“Choosing your POV is like choosing who gets to hold the camera. Choose wrong and your audience sees the back of everyone’s heads. Choose right and they see the whole beautiful mess.”
— L.A. Walton, The Book Maven
Point of view is one of the most critical decisions you’ll make as a storyteller, and somehow it’s one of the least discussed. POV determines what the reader knows, when they know it, and how close they feel to the action. It’s the lens of your entire narrative. And yet most writers choose it almost accidentally.
POV Options at a Glance
| POV | Best For | Watch Out For |
| First Person (‘I’) | Intimacy, voice-driven stories, memoir. | Limited perspective. You only know what the narrator knows. |
| Third Person Limited | Most fiction. Close but flexible. | Accidentally head-hopping between characters. |
| Third Person Omniscient | Epic stories, ensemble casts. | Can feel distant. Hard to maintain without info-dumping. |
| Second Person (‘You’) | Experimental, choose-your-own-adventure, certain literary fiction. | Can feel gimmicky if not executed perfectly. |
| Multiple POV | Complex narratives, thrillers. | Each POV needs a distinct voice or readers get confused. |
How to Choose Your POV
- Ask: whose story is this? The character with the most at stake should usually be your POV character.
- Ask: what does the reader need to know? If the reader needs to see things the protagonist can’t, consider third person omniscient or multiple POVs.
- Test it. Write the same scene in two different POVs. The one that feels most alive is your answer.
- Read widely in your genre. What POV do your favorite books use? There’s usually a genre convention for a reason.
Your Move, Creative
Take your current project’s opening scene and rewrite it in a different POV. Notice what changes. What new information appears? What disappears? Use that experiment to confirm—or change—your choice.
Stop letting your stories stay stuck.
