9 Tips for Choosing and Using the Right Point of View

• Most popular point of view types in stories
Among the most important decisions a fiction writer can make is what point of view to use in a story. Point of view determines what aspects of a story will be left out and deeply affects how the reader relates to the main character and interprets the tale’s message.

• Select your viewpoint character with care
Every story is told from someone’s perspective. This someone is known as the viewpoint character.

• Streamline writing by cutting perception fallacy
When writing from a character’s point of view, authors should avoid the perception fallacy. This clunky kind of storytelling assumes that if a tale is being told from a specific character’s point of view, then all description must be filtered directly through that character’s senses and perceptions.

• Avoid shifting point of view in your story
Jumping between points of view is confusing to readers. A new point of view changes up the rhythm and flow of a story in an unnatural way. Readers often will have to re-read the passage to figure out what’s going on and then must acquaint themselves with a new narrator.”

• Create intimacy with narrator via first-person
A story can be told from several viewpoints. When the main character narrates his experiences and observations, the author is using “first-person limited” point of view.

• When to use first-person minor in stories
Among the lesser used yet most powerful of point of views is first-person minor. This point of view occurs when the narrator is in the story but is not the protagonist. It can be identified by the use of I/me. It sometimes is referred to as first-person peripheral.

• Types of third-person point of views 
By far, the most common point of view used in literature is that of third-person. When the narrator is not a character in a story, a third-person point of view is being used.  

• Use third–person limited for greater clarity
One type of third-person point of view is third-person limited. This is when the narrator tells the story only from the perspective of what the main character can observe and think, but unlike first-person limited, we also observe the main character through the author’s eyes.

• Rotate third-person limited to avoid issues
Sometimes writers structure their book so that the third-person limited point of view alternates from scene to scene between major characters in a book. However, within each scene, only one of those characters’ point of view is used. This literary device is known as third-person rotating limited.

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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.

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