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Angie Kiesling Editorial Director

Banish Point-of-View Stumbling Blocks
By Paige DeRosa

How many times have you been told to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes? As writers, we are required to do exactly that—slip on the soles of all kinds of colorful characters. But what happens between our feet and our brain can sometimes be confusing, especially when we’re required to finesse our way into the head of a character we barely know. In order to accomplish point of view (POV) writing, familiarizing ourselves with the nitty-gritty is a tedious yet necessary evil.

There are only a few options when it comes to the narrative voice, and they are very cut-and-dry. Let’s take a look at some of them:

First-person point of view, as everyone from your mother to your fifth-grade schoolteacher told you, is when the narrator employs the use of the pronoun “I.” Of course, use of the first-person POV lends itself to the narrator becoming unreliable since it is strictly from their viewpoint and outside the frame of reference of any other character.

One subsection of first person is a technique called stream-of-consciousness—favored by authors such as William Faulkner in the Southern Gothic masterpiece The Sound and the Fury. Stream-of-consciousness is a character’s internal monologue that presents life as a thought process—and it can seem somewhat frenzied in its execution. It requires a real sleight-of-hand to make it work.

If first person is one of the common techniques, then second person is its less famous sister. This is when the reader acts as the narrator. These books usually follow in the same vein as Choose Your Own Adventure-style books and are largely underrated in terms of artistic expression.

Third-person POV includes three different variations: the limited omniscient, which is limited to one character’s thoughts only—usually the protagonist; omniscient, with a God-like narrator able to penetrate everyone’s thoughts in the past, present, and future; and objective, or “fly on the wall,” in which the narrator isn’t privy to any of the characters’ thoughts, just their actions. Ambitious writers might try their hand at an omniscient POV, but it takes seasoned professionals to execute the technique without it becoming too scatterbrained.

Now that you know the ropes of POV writing, let’s take a look at some common pitfalls. Inexplicable shifts in point of view are common among new writers when they sit down to write their first novel or instructional guide. Study the following passage and determine where the shift in POV occurs:

John was tired after working all day long. His boss, Dan, had piled more work on him than he could shake a stick at, and to top it all off, Dan was unhappy with his declining work ethic. He always sits at his desk and plays computer games, thought Dan. I guess that means no promotion.

The viewpoint is identified as John’s in the first sentence. Midway through the second sentence, the focus shifts to Dan. By the third sentence, the inevitable has happened: Dan’s thoughts have completely monopolized John’s story. A quick fix would be to change the second sentence to “Dan seemed unhappy” and omit the third entirely. Unless you’re working in the limited omniscient voice, where the narrator can travel unobstructed from one person’s thoughts to another, it’s best to stick with only one character. See if you can again identify where the shift occurs:

Amy finished dancing and waited quietly for the crowd’s approval. It never came. Most of the crowd felt embarrassed for her.

The shift in point of view here occurs in the third sentence. All of a sudden, we jump from Amy’s head into the heads of the crowd members, who are little more than secondary—if not tertiary—characters with virtually no importance to the story.

Another roadblock to creating an effective POV would be the use of first-person narrative in a scholarly work or instructional manual. In a genre that requires an author to remain largely unbiased and objective, throwing “I” into the mix is just another obtrusive slip-up that can detract from your work’s credibility. By proving yourself to be a credible, reliable source without bias, you can gain and effectively retain reader interest.

POV takes a great deal of time and patience to master and, if exhibited proficiently, shows a mark of professionalism, according to acclaimed literary instructor Janet Burroway, author of Writing Fiction. The hardest part is learning how to stay in one character’s head, but once novice writers do just that, they can fully embrace the rewards.

Keep these things in mind as you go about writing your next piece of narrative fiction—or in anecdotal nonfiction. Set yourself apart from shoddy writers who are making these mistakes and your writing will improve tenfold—as will your confidence in your own abilities.