of jargon. Visual reminders would help. I got lost immediately.

[tomlewis]

I agree that breaking the fourth wall must be done very cautiously as well as very gently. And as infrequently as possible.

What I do not agree with is that it will automatically pull SAM out of her fictive dream. If done properly, I don't think that is necessarily what will happen.

I use breaking the fourth wall in a manner not covered here. It allows first-person narration to be conversational, by which I mean rather than the narrator broadcasting blindly out into a void, not knowing who SAM might even be, or if anyone is even listening, they are targeting SAM directly as a known entity, the way one might tell a friend a story over a beer in their favorite bar together. In this way, 'conversational' becomes a particular kind of narrative device.

This has the effect of making SAM feel included and welcomed. An example of not doing this might be a sentence in narrative such as, 'I think that's a good idea', which is simply internal monologue said in narration and not said in dialogue.

But if that sentence is changed to, 'You know, I think that's a good idea', (again, this is not said in dialogue, it is said in internal monologue in narration) this implies that the narrator has made an immediate realization and that they are sharing that thought directly with SAM.

Since in first-person, all information comes to SAM via the inside of the viewpoint character's thinking, when they break the fourth wall in this manner it does not change anything, and it therefore does not pull SAM out of her fictive dream. She is still getting the exact same story info told to her directly from the narrator, which is how she gets all information from a first-person narrator.

So a subtle switch to second person and back delivers the same story information in a manner no different from how it is delivered in first person, with the added benefit of it being conversational, and fitting that particular narrative device. That does not have the ability to pull SAM out of the story. It doesn't carry that risk.

A way to make this work is to include a gentle break of the fourth wall very early in the story, and then maybe one or two more placed strategically in the first or second chapter, but only if that is appropriate, and where it is appropriate. This establishes for SAM that 'the viewpoint character is speaking directly to me', which she will only understand subconsciously, but she will still understand it.

Then, it's power steering all the rest of the way. SAM will feel shoulder to shoulder with the viewpoint character all the way to the end.