Select your viewpoint character with care

Every story is told from someone’s perspective. This someone is known as the viewpoint character.

For example, in “The Matrix” movie series, the story is seen through the perspective of Neo, the tales’ hero. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” it’s through the perspective of Nick Carraway, a bond salesman who is Gatsby’s neighbor. Usually the story’s hero is the viewpoint character. Sometimes this character is referred to as the POV character.

The viewpoint character does not have to be the story’s main character – or even a character in the story, however.

How do you decide who will be the viewpoint character? Ask yourself which character:
• Faces key decisions that must be shown in the story? You must show how these choices are arrived at to move along your plot, so this character is a good choice to be the viewpoint character.
• Makes the best observer? Sometimes the main character facing significant choices doesn’t have the ability to make the right decision; in such a story, your viewpoint character is showing how the main character made the wrong call.
• Serves as a surrogate for the author? This character usually is the author living a fantasy. Making him the viewpoint character can result in a melodramatic story.
• Serves as a surrogate for reader? This character probably is the best viewpoint character as it is the one who readers can identify with.

One last note: Your viewpoint character, if a character in the story, needs to be at an event to tell about it. Having a key event told to the viewpoint character amounts to exposition, a major style issue.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.