Continuing the Writer’s Digest series on mistakes writers make, Moriah Richard adds not understanding point of view to the list. “Let’s take a few minutes to familiarize ourselves with the rules of POV so that you can up-level the quality of your work—and even learn how to break a rule or two in the process,” she writes.
The easiest way to fix this mistake is understanding which POV works best for you.
- First Person. “This POV limits writers in the way that your story can only see as far as your character can; if they don’t know something, your reader can’t really know it either,” Richards explains. “It’s a great tool to use if you’re employing an unreliable narrator or unraveling a mystery or both.”
- Second Person. “Second-person POV is when the reader becomes a character in the text and most often uses you/your/you’re pronouns,” Richards says. “This POV is perhaps the one least used in traditional publishing. Why? It’s extremely hard to do well.”
- Third Person Limited. This POV “gives you, the writer, distance from your characters while still being able to dip into their mind,” Richards notes. “This will give you more space as an author, since you can have your reader see the character from a broader vantage point. But like with first-person, this POV uses your character as the story’s filter, so everything that they think and feel is right at the surface of the story.”
- Third Person Omniscient. “This is a really popular choice for people who have huge casts of characters and/or complicated plots, because it allows you to move the reader from one part of the story to another in a way that makes sense and keep things streamlined,” Richards explains. :This will give you the ability to pick and choose what your reader is looking at at any given moment; however, it also means that you will have to be diligent to make sure that every scene, every moment you dip into a new character’s mind is pertinent to the story.”
