Understanding different perspectives in your writing or someone else’s writing is one of the harder mental tasks. In the end, when we read or write, we are only thinking linearly or from a single point of view. It takes a lot of self-awareness to be able to bring different perspectives to writing.
In this post, I will share some details on how I think about different perspectives when I write.
Types of perspectives
In writing, we have a first-person point of view and a third-person point of view.
First Person is mostly about when the writer is also the narrator. Everything said in the writing is about I or we. “I did this. I said this”
The third Person is a little different. The writer and the narrator can be different. In the third person point of view, the writer can be more liberal but mostly uses he or she. “He said. She said”
There is also a second-person point of view. When the narrator talks about you, the reader. “You did this. You said that”
What perspective to use?
There is not one clear answer about what perspective to use when you are writing a story or a novel. It all depends.
One simple tip is to understand how many characters you have in your story or a novel. Using first-person point of view can limit the view of the story, but it’s easier to connect with your reader. In long-form stories, first-person perspective does not help.
Third-person perspective allows us to see the story from different characters’ perspectives. It allows one to jump from one person to another. It can create confusion for a reader if the reader is not following all the characters.
Moby-Dick, and The Great Gatsby are fine examples of first-person novels.
A Game of Thrones is a great example of the third-person novel.
Change perspectives in stories
Changing perspectives in stories can be challenging, but can also back-fire if readers lose interest in the story. If you intend to change the perspective, you must do that with care.
That said, you can still combine a few different perspectives in your novel.
Here are some tips for making that work:
- If you want to shift the perspective to another character, denote the shift with a section break or a chapter break and signal to the reader that they’re with a new character. It’s good to let the reader have a mental break before you change the perspective.
- If you are inserting an interlude from another POV or a wildly different perspective (like a brief passage of first person in an otherwise third person narrative), make it stylistically different than the rest of the novel, like using italics or a markedly different prose style, so the reader recognizes it as an interlude or something different rather than as a continuation of what came before.
Perspective is critical and to get it right is equally important for a writer. When starting to write your novel or story, you should spend some time thinking about how you want to present your story and what perspective can bring the story alive.