Creative Writing Point Of View

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This time, I’ll limit the point of view to Mary’s perspective only: “Did you find your keys? In modern fiction, this technique is the preferred way of telling a story with multiple characters.

Examples: If you need multiple perspectives to tell your story you might use multiple POV or experiment with third person omniscient.

In this point of view, the reader becomes an outsider looking in on the story as it’s told from the main character’s perspective using he/she/they.

Although the story is told from the character’s perspective, it’s told in the author’s voice (though there is one exception to this which we’ll get to in a moment! There are three types of third person: Third Person Omniscient, Third Person Limited, and Deep Point of View.

This places the reader directly into the story as though they are the main character and has a very engaging effect.

Let’s look at an example from Leo Tolstoy’s short story trio, Yes !

There is another technique for this which is more popular and common modern fiction, which we’ll get to in the last section. We experience everything from Mary’s POV and only know what’s going on inside her head. It uses third person pronouns he/she/they, but instead of using the author’s voice the story is told in hero’s voice. The second brings you into Kali’s head by removing “interruptions” by the author like “she wondered” or “she knew.” The second example also uses more of Kali’s voice to reveal her thoughts, feelings, and perceptions–it’s almost as though she is the narrator, yet we stay in third person point of view.

Examples of third person omniscient novels: by Jane Austen. Unlike omniscient POV which is limitless, in this POV we are “limited” to Mary’s perspective. This brings the reader deep into the hero’s head and allows them to experience the story through the hero, feeling what they feel. Kali’s fidgety impatience had driven the details from her memory. This point of view can be challenging to write and is still emerging in fiction, but it’s quickly gaining popularity in the writing world because of the intimacy it creates between the reader and character.

The narrator might even slip into second person occasionally and address the reader (a huge no-no in modern fiction! Omniscient point of view is completely unlimited, and pretty much anything goes. All of the jumping around can be disorienting to the reader and leave them confused about whose story this is supposed to be.

But what if you need the perspectives of multiple characters to tell your story? Deep point of view is a style of writing that is beginning to grow in popularity.